EXECUTIVE PROFILE: Ricky Sandhu, Founder of Urban-Air Port

Ricky Sand­hu found­ed Urban-Air Port in 2019 and today is the company’s Exec­u­tive Chair­man. He has been in the news — a lot — recent­ly after his Urban-Air Port (UAP) ‘Air One’ ver­ti­port infra­struc­ture was on dis­play at Coven­try for three weeks.

In part­ner­ship with Hyundai’s Super­nal eVTOL, the event was a great suc­cess leav­ing the pub­lic who attend­ed enthralled, enthused and amazed by what they saw. Below, is a brief pro­file of this pio­neer­ing man who is help­ing to deliv­er the future of air flight in to the present.

evtolinsights.com has also pub­lished a two part inter­view with Sand­hu, where he dis­cuss­es the event in depth.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Chris Stonor Asks The Ques­tions.

Describe Urban-Air Port in 5 words

Lead­ing tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven ver­ti­port devel­op­er

What event first inspired your UAP vision?

When work­ing for Air­bus in 2017. The com­pa­ny was devel­op­ing an Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) pro­gram. This gave me an insight of what was required: Infra­struc­ture.

Proud­est com­pa­ny moment to date

The Urban-Air Port (UAP) team com­ing togeth­er inside Air One for a pho­to.

UAP Team

What is UAPs vision for eVTOL and the UAM Mar­ket?

To enable the indus­try to take flight, by pro­vid­ing the appro­pri­ate ground infra­struc­ture in parts of cities where the demand is great­est. And why tech­nol­o­gy is so impor­tant to unlock these areas by cre­at­ing a UAM net­work.

What does a typ­i­cal work­ing day look like for you?

It starts with a triple shot cof­fee and usu­al­ly ends with a Bavar­i­an beer (laughs). Present­ly, my day includes liais­ing with our amaz­ing team, advanc­ing dif­fer­ent parts of the busi­ness, speak­ing to the media from all over the world, and talk­ing to prospec­tive cus­tomers as well as our investors.

How do you relax away from the job?

I relax with my fam­i­ly and kids. I make sure I spend week­ends with them. I love walk­ing around Regent’s Park in Prim­rose Hill and breath­ing in the fresh air. I live close by. That’s where I get my steps in. I can walk up to 15 kilo­me­tres in a day.

Favourite book or film?

A favourite book is Shoe Dog by Nike co-Founder Phil Knight. It real­ly inspired me. I gave a copy to my man­age­ment team to read.

A favourite recent film is Le Mans ’66 (Matt Damian/Christian Bale) that shows the Ford v Fer­rari bat­tle for suprema­cy at the 1966 Le Mans. It required huge surges of com­plete re-imag­i­na­tion from Ford to build a race car to beat Fer­rari. This is prob­a­bly my best film of all time.

What is your favourite hol­i­day des­ti­na­tion?

My fam­i­ly and I vis­it Greece quite a lot. Our secret hide­away are the ion­ian islands. It is not easy get­ting away giv­en how busy we are, but I have a great team which allows me to take hol­i­days. It is impor­tant to recharge the bat­ter­ies.

If you could invite three guests to din­ner (dead or alive), who would they be?

Michael Jor­dan, def­i­nite­ly, he has been a life-long hero of mine who strives for ulti­mate per­fec­tion. Then Robert de Niro and the third, let me think…(pause)… I know… Andrew Carnegie, the for­mer steel mag­net who was one of the rich­est peo­ple in Amer­i­ca.

What is your dream car?

That would have to be a clas­sic — The 1977 Porsche 911.

So, not an elec­tric car, then?

There aren’t any good ones, yet.

What are the present top three chal­lenges fac­ing the eVTOL indus­try?

The financ­ing of it. Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for eVTOLs. The adop­tion by cities and con­sumers.

Dream Car

Most inspir­ing sto­ry about the indus­try you have read to date?

(After care­ful thought) Mod­esty aside, it’s got to be us. For exam­ple, we had 150 kids from my son’s north Lon­don school, aged from 6 to 8, who came to Air One along with 10 of their teach­ers. The chil­dren were ask­ing about hydro­gen, charg­ing, how much would a flight cost… They seemed total­ly inspired. We did a com­pe­ti­tion where they could design their own eVTOL and urban-air port, a locat­ed street and city. We announced the win­ners and for the 6 year-olds it was a team of girls. This was a real­ly inspir­ing exer­cise for us and a love­ly moment.

Most impor­tant indus­try devel­op­ment you think may hap­pen in the next year?

Hope­ful­ly, mov­ing the nee­dle towards a ful­ly cer­ti­fied air taxi. Deliv­er­ing on Urban-Air Port orders to real loca­tions for real clients. These two aspects need to work and move in par­al­lel. We will cer­tain­ly ful­fil our part.

Where do you think the indus­try will be in the next five years? What are your hopes?

For us, we aim to have sev­er­al hun­dred Urban-Air Ports deployed around the world. We hope to see an equal­i­sa­tion of both pas­sen­ger and car­go eVTOLs fly­ing over some cities with an appro­pri­ate ground net­work struc­ture. We will be liv­ing in an advanced air mobil­i­ty world.

How can peo­ple get in touch with UAP?

Either via the web­site where there is a con­tact but­ton: https://www.urbanairport.com or through our media comms: lewis.evans@urbanairport.com