FIA Connect 2020 webinar talks about exciting future of Urban Air Mobility

Speak­ers from the US Air Force, real estate devel­op­er Hill­wood, the FAA and Uber Ele­vate dis­cussed the role of avi­a­tion in the future of mobil­i­ty at Farn­bor­ough Inter­na­tion­al Air­show (FIA) Con­nect 2020.

Organ­ised by FINN – The Avi­a­tion Indus­try Hub, the webi­nar on Mon­day is part of a vir­tu­al pro­gramme com­pris­ing free-to-attend con­fer­ences, net­work­ing, and pro­mo­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties.

Mod­er­at­ed by Matt Met­calfe, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Future Mobil­i­ty and Avi­a­tion at Deloitte Unit­ed States, the webi­nar enti­tled ‘Ele­vat­ed Mobil­i­ty: Get­ting from Demo to Do!’ fea­tured Dr. Eric Alli­son, Head of Uber Ele­vate, Ross Per­ot Jr., Chair­man of Hill­wood, Dr. Will Rop­er, Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of the Air Force for Acqui­si­tion, Tech­nol­o­gy and Logis­tics, US Air Force, and Dr. Michael Romanows­ki, Direc­tor of Pol­i­cy & Inno­va­tion, Air­craft Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Ser­vice (AIR) at the FAA.

Intro­duc­ing the dis­cus­sion, Met­calfe said: “Many believe we are at the precipice of a trans­for­ma­tion in the avi­a­tion indus­try, where it plays a much more sig­nif­i­cant role in the future of mobil­i­ty; how we move goods and peo­ple around states and cities.

“While there has been tremen­dous invest­ment from gov­ern­ments and indus­try to demon­strate and test these emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies and prove they are viable from an eco­nom­i­cal and soci­etal point of view, what can we do to accel­er­ate their implementation…how do we get from demon­stra­tion to do?”

Intro­duc­ing Uber Ele­vate’s ambi­tions for the indus­try, Alli­son said: “We’ve has been evolv­ing over the past cou­ple of years from all about ride-shar­ing to being this plat­form for mov­ing peo­ple and things through cities. We start­ed this inves­ti­ga­tion with Ele­vate about three years ago, to under­stand that with the tech­no­log­i­cal advances, what does this unlock in terms of this future poten­tial of this type of aero­mo­bil­i­ty?”

Per­ot Jr. added that Hill­wood enjoys strong part­ner­ships with Bell Heli­copter and more recent­ly, Uber, and he said it would build its ground infra­struc­ture around the coun­try. It is also work­ing with Deloitte Uni­ver­si­ty on the Deloitte Inno­va­tion Zone, and spon­sored Tex­a­s­Up last year — which brought 150 entre­pre­neurs togeth­er to talk about the future of avi­a­tion and trav­el in gen­er­al.

The com­pa­ny has built a huge 27,000-acre Alliance­Texas devel­op­ment and plans to col­lab­o­rate and devel­op a first-of-its-kind mobil­i­ty inno­va­tion ‘do-tank’ for part­ners, to devel­op, test, scale, and com­mer­cialise advanced mobil­i­ty tech­nol­o­gy and busi­ness mod­els.

In his role at the FAA, Dr. Romanows­ki said: “I over­see the reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments for effec­tive­ly every­thing that flies, from small UAS up to large trans­port air­planes and urban air mobil­i­ty vehi­cles. We work to set­tle the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and pro­duc­tion require­ments and the con­tin­ued oper­a­tion safe­ty require­ments that fits into that.

“In our Inno­va­tion Cen­ter, we’re work­ing with about 30 dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies, look­ing at their path to cer­ti­fy­ing urban air mobil­i­ty vehi­cles, whether they qual­i­fy as air­planes or new type of air­craft. We’re work­ing with them ear­ly on so they can under­stand the path­way to cer­ti­fy­ing them, and remove some of that ambi­gu­i­ty for them so that there is some sense of cer­tain­ty and the pub­lic under­stands the safe­ty expec­ta­tions for those vehi­cles.”

Dr Rop­er is in charge of all of the US Air Force and Space Force acqui­si­tion in tech­nol­o­gy and devel­op­ment. He said: “We have got to go out­side our walls and where the inno­va­tion is hap­pen­ing. Aero­space is boom­ing right now; it’s cheap­er to build than ever before and Urban Air Mobil­i­ty is on the cusp of final­ly going over the goal line and fly­ing us around like the Jet­sons promised in 1962.

“When we look at Urban Air Mobil­i­ty and what a big impact it could have for the econ­o­my not just in the US but across the World, the Air Force can­not stand by idle and just hope that the mar­ket evolves in a way that is ben­e­fi­cial for the coun­try and mil­i­tary. We want to be active­ly engaged with it, which is why we’ve raised our hand on the Agili­ty Prime pro­gram and said we think we can be one of the first adopters of this tech­nol­o­gy.”

When dis­cussing how to make ele­vat­ed mobil­i­ty a part of our trans­porta­tion net­work, Alli­son said there are three main things that come to mind; Reg­u­la­tion, Cap­i­tal and Tim­ing. “We have to make sure we are work­ing on the same things at the same time and in the right way; so when the vehi­cles, infra­struc­ture and reg­u­la­tions are all in place,” he said.

Anoth­er top­ic focused on con­ver­sa­tions with local com­mu­ni­ty groups when work starts on build­ing the infra­struc­ture to cater for the vehi­cles. Rop­er Jr. said the impor­tant thing is to ‘over com­mu­ni­cate’.

“It is mak­ing sure the mar­kets you’re work­ing in real­ly under­stand what you’re doing and you need to be the first with the answers, and get them out quick­ly,” he said. “When you talk to com­mu­ni­ty groups, their first ques­tion will be ‘how often are you going to fly over my house?’ ”

Dr Romanows­ki added: “The safe­ty require­ments are ground­ed in pub­lic accep­tance and expec­ta­tions, and show­ing that those are met. This seg­ment of the indus­try real­ly won’t get off the ground unless the pub­lic has con­fi­dence in those vehi­cles, fly­ing in those vehi­cles or hav­ing those vehi­cles fly­ing in and around their homes and com­mu­ni­ties. Ensur­ing they are ful­ly bought in and com­ing on the jour­ney every step of the way is a key part of it.”

To reg­is­ter for the event, which includes the launch of Glob­al Urban Air Sum­mit (GUAS) 2.0 tomor­row (Thurs­day), vis­it https://connect.farnboroughairshow.com/