Future of Flight virtual event outlines key issues facing aerospace and aviation markets

Some of the chal­lenges fac­ing the aero­space and avi­a­tion indus­tries were dis­cussed at Atkins’ Future of Flight vir­tu­al trade show and con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, 17th June.

Organ­ised by one of world’s most respect­ed design, engi­neer­ing and project man­age­ment con­sul­tan­cies, the event was the first of its kind and con­sist­ed of vir­tu­al booths, pre­sen­ta­tions, net­work­ing cha­t­rooms and videos about a host of dif­fer­ent sec­tors.

They includ­ed Advanced Engi­neer­ing, After­mar­ket, Cyber Secu­ri­ty, Drones, Future of Flight Chal­lenge, Safer Pas­sen­ger Jour­neys, Space and Sus­tain­able Aero­space. Also join­ing as event part­ners on the day were eVTOL devel­op­er Ver­ti­cal Aero­space and AERALIS, a British aero­space com­pa­ny which is design­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of mod­u­lar jet train­er air­craft.

The eight pre­sen­ta­tions focused on Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM), Cyber Secu­ri­ty, Space, MRO, Dig­i­tal Tools and Tech­nol­o­gy and Sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

The first one of the morn­ing, enti­tled ‘Unlock­ing the Third Dimen­sion of Trans­porta­tion’, was deliv­ered by Andrew Mun­day, Direc­tor of Atkins’ Advanced Engi­neer­ing and Tech­nol­o­gy Prac­tice.

He start­ed by say­ing that 60 per cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion are pre­dict­ed to live in urban areas by 2050, adding that the aver­age speed of traf­fic in Lon­don in 2017 was just 5.6mph.

“Mobil­i­ty in cities is becom­ing a glob­al prob­lem, and so there is a need for a solu­tion,” Mun­day said. “There is a huge amount going on across dif­fer­ent modes of trans­port and I’m not say­ing UAM is the solu­tion to the entire­ty of a city’s prob­lems. How­ev­er, it is a new dimen­sion that can be part of the solu­tion.

“The ambi­tion is that we want to be able to fly from wher­ev­er we are, to the place we want to go, in a straight line, imme­di­ate­ly, cheap­ly and safely…can we do it in a way that soci­ety deems it accept­able?

Mun­day added that the advances in tech­nol­o­gy has opened up lots of poten­tial for the UAM mar­ket, which includes AI, dig­i­tal con­nec­tiv­i­ty, Unmanned Traf­fic Man­age­ment (UTM) and elec­tric propul­sion.

But he stressed that despite the obvi­ous advan­tages, get­ting the per­mis­sion of soci­ety to allow eVTOL air­craft to oper­ate will be more frag­ile and hard­er to pre­dict.

Also speak­ing was Andrew Caugh­ey, Atkins’ Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Lead for Space. His pre­sen­ta­tion was enti­tled ‘The Four Cor­ner­stones of Space-enabled Urban Air Mobil­i­ty’.

Caugh­ey believes there are a num­ber of sim­i­lar­i­ties between the UAM and Space indus­tries, say­ing: “In both sec­tors, we’re see­ing a rapid­ly evolv­ing tech­nol­o­gy envi­ron­ment with sig­nif­i­cant inno­va­tion and dis­rup­tion. There are great exam­ples of new think­ing, new prod­ucts and new chal­lenges and we’re see­ing new entrants to the mar­kets which are shak­ing up tra­di­tion­al tech­nolo­gies and busi­ness mod­els.”

Exam­ples men­tioned include SpaceX’s Star­link mega­con­stel­la­tion, which is chang­ing the norm around com­mu­ni­ca­tion satel­lites, and how Urban Air Mobil­i­ty is trans­form­ing how we think about air trav­el. Caugh­ey men­tioned how Air­bus and Boe­ing are sup­port­ing new entrants with finance, men­tor­ing or incu­ba­tor pro­grammes.

He added: Anoth­er sim­i­lar­i­ty is the scale of the chal­lenges that these sec­tors are seek­ing to over­come, and that means col­lab­o­ra­tion goes beyond indus­try. Gov­ern­ments and the pub­lic sec­tor are the key enablers for future suc­cess in UAM and Space.

“I think there are a vast num­ber of oppor­tu­ni­ties for col­lab­o­ra­tion between these two sec­tors. And with decades of expe­ri­ence to rely on, Space is undoubt­ed­ly going to be a cru­cial enabler for the UAM land­scapes of tomor­row.”

Caugh­ey believes the four cor­ner­stones where UAM indus­try can built on the ground­work laid down by the Space sec­tor, which are Satel­lite Nav­i­ga­tion, Satel­lite Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Earth Obser­va­tion and Advanced Engi­neer­ing.

He added that Satel­lite Nav­i­ga­tion in par­tic­u­lar will be the wide­ly exploit­ed inter­sec­tion between both Space and UAM, giv­en that it already enables the safe flight of mil­lions of pas­sen­gers around the world every year.

Also deliv­er­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion about the UAM indus­try was James Rich­mond, who is Atkins’ Future of Flight Lead. Enti­tled ‘MRO: A For­got­ten Bar­ri­er to UAM’, Rich­mond start­ed by say­ing that he believes inef­fec­tive plan­ning for main­te­nance, repair and over­haul could present a sig­nif­i­cant bar­ri­er to the scal­ing of UAM.

He said: “Many fac­tors can influ­ence the scal­a­bil­i­ty of the sys­tem and these may include the infra­struc­ture avail­abil­i­ty, the enable­ment of enough move­ments or oper­a­tions which is large­ly dri­ven by the approach to UTM and ATM, and also hav­ing the right demand for the sys­tem in the first place.

“How­ev­er we must not for­get some of the oper­a­tional ele­ments and one in par­tic­u­lar is the sys­tem’s abil­i­ty to main­tain, repair and over­haul the vehi­cles. This serves as a key fac­tor in dri­ving util­i­sa­tion, as it has done in the aero­space indus­try for many decades, and is a key fac­tor in hav­ing a viable busi­ness mod­el.”

But Rich­mond advised that an oper­a­tional require­ment like this does­n’t come as an after­thought, and stressed that OEMs must con­sid­er this now while they have the chance to influ­ence the out­come.

“Plan­ning now is sim­ply not enough and for those who want a piece of this well sought-after pie must col­lab­o­rate with the oth­er stake­hold­ers. My mes­sage is sim­ple: it’s plan now, and plan togeth­er.

“Whilst we focus our efforts on over­com­ing the near-term chal­lenges to enable Urban Air Mobil­i­ty, we must not lose sight of those that influ­ence its abil­i­ty to scale. And its these that under­pin the com­mer­cial via­bil­i­ty of the sys­tem as a whole. These oper­a­tional require­ments are not a bolt-on ben­e­fit that can be lever­aged once we have a sys­tem in place, but need to be thought out ear­ly in the design life-cycle.”

For more infor­ma­tion about Atkins’ work, vis­it https://www.atkinsglobal.com/en-gb