Busy schedule planned for Royal Aeronautical Society’s Urban Air Mobility conference

The Roy­al Aero­nau­ti­cal Soci­ety (RAeS) will host its two-day vir­tu­al Urban Air Mobil­i­ty con­fer­ence this week, which will aim to explore the chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties in the indus­try.

Tak­ing place from Octo­ber 22nd-23rd, the event will cov­er the fol­low­ing top­ics: Urban Air Mobil­i­ty Mar­ket and Demand; Tech­nolo­gies; Infra­struc­ture — phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal; Trans­port Sys­tem Inte­gra­tion; Oper­a­tions; Busi­ness Cas­es and Oper­at­ing mod­els; Reg­u­la­tion; and Safe­ty, Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, Secu­ri­ty & Test­ing.

Announc­ing the event, it said: “The 2020s her­alds a new and excit­ing era in avi­a­tion with the adop­tion of autonomous sys­tem tech­nolo­gies, AI, dig­i­tal sys­tems, new propul­sion sys­tems, new mate­ri­als, and new busi­ness oper­at­ing mod­els. None more so, than in the poten­tial of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty.

“These inno­va­tions bring with them sev­er­al of chal­lenges, notably as new play­ers in this sec­tor are typ­i­cal­ly start-ups with lit­tle avi­a­tion back­ground but bring with them new skills from oth­er sec­tors.

“Giv­en the Society’s body of knowl­edge, our role now includes the need to answer the hard ques­tions of the future; why, when, how much, is it safe?”

Day one will start with a wel­come and intro­duc­tion from Con­fer­ence Chair Andrew Chad­wick MRAeS and a keynote by Robert Bourke, Vice Pres­i­dent of Oliv­er Wyman, enti­tled ‘Urban Air Mobil­i­ty — Deliv­er­ing the Dream.’

Ses­sion one will look at Urban Air Mobil­i­ty Mar­ket and Demand, and speak­ers will be Sameer Savani, Head of Inno­va­tion and Engi­neer­ing at ADS Group, Nishaan Rama, Senior Asso­ciate at ICF, and James Cran­swick, Direc­tor of Avi­a­tion at Deloitte. All three will then fea­ture in a pan­el dis­cus­sion.

The sec­ond ses­sion will focus on tech­nolo­gies, fea­tur­ing Dr. Alice Stitt from the Aero­space Tech­nol­o­gy Insti­tute (ATI) and James Shep­pard, Head of R&T at Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, while the third ses­sion of the day will be about Infra­struc­ture. Speak­ers will include Dar­rell Swan­son of Swan­son Avi­a­tion Con­sul­tan­cy, Richard Park­er, Chief Exec­u­tive of Alti­tude Angel, Adri­an Zanel­li, Chief Devel­op­ment Offi­cer for Urban-Air Port, Six Miles Across Lon­don.

Anoth­er pan­el dis­cus­sion will fea­ture Swan­son, Park­er, Zanel­li and Mariya Tara­banovs­ka, Co-Founder of Flight Crowd.

On the Fri­day, the keynote will be deliv­ered by Pro­fes­sor Iain Gray, Direc­tor of Aero­space at Cran­field Uni­ver­si­ty, which will talk about work­ing togeth­er to deliv­er an inte­grat­ed mobil­i­ty solu­tion. Ses­sion Four will look at Trans­port Sys­tem Inte­gra­tion, fea­tur­ing Mark West­wood, Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer at Con­nect­ed Sys­tems Cat­a­pult, and Thomas Wil­son, Drone Part­ner­ships Man­ag­er at Flock Cov­er.

Ses­sion Five will be about Oper­a­tions, fea­tur­ing Hari­ni Kulatun­ga, Vice Pres­i­dent of Head of Solu­tions at Air­bus, and FLY­T’s Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer, Andy King, and the final ses­sion on Fri­day will be on Reg­u­la­tions.

This will fea­ture Mun­ish Khu­ra­ma, Senior Man­ag­er — Busi­ness Devel­op­ment at EUROCONTROL, Fred­er­ic Laugere, Inno­va­tion Ser­vices Lead at the UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty, and Mil­dred Troegel­er, Direc­tor of Glob­al Air­space Inte­gra­tion at Boe­ing NeXt.

Estab­lished in 1866, the Roy­al Aero­nau­ti­cal Soci­ety is the world’s only pro­fes­sion­al body ded­i­cat­ed to the aero­space com­mu­ni­ty. It exists to fur­ther the advance­ment of aero­nau­ti­cal art, sci­ence and engi­neer­ing around the world.

Reg­is­tra­tion fees for this event will be £100 for mem­bers, £200 for non-mem­bers and £137.50 for cor­po­rate part­ners. Those who are mem­bers of either ADS, ATI, ARPAS-UK, IET, Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety, Trans­port­UP and UKRI can buy tick­ets for £150, while it is £62.50 for stu­dents.

For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it https://www.aerosociety.com/events-calendar/raes-urban-air-mobility-conference-2020/