Q&A: Ricky Sandhu of Urban-Air Port expands on its infrastructure project and exciting plans for later this year

Fol­low­ing the recent announce­ment by Urban-Air Port about its new infra­struc­ture pro­gramme, with part­ners Alti­tude Angel and Safe­guard Ver­ti­ports, we spoke to com­pa­ny founder and CEO Ricky Sand­hu about the indus­try reac­tion to the news.

He also gave his thoughts on land­ing infra­struc­ture for eVTOL air taxis and drones, and told us about Urban-Air Port’s plans to set up what could be the world’s first event for the indus­try post-Covid-19.

Q: What has the reac­tion been like since mak­ing your announce­ment about this infra­struc­ture pro­gramme, Ricky?

Ricky Sand­hu: “It’s been pret­ty amaz­ing actu­al­ly. Since our first announce­ment at the end of Jan­u­ary [win­ner of Future Flight Chal­lenge], that still kept on going until a few weeks ago. We’ve got so much to do and we’re quite keen to take the pub­lic with us on this jour­ney.

“We’re invest­ing a lot in the PR side of things because we know it’s been lack­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly from the infra­struc­ture side, but I also think from the eVTOL side. What we’re real­ly good at is demys­ti­fy­ing  big, com­plex things. I’ve been doing it my whole career and when I worked at Fos­ters, I remem­ber a mas­sive project in Stock­holm called Slussen and it was road, rail, metro, marine and sub­ter­ranean. There were huge bridges and infra­struc­ture and it was quite a lot to do at one time. 

“I remem­ber as we were doing it, the project team said it’s amaz­ing how you demys­ti­fied things; tak­ing some­thing very com­plex, break­ing it down to its con­stituent parts and pre­sent­ing it an under­stand­able way for instance start­ing with the handrail detail, with inte­grat­ed light­ing of a new steel bridge [the touch­point for users] that ulti­mate­ly is just a small part of a huge new crit­i­cal piece of infra­struc­ture – the human­i­ties of big inno­v­a­tive infra­struc­ture is what we unique­ly under­stand 

“So our work at Urban-Air Port with the media announce­ments is to break it down, make it sim­ple, leg­i­ble and assur­ing. This par­tic­u­lar one was packed full of punch and there’s so much more to come. Our plan is to take peo­ple with us, and also show lead­er­ship from our side.”

Q: With every­one you have been speak­ing to, from those who are new to the indus­try to those with decades of expe­ri­ence, do you think the pen­ny is start­ing to drop and peo­ple are start­ing to realise this new way of trav­el­ling is going to be big?

RS: “I think so and it’s awe­some that Bloomberg picked us up. We’re also on Bloomberg Tech on Twit­ter, so that’s pret­ty cool. You can’t board a train with­out a train sta­tion, board a plane with­out an air­port or catch a bus with­out a bus stop. 

“So you need this infra­struc­ture and I think it’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty to do some­thing dif­fer­ent, to now just have siloed func­tion­al­i­ty for each infra­struc­ture but to actu­al­ly bring lots of mobil­i­ty sys­tems togeth­er. It’s all about mobil­i­ty in the end for us. 

The fact we have got Kwasi Kwarteng [UK Sec­re­tary of State for the Depart­ment of Busi­ness, Ener­gy and Indus­tri­al Strat­e­gy] as part of our news sto­ry is awe­some and sup­port from the Depart­ment for Trans­port as well shows we’re real, seri­ous, cred­i­ble and lead­ing the world. The UK is real­ly push­ing us.”

Q: As well as the UK, is the plan for Urban-Air Port to push out sim­i­lar infra­struc­ture pro­grammes to oth­er coun­tries e.g. work­ing with the US state Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tions or gov­ern­ments in Asia-Pacif­ic?

RS: “Exact­ly. Our next announce­ment will talk about us expand­ing over­seasand we have our close con­nec­tions with Hyundai Motor Group in USA & South Korea. We’ve also been quite for­tu­nate and priv­i­leged to join the Pacif­ic Basin Eco­nom­ic Coun­cil in Asia, so we’ve got pret­ty good cov­er­age into those mar­kets alre­day. And there’s lots of oth­er places in between, which we hope we can share in the com­ing weeks and months. 

“This par­tic­u­lar announce­ment was a key one because it’s about the sys­tems, safe­ty require­ments and reg­u­la­tions that the UK is lead­ing on, and we can scale it up across the UK, but then also export and help oth­er coun­tries build those sys­tems too.

“Safe­guard Ver­ti­ports was con­ceived because of our work, so we’re cre­at­ing real jobs and real­ly inno­v­a­tive new UK com­pa­nies. And by work­ing togeth­er, which we’ll have to do, we can cred­i­bly, sen­si­bly and respon­si­bly grow all of the Air Archi­tec­tureTM  you need in order to sup­port the ground infra­struc­ture for the aer­i­al vehi­cles.

“So  feel we’re real­ly doing a lot of the hard yards for the eVTOL man­u­fac­tur­ers. Whilst they are get­ting all the SPAC deals and atten­tion right now, we’re behind the scenes work­ing dou­ble time to make their visions become real­i­ty but paving the way for these incred­i­bly sophis­ti­cat­ed and beau­ti­ful vehi­cles to land & take-off from agnos­tic, hard work­ing sup­port­ing infra­struc­ture  But in order for this to hap­pen, we’ve got to do a lot with our city part­ners and the reg­u­la­tors. There’s a lot going on.

“The air assets can only work if the ground sys­tems work too, so the ener­gy sys­tems, EV charg­ing sys­tems and pas­sen­ger expe­ri­ence. All of those things are very much relat­ed, so we’re com­ing at it from the top and the bot­tom.”

Q: It must be excit­ing to final­ly be in a posi­tion to plan demon­stra­tions of your Air Archi­tec­ture lat­er this year, which will real­ly help with pub­lic accep­tance.

RS: “Yes, and it’s part of that demys­ti­fi­ca­tion process. A lot of the tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment hap­pens in stealth mode behind closed doors, but at the same time, a lot of what is being pro­posed is some­thing that peo­ple need to adopt and utilise straight away. 

“And this will only hap­pen if there are live and prop­er­ly organ­ised demon­stra­tions and events like Air One. For the first time in the world, there will be a ful­ly oper­a­tional Urban-Air Port in a dense, down­town set­ting. It’s fine to fly drones in air­fields in remote loca­tions and that’s need­ed to advance the indus­try, but Air One will be some­where where you nor­mal­ly go shop­ping, where you walk past on the way to the train sta­tion, so it becomes part of real life.

“Adam Slepi­an [Glob­al Head of Part­ner­ships at the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty Divi­sion of Hyundai], said this might be the first major event for the indus­try post Covid-19.  It’s awe­some and such a great way to show what we’ve been work­ing on. We’ll be tak­ing all the nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions with Coven­try City Coun­cil and the UK Gov­ern­ment and remain laser focused on our goal of bring­ing this sec­tor to the peo­ple – to the ground, as it were, and we tru­ly wel­come every­one to share in this expe­ri­ence.”

Q: How are devel­op­ments com­ing along in Coven­try? Are you still on track to host live demos by the end of this year?

RS: “Yes, we are on pro­gramme. The team is work­ing very hard. We’ve pushed our­selves hard because any piece of infra­struc­ture nor­mal­ly takes years to realise. We’ve giv­en our­selves 11 months to design, devel­op, man­u­fac­ture, install, test, val­i­date and oper­ate. We’ve got an amaz­ing team which is grow­ing each day and have tak­en a lot of quite big but sen­si­ble steps. Our next announce­ment will tell you more about what is hap­pen­ing.”

Q: Many regard infra­struc­ture as a bot­tle­neck of the indus­try, do you think it has been over­looked?

RS: “It cer­tain­ly has­n’t been over­looked by us. But for the rest of the world, yes I do think it has to some degree. We’ve been and will con­tin­ue to be laser focused on infra­struc­ture because with­out it, there will be no sec­tor. 

“It’s cru­cial­ly impor­tant not only for pas­sen­ger air taxis and eVTOLs, but also for eVTOLs for car­go logis­tics and small­er drones because you need orches­tra­tion and organ­i­sa­tion when you’ve got mul­ti­ple vehi­cles

“They all need charg­ing and main­tain­ing. They need to be loaded and unloaded and there’s lot of very com­pli­cat­ed pro­to­cols on dif­fer­ent types of car­go. There’s many things one has to go through that needs to be done in a very con­trolled envi­ron­ment. 

“Our expe­ri­ence, not only in cities but avi­a­tion and aero­space, is the core of Urban-Air Port, a unique under­stand­ing that lays the foun­da­tion for effec­tive­ly min air­ports in cities – ‘Urban-Air Port’, the name itself embod­ies this real­i­ty. . We are start­ing to show the world one of our mod­els, but we’ll be reveal­ing oth­ers which are small­er and some which are big­ger. 

“What we are devel­op­ing is a scal­able sys­tem, which means if there’s a lev­el of tai­lor­ing, we can do it with­in our sys­tem for what your needs are, what use-cas­es you have and what vehi­cles you’ll be using. I think that’s real­ly impor­tant and for the first time, infra­struc­ture can be designed, devel­oped, fab­ri­cat­ed, test­ed, val­i­dat­ed and hand­ed over with­in 11 months for oper­a­tional readi­ness and tran­si­tion and deploy­ment.

“That’s some­thing you can’t do with a train sta­tion or an air­port, so it means we have a mod­el that can be deployed rapid­ly in mul­ti­ple loca­tions at mul­ti­ple sizes and for mul­ti­ple use cas­es. And all of a sud­den, that will then lead to ful­ly fledged Air Archi­tec­ture™ that is scaled across the coun­try. And then we can export that glob­al­ly. 

“But it’s not easy. There’s actu­al­ly a lot of chal­lenges and we have to go in lock­step with the indus­try, so that as the indus­try starts to grow and there’s more vehi­cle move­ments, our infra­struc­ture can scale to serve all of those move­ments in future; whether they’re small or much larg­er drones.

“That’s why to show for the first time, a real eVTOL in per­fect har­mo­ny with its infra­struc­ture, is going to be real­ly excit­ing for every­body to see. You can’t have one – with­out the oth­er and Urban-Air Port pro­vides the nec­es­sary func­tion­al­i­ty that will be required to serve this sec­tor.”