GE Aviation becomes latest partner to join Uber Elevate’s growing ecosystem

GE Aviation’s Dig­i­tal Group has been select­ed as an Uber Ele­vate ecosys­tem part­ner and will devel­op require­ments for a flight data mon­i­tor­ing pro­gramme to sup­port eVTOL air­craft on the Uber plat­form.

The com­pa­ny is a world-lead­ing provider of jet and tur­bo­prop engines, com­po­nents, avion­ics, elec­tri­cal pow­er sys­tems, dig­i­tal solu­tions and inte­grat­ed sys­tems for com­mer­cial, mil­i­tary, busi­ness and gen­er­al avi­a­tion air­craft. 

It is the lat­est to join Uber’s diverse net­work, join­ing air­craft OEMs and real estate firms such as Hyundai, EmbraerX, Mac­quar­ie, Oaktree’s Trans­porta­tion Infra­struc­ture Fund and Hill­wood Prop­er­ties.

In a press release announc­ing the news, GE Avi­a­tion says its Flight Data Mon­i­tor­ing pro­gram and indus­try expe­ri­ence in work­ing with some of the world’s largest flight data bench­mark­ing pro­grams, made this part­ner­ship a ‘nat­ur­al fit’ for Uber Ele­vate.

Andrew Cole­man, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of GE Aviation’s Dig­i­tal Group, said: “This part­ner­ship will help expand our dig­i­tal inno­va­tion as the trav­el indus­try con­tin­ues to evolve. We’re able to bring our expe­ri­ence in dig­i­tal across the trav­el ecosys­tem by help­ing trav­el­ers reach their des­ti­na­tion safe­ly and effi­cient­ly.”

Bob W. Whet­sell, Direc­tor of Safe­ty Pro­grammes with GE Aviation’s Dig­i­tal Group, added: “Uber Elevate’s eVTOL ride shar­ing pro­gramme is anoth­er ground­break­ing mile­stone in avi­a­tion his­to­ry. The eVTOL air­craft cre­ate a new ecosys­tem for rideshar­ing, focus­ing on safe­ty, min­i­miz­ing noise, and ener­gy effi­cien­cy.”

Used by hun­dreds of oper­a­tors world­wide, Flight Data Mon­i­tor­ing is GE Aviation’s pre­mier ser­vice for help­ing oper­a­tors under­stand and improve safe­ty.  GE’s patent­ed ana­lyt­ics soft­ware fus­es mete­o­ro­log­i­cal infor­ma­tion, nav­i­ga­tion data, and ter­rain map­ping to iden­ti­fy safe­ty events and mea­sure­ments on thou­sands of flights every day.S

Since its intro­duc­tion in the air­line indus­try more than 20 years ago, Flight Data Mon­i­tor­ing has been wide­ly cred­it­ed with reduc­ing inci­dent and acci­dent rates at air­lines and air­craft oper­a­tors where it has been adopt­ed. 

The Uber Ele­vate team is plan­ning to launch its aer­i­al ride-shar­ing net­work in three cities by 2023 — Dal­las, Los Ange­les and Mel­bourne.

Wyatt Smith, Uber Ele­vate’s Head of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment, gave an fas­ci­nat­ing insight into this ser­vice dur­ing a Revolution.Aero vir­tu­al Town Hall meet­ing last week.