Thought Leadership: Advanced Air Mobility in commercial aviation may be in start-up mode now, but the future awaits

The support challenges – from design through to production, operation and maintenance – that await organisations looking to enter or further entrench themselves in a high-growth industry

In 2021, Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) and Advanced Air Vehi­cles (AAVs) attract­ed $7 bil­lion in new invest­ment, a record year—more than dou­bling the total dis­closed invest­ments made over the pre­vi­ous decade. There is no doubt that the AAM indus­try is at a piv­otal point across com­mer­cial avi­a­tion.

But Rob Math­er, Vice Pres­i­dent, Aero­space and Defence Indus­tries, IFS, explains that most AAM organ­i­sa­tions have a ‘start-up’ men­tal­i­ty and it’s those organ­i­sa­tions that look beyond ini­tial design and pro­to­typ­ing, and set up a strat­e­gy for widescale com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion and ongo­ing oper­a­tions that stand to gain the most. That includes the soft­ware they use to man­age every step of each AAV life­cy­cle.

AAV Cer­ti­fi­ca­tions are on the hori­zon both sides of the Atlantic

Here, we explore the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy at the fore­front of the future of air trav­el Advanced Air Vehi­cles are not a far-off future tech­nol­o­gy from the Jet­sons; they are com­ing soon­er than you might think—and air­wor­thi­ness cer­tifi­cates are just around the cor­ner.

Con­sid­er this 2021 assess­ment from the Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA): “Urban Air Mobil­i­ty is expect­ed to become a real­i­ty in Europe with­in 3–5 years. New tech­nolo­gies such as elec­tric propul­sion and enhanced bat­tery capac­i­ty, applied to ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing sys­tems, make this pos­si­ble. The first com­mer­cial oper­a­tions are expect­ed to be the deliv­ery of goods by drones and the trans­port of pas­sen­gers, ini­tial­ly with a pilot on board.

Lat­er remote pilot­ing or even autonomous ser­vices could fol­low. Sev­er­al pilot projects are under way and some Euro­pean man­u­fac­tur­ers have already applied or cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, includ­ing for pilot­ed vehi­cles for pas­sen­ger trans­port. EASA is work­ing with them on the air­wor­thi­ness of the vehi­cles.”

In North Amer­i­ca the FAA is already focus­ing on the infra­struc­ture to sup­port AAM. This year, it released inter­im guid­ance, via Engi­neer­ing Brief, to sup­port the design and oper­a­tion of facil­i­ties that Elec­tric Ver­ti­cal Take-off and Land­ing (eVTOL) air­craft will use for ini­tial oper­a­tions. It states: “The FAA is includ­ing AAM and UAM in our plan­ning efforts, and our work is organ­ised around five areas of activity—aircraft, air­space, oper­a­tions, infra­struc­ture, and com­mu­ni­ty.”

One of the lead­ing AAM play­ers, Joby Avi­a­tion recent­ly received a Part 135 Air Car­ri­er Cer­tifi­cate from the FAA, ahead of sched­ule, allow­ing Joby to begin on-demand com­mer­cial air taxi oper­a­tions. The Part 135 Air Car­ri­er Cer­tifi­cate is one of three FAA approvals required for Joby to oper­ate its rev­o­lu­tion­ary eVTOL air­craft as an air taxi ser­vice in cities and com­mu­ni­ties across the Unit­ed States.

The prime tar­gets for AAM – where envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits are high­est

McK­in­sey esti­mates short-haul flights account for more than 17 per cent of total air­line CO 2 emis­sions, mak­ing them an impor­tant tar­get for decar­bon­i­sa­tion efforts. Replac­ing these tra­di­tion­al­ly-pow­ered flights with low­er car­bon tech­nolo­gies – such as green propul­sion – could real­ly con­tribute to low­er­ing avi­a­tion emissions—and that’s before fac­tor­ing in replac­ing ground trans­porta­tion emis­sions for sim­i­lar jour­neys.

With today’s emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies, AAM has the high­est poten­tial to dis­rupt trav­el of dis­tances up to 1,000 miles, dis­tances cur­rent­ly served by local ground vehi­cles and high num­bers of short-haul air­craft flights. Ground trans­porta­tion con­vert­ing to air trav­el will rep­re­sent a brand-new mar­ket but for air­lines, the impact is most felt with elec­tri­fi­ca­tion and hybrid usage in short and region­al dis­tances. The poten­tial to rev­o­lu­tionise short and medi­um trav­el is immi­nent but it will be a longer path for AAM to impact long-haul and trans-ocean­ic flights.

Ris­ing fuel prices are dri­ving fur­ther air­line inter­est in AAM. In fact, Avi­a­tion Week reports that one- third of the cur­rent orders for AAVs have been placed by air­lines. At IFS we cur­rent­ly have two cus­tomers excelling in the elec­tric propul­sion mar­ket. Cape Air will become one of the world’s first car­ri­ers to go elec­tric in the sky.

The com­pa­ny is work­ing close­ly to devel­op and oper­ate the Avi­a­tion Alice elec­tric aircraft—a nine-seat ful­ly elec­tric plane that has been designed from the ground-up to be the per­fect short com­mute air­craft.

On the OEM side, Rolls-Royce, beside all its work on the Trent engine fam­i­ly run­ning on sus­tain­able avi­a­tion fuels, is tar­get­ing elec­tri­fi­ca­tion too. In late 2021 the Rolls-Royce, “Spir­it of Avi­a­tion”, sup­port­ed by part­ner Elec­troflight, set three new world records for an all-elec­tric air­craft.

Pos­i­tive soci­etal impli­ca­tions – we’re already see­ing a gov­ern­ment groundswell

There is huge soci­etal ben­e­fit to be gained by mak­ing region­al trans­port more acces­si­ble for human and goods trans­porta­tion. A recent report by the UK Gov­ern­ment revealed that two in three peo­ple thought that improved trans­port links would have a pos­i­tive impact on people’s abil­i­ty to access job oppor­tu­ni­ties.

Not only can AAM pos­i­tive­ly impact com­mut­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, but from a car­go per­spec­tive it could pro­vide bet­ter link­age to rur­al com­mu­ni­ties by deliv­er­ing vital sup­plies and ser­vices to under-served areas.

In the U.S., AAM Leg­is­la­tion has also just gained House approval. A bill that gained House pas­sage in June will pro­vide $25 mil­lion in grant funds to sup­port AAM in FY 2023. The Advanced Avi­a­tion Infra­struc­ture Mod­ern­iza­tion Act (AAIM Act), H.R. 6270, autho­ris­es fund­ing to plan and then build new AAM infra­struc­ture by using exist­ing heli­ports and air­ports, estab­lish­ing new ver­ti­ports and asso­ci­at­ed charg­ing infra­struc­ture. But a cru­cial aim of the leg­is­la­tion is the need to engage com­mu­ni­ties in the plan­ning process and bring new tech­nolo­gies to a diverse set of com­mu­ni­ties, while cre­at­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of new green jobs.

We’re just at the start-up stage – but AAVs are assets to be sup­port­ed through-life

There is very much a “Sil­i­con Val­ley mind­set” in the AAM move­ment right now. The AAV land­scape is cur­rent­ly dom­i­nat­ed by dis­rup­tive start-ups or spin-offs and joint-ven­tures between lead­ing avi­a­tion players—with cer­ti­fi­ca­tion tar­gets rang­ing from 2022 through to 2028.

Despite this var­ied land­scape, each AAM organ­i­sa­tion will face the same core challenges—taking a next-gen­er­a­tion asset from design and proof-of-con­cept, through to pro­to­typ­ing, widescale oper­a­tions and ongo­ing main­te­nance. Unlike man­u­fac­tur­ing of tra­di­tion­al air­craft, many organ­i­sa­tions involved in pro­duc­ing AAVs are look­ing to become a “one-stop” shop for their assets, well beyond ini­tial sale.

From design, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and ini­tial deliv­ery, right through to sup­port­ing the spares, parts man­age­ment and main­te­nance of that AAV asset through­out its life­cy­cle. Many, like Joby are even look­ing to act as the oper­a­tor of their air­craft, mean­ing that they will also be respon­si­ble for the con­tin­u­ing air­wor­thi­ness of each air­craft.

Through-life sup­port begins with the right soft­ware

The mar­ket lead­ers in AAM will make soft­ware a cen­tral part of their evo­lu­tion­ary growth to assert their author­i­ty in a matur­ing mar­ket­place. An asset of tomor­row requires soft­ware sup­port that can sup­port every step of its jour­ney. The abil­i­ty to effi­cient­ly man­age a com­plex asset through its entire life­cy­cle requires an under­ly­ing data thread—to build, oper­ate, main­tain, and sup­port that asset.

With such quick expan­sion antic­i­pat­ed, it is essen­tial for AAV organ­i­sa­tions to have a 360-degree view of oper­a­tional process­es to make informed, data-dri­ven busi­ness deci­sions. This requires sup­port­ing soft­ware to aggre­gate, analyse and action this data, as well as to evolve in lock­step with com­pa­ny growth strategy—from ini­tial design and engi­neer­ing through to man­u­fac­tur­ing and main­te­nance.

This will put the focus on breadth of func­tion­al­i­ty for sup­port­ing soft­ware too, with rel­e­vant mod­ules need­ing to be deployed in line with busi­ness require­ments. This could span func­tion­al­i­ties such as sup­ply chain pro­cure­ment, HR, pay­roll, finance, project man­age­ment in the design and pro­duc­tion phas­es, mov­ing to man­u­fac­tur­ing exe­cu­tion sys­tems, reg­u­la­to­ry com­pli­ance frame­works, export con­trol in the man­u­fac­tur­ing phase, and MRO, asset man­age­ment and work­force man­age­ment for ongo­ing main­te­nance and sup­port.

There’s more to AAM than the AAV – there’s the big­ger pic­ture to take into account

While the AAM indus­try is still in its infan­cy, there is a once in a life­time oppor­tu­ni­ty to grab mar­ket share. Mov­ing from man­u­fac­tur­ing an AAV to oper­at­ing an air taxi busi­ness opens up a whole new set of busi­ness process­es that will need sup­port, includ­ing main­te­nance plan­ning exe­cu­tion, con­fig­u­ra­tion man­age­ment and more.

AAV man­u­fac­tur­ers should­n’t choose sys­tems that are only good for them today, but will grind to a halt when they reach their max­i­mum capability—meaning the man­u­fac­tur­er must then find and install soft­ware that can enable them to take their busi­ness to the next lev­el.

Instead, they need a solu­tion that will grow as they do, this means putting a sys­tem in place from the very start that can sup­port an AAV com­pa­ny as it shifts from pro­to­type, through to oper­a­tion and com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion.