Jaunt Air Mobility’s Chief Commercial Officer provides additional insight into company’s Access Skyways group

After eVTOL air­craft devel­op­er Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty announced it had estab­lished Access Sky­ways — a group of part­ner com­pa­nies which will pro­vide exper­tise around the inte­gra­tion of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty — we spoke to Simon Briceno, Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty’s Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer, about this in more detail.

The com­pa­ny, which is an Uber Ele­vate part­ner, is also cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing its Jour­ney eVTOL air taxi, and as part of its roadmap, esti­mates it will enter full rate pro­duc­tion by 2026.

Q: Can you tell us more about the back­ground behind set­ting up Access Sky­ways?

SB: “We real­ly see an imme­di­ate need to work close­ly with experts, in par­tic­u­lar on the infra­struc­ture side of the ecosys­tem, to ensure that those ele­ments are in place and ready for our cus­tomers when we enter ser­vice. As you know and many oth­er peo­ple in this space under­stand, the ecosys­tem is quite an enor­mous under­tak­ing.

“My back­ground pri­or to join­ing Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty was in avi­a­tion and aero­space and in par­tic­u­lar, design­ing air­craft and these eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy plat­forms.

“Much of the eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy is mature and I think we can all see it’s almost ready to take to the skies, but when you start to real­ly think about trans­port­ing pas­sen­gers and pro­vid­ing com­mer­cial ser­vices, you have to address many oth­er things. Like with today’s com­mer­cial avi­a­tion, there are rules and stan­dards which have to be fol­lowed, whether it’s from an air­craft air­wor­thi­ness stand­point or on the ground infra­struc­ture at an air­port or heli­port.

“As a com­pa­ny we are in the busi­ness of sell­ing air­craft, but these air­craft need sup­port­a­bil­i­ty. And our cus­tomers in par­tic­u­lar ask a lot of ques­tions about our air­craft, and have equal­ly as many ques­tions about how it’s going to fly, where it’s going to land, take-off and how it will be charged.

“We have tak­en our phi­los­o­phy at Jaunt where we believe in col­lab­o­rat­ing with Tier 1 aero­space sup­ply com­pa­nies on our air­craft devel­op­ment. We are fol­low­ing that very tried and true approach as well, and just like we’re doing on the air­craft, we believe that part­ner­ing with the right expert com­pa­nies on infra­struc­ture and air­craft sup­port­a­bil­i­ty is key. 

“We don’t intend to do all of this our­selves. It has to be an effort where we engage with the local trans­porta­tion com­mu­ni­ty, mass tran­sit agen­cies and with local plan­ning organ­i­sa­tions in the cities and areas we plan to oper­ate. Work­ing with them and these part­ner com­pa­nies, we hope to grow and pro­vide an inte­grat­ed solu­tion for urban air mobil­i­ty.

“That is what it comes down to. Inte­grat­ing our air­craft into a viable and fea­si­ble oper­a­tion. This has been in the works for some time, but it takes time to bring in some of these com­pa­nies. — we’re still work­ing on two more and will hope­ful­ly have news about this short­ly.”

Q: PS&S Inte­grat­ed Ser­vices and PRICE Sys­tems are the first part­ners to join Access Sky­ways. Do you have a set num­ber of com­pa­nies you’d like to bring in?

SB: “We hadn’t real­ly thought about any min­i­mum or max­i­mum num­ber of part­ners we’re try­ing to achieve. We start­ed by think­ing about some of the crit­i­cal areas that need to be addressed with oper­a­tors in the near term, and those high­light­ed in the info­graph­ic are what we real­ly see now in 2020/21, as being impor­tant for the entry into ser­vice of our air­craft. It’s being able to have part­ners with expe­ri­ence and exper­tise in these areas.

“It’s been a coor­di­na­tion, both an out­reach from our side and the exist­ing con­nec­tions with those com­pa­nies. With PS&S and PRICE, hav­ing worked togeth­er pre­vi­ous­ly and then real­is­ing that col­lec­tive­ly, we are going to be able to address these chal­lenges togeth­er.

“We’re just cross­ing the T’s and dot­ting the I’s on the next two part­ners and once that’s done, you will see how they will com­ple­ment the three that are part of Access Sky­ways now, and how we can ful­fil all of these key areas and go beyond that.

“As we work towards address­ing new ecosys­tem chal­lenges down the road, such as more autonomous oper­a­tions, there’s going to be a need for exper­tise in that area, and we are open to part­ner­ships with oth­ers going for­ward. Today, we are start­ing with this ini­tial group to address the needs we have in the near term.”

Q: You briefly men­tioned the chal­lenges which the group needs to solve ear­li­er in our con­ver­sa­tion. Are there any in par­tic­u­lar that you feel are more press­ing than oth­ers at the moment?

SB: “I would say out­side of the air­craft, and that’s impor­tant to dis­tin­guish as there are plen­ty of tech­ni­cal chal­lenges for air­craft OEMs, such as bat­tery cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. We feel very con­fi­dent with our air­craft con­fig­u­ra­tion and its path­way to cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, because of the fact we can cer­ti­fy under exist­ing rules. But out­side of the air­craft, when we refer to the ecosys­tem, in my opin­ion there are chal­lenges with air­space inte­gra­tion, infra­struc­ture and gain­ing pub­lic accep­tance.

“Those three are, at least right now, the biggest chal­lenges to address. The good news is that all three are being addressed exten­sive­ly. For exam­ple, NASA and the FAA have spent sev­er­al years look­ing at the air­space inte­gra­tion aspect, with pro­grammes like Unmanned Traf­fic Man­age­ment and NASA’s UAM Nation­al cam­paign.

“On the infra­struc­ture side, a key focus is the elec­tri­fi­ca­tion aspect. And third­ly and most impor­tant­ly, the pub­lic accep­tance is one that is both tied to the air­craft and tied to the infra­struc­ture, and is one in which we weigh heav­i­ly.

“This future mar­ket real­ly won’t hap­pen with­out hav­ing the pub­lic on board. A lot of peo­ple think pub­lic accep­tance is just about mak­ing safe and qui­et air­craft. But the real­i­ty is when you start think­ing of new ver­ti­port loca­tions, this is real, phys­i­cal infra­struc­ture that could be very close to where peo­ple live. So you have to work with that local com­mu­ni­ty and the var­i­ous groups to show there is a clear val­ue propo­si­tion and clear ben­e­fit that intro­duc­ing this trans­porta­tion ser­vice brings to them.

“One fourth chal­lenge which prob­a­bly ties in clos­er to the air­craft, is main­te­nance and repair. The MRO for elec­tric air­craft is going to be very dif­fer­ent than it is for tur­bine and pis­ton engines. Today’s avi­a­tion MRO com­pa­nies will need to work close­ly with eVTOL air­craft OEMs and oper­a­tors to build the knowl­edge and main­te­nance capa­bil­i­ties over the next sev­er­al years and be ready to sup­port eVTOL air­craft when they enter ser­vice. That’s why ear­ly out­reach with them is equal­ly as impor­tant.”

Q: Can you tell us how this group will work togeth­er going for­ward, and as more com­pa­nies start to join over the next cou­ple of years?

SB: “We have been work­ing for sev­er­al months to deter­mine the cadence and work­ing rela­tion­ship and objec­tives, and what we want to accom­plish over the next X time frame. Much of that is still in the works and we’re kick­ing it off, but at the same time, still have a bit to finalise.

“From an Access Sky­ways objec­tive stand­point, we’re going to work togeth­er to address very key cus­tomer require­ments and needs, whether they are oper­a­tors or gov­ern­ment enti­ties look­ing to explore the urban air mobil­i­ty space and get involved. We are also work­ing with oth­er AAM ini­tia­tives which have been devel­oped.

“Many of these cus­tomers have ques­tions about the ecosys­tem and have expressed an inter­est in hav­ing stud­ies per­formed, analy­sis and things of that nature. That is our tar­get. It’s not just about ‘here is the air­craft’ and we walk away. It needs to be a com­pre­hen­sive pack­age so to speak.”

Q: Are there any par­tic­u­lar ques­tions which keep com­ing up more often?

SB: “On the elec­tri­fi­ca­tion side of the infra­struc­ture, that is rel­a­tive­ly new to many peo­ple. We intend as an OEM to oper­ate in exist­ing infra­struc­ture — like exist­ing air­ports and heli­ports. That infra­struc­ture is there today. What you don’t yet see is any kind of charg­ing infra­struc­ture for any of these vehi­cles because they are very much still fuel-based. 

“There are ques­tions about how that is all going to be imple­ment­ed and part of it is because of the quan­ti­ty of ener­gy that has to be trans­ferred into the air­craft. 

“The next area is cer­tain­ly one where these air­craft are going to land and take off. What is the cadence and tem­po of oper­a­tions, how do you design the ver­ti­port for ini­tial oper­a­tions, and then for scaled oper­a­tions? And how does that work with exist­ing trans­porta­tion modal­i­ties or mass tran­sit oper­a­tions that cus­tomers might have avail­able? 

“Those are the ques­tions that we’ve been asked, and at this point, we’re talk­ing about the air taxi and urban air mobil­i­ty mar­kets. There are oth­er mar­kets, such as tourism and car­go, where you have sim­i­lar and in some cas­es, the same chal­lenges but have slight­ly dif­fer­ent oper­a­tions.”

Q: Is Access Sky­ways open to com­pa­nies all over the world?

A: “Absolute­ly. In fact, the two com­pa­nies which are com­ing on board are glob­al. There are no bor­ders in what we are try­ing to do.

“This is a glob­al ini­tia­tive and the intent behind Access Sky­ways is to hit the ground run­ning and pro­vide inte­grat­ed answers to our oper­a­tors and cus­tomers. But that doesn’t mean we are not talk­ing to oth­er part­ner com­pa­nies that we work with either inde­pen­dent­ly or can become part of Access Sky­ways in future. We have not cre­at­ed any restric­tions or lim­its, this is just the begin­ning.”

Q: What impact do you hope Access Sky­ways can have on the indus­try, as Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty gath­ers more momen­tum?

SB: “As we go through our own com­pa­ny growth, we talk with a lot of peo­ple who still have bare­ly heard of this space or this future mar­ket of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty. Even those we have talked to, and the oper­a­tors and cus­tomers who have done their research, still have many ques­tions about how the ecosys­tem will look like and how it will work. We’ve found that they often get very siloed respons­es or answers that only address one part of the ecosys­tem, like the air­craft or the infra­struc­ture.

“One of the goals behind this effort is to approach oper­a­tors and cus­tomers who want to know more about what an inte­grat­ed solu­tion might look like, and pro­vide them with a com­pre­hen­sive answer and not one where it is just about the air­craft. It is to help the cus­tomer under­stand what the entire pack­age looks like, from con­cept to oper­a­tions.”

You can find out more about Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty’s Access Sky­ways group, by vis­it­ing www.jauntairmobility.com/air-mobility