“We live by the 3D’s. If it is Dull, Dirty or Dangerous a Drone should be doing it” (Julie Garland, Avtrain)

evtolinsights.com is embark­ing on a series of arti­cles look­ing at Ire­land and how the coun­try is shap­ing the future of the eVTOL and drone indus­try. We begin the series with Julie Gar­land, founder of Dublin-based Avtrain, who is at the fore­front of the Irish assault. Her com­pa­ny spe­cialis­es in train­ing drone pilots and oper­a­tors. She found­ed Avtrain in 2019.

Julie holds an impres­sive CV which includes being a for­mer Air­line Train­ing Cap­tain and Air­craft Main­te­nance Engi­neer; Direc­tor Com­pli­ance for Nor­we­gian Air Inter­na­tion­al; as well as a Bar­ris­ter at Law, a for­mer Fel­low of the Char­tered Insti­tute of Arbi­tra­tors and an accred­it­ed medi­a­tor.

Avtrain cur­rent­ly holds an approval as Recog­nised Enti­ty issued by the Irish Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty for the grant of EASA Open A2 and all Spe­cif­ic Cat­e­go­ry Autho­ri­sa­tions, Dec­la­ra­tions & Light UAS oper­a­tor Cer­tifi­cate (LUC).

Julie is the found­ing Chair of the Unmanned Air­craft Asso­ci­a­tion of Ire­land (UAAI) and spear­head­ed bring­ing the UAAI and Ire­land into the new­ly formed JEDA, the Joint Euro­pean Drone Asso­ci­a­tions to give drone oper­a­tors a voice in Europe. She also sits as the JEDA rep­re­sen­ta­tive on JARUS (Joint Author­i­ties for Rule-Mak­ing on Unmanned Sys­tems).

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The inter­view last­ed close to 1 hour and 10 min­utes. Some of the infor­ma­tion cov­ered is already in the pub­lic domain, so links are post­ed as part of the arti­cle, where read­ers can both lis­ten to a pod­cast and watch a video.

To learn more about Julie’s back­ground and expe­ri­ence, please tune in to this pre­vi­ous evtolinsights.com pod­cast car­ried out by Jason Pritchard last Octo­ber.

eVTOL Insights Pod­cast: Julie Gar­land of Avtrain talks about cer­ti­fy­ing drones and an excit­ing proof-of-con­cept tri­al in Ire­land

To fol­low this up: For more up-to-date news please see this video from June 29th where Julie is inter­viewed by Dawn Zol­di from Dawn of Drones.

I first com­mu­ni­cat­ed with Julie Gar­land via the week­ly evtolinsights.com Club­house event (every Thurs­day at 5pm). We lat­er met at the Farn­bor­ough Air­show. She is a very like­able, full of ener­gy, busy lady whose pas­sion and enthu­si­asm for drones and eVTOLs is infec­tious. Her man­ner of speech is like a gatling gun. Rapid, quick-fire and from the hip. Add a pleas­ing Irish brogue and peo­ple lis­ten intent­ly to her, fas­ci­nat­ed by the expe­ri­ence, knowl­edge and ideas she holds.

Not only is Julie high­ly respect­ed with­in the indus­try, but her tour-de-force is thrust­ing Ire­land into the fore­front of the increas­ing drone and eVTOL devel­op­ments now tak­ing place, help­ing the coun­try to forge and even lead Europe.

At Farn­bor­ough, Julie was in her ele­ment. Avtrain had a pres­ence on the Enter­prise Ire­land Trade Stand (No.1336/Hall 1), as one of six Irish com­pa­nies.

She lat­er explained how thrilling the expe­ri­ence had been. “This was a per­son­al career high­light. I have attend­ed the Air­show many times, but to be there rep­re­sent­ing the Irish Avi­a­tion Indus­try under the Avtrain name, was some­thing quite spe­cial. And then to be a speak­er on a Forum pan­el about pilot train­ing as well as be inter­viewed by the media … a real career high.”

Announc­ing three days in to the Air­show that Avtrain had signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing (MoU) with Spright in the pres­ence of An Táin­iste Leo Varadakar, the Irish Min­is­ter for Enter­prise, Trade and Employ­ment, to part­ner for EASA pilot and oper­a­tor train­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, a col­lab­o­ra­tion that will take place at the Future Mobil­i­ty Cam­pus Ire­land (FMCI), locat­ed in Shan­non, was the cher­ry on top.

Spright and Avtrain sign for­mal agree­ment to bring pilot train­ing and oper­a­tor cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to Shan­non, Ire­land

“Farn­bor­ough was incred­i­ble for us,” enthus­es Julie. “The UK busi­ness we have picked up dur­ing and after the show has expo­nen­tial­ly increased.”

Avtrain will be attend­ing the Drone X Trade Show and Con­fer­ence at Excel, Lon­don on Sept 7th and 8th. She explains, “This is about us tar­get­ing the UK mar­ket. We’re aim­ing for a far greater pres­ence.”

Avtrain attends up to four world­wide con­fer­ences a year, in Julie’s words, “to increase the company’s pro­file.” For exam­ple, Avtrain was at the Dubai Air­show last Novem­ber. She can afford this thanks part­ly to the sup­port from Enter­prise Ire­land who con­tribute towards the high over­heads and costs of attend­ing such major shows.

Julie’s future hopes include using a sim­u­la­tor for Avtrain’s drone train­ing pro­gram; gain­ing a big­ger pres­ence in Europe which includes a focus on small­er coun­tries like Poland and Esto­nia; and align­ing the Euro­pean EASA drone cer­ti­fi­ca­tion with the dif­fer­ent UK CAA process.

Then, there are the fur­ther devel­op­ments at Shan­non Air­port under the coor­di­na­tion of Future Mobil­i­ty Cam­pus Ire­land (FMCI), after recent suc­cess­ful drone tri­als with Fedex (watch Dawn of Drones video). This includes con­struct­ing “a first in Ire­land” ver­ti­port to replace the present droneport. This should lead to fur­ther ver­ti­ports in the future along with pilot train­ing in the cer­ti­fied cat­e­go­ry for pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing eVTOLs.

Giv­en there are high hopes that air taxis will be fly­ing com­peti­tors and pub­lic to and from the Ryder Cup tour­na­ment in 2027, held at the Adare Manor Gold course in Coun­ty Lim­er­ick, this train­ing pro­gram could become sig­nif­i­cant.

FMCI, Avtrain and Shan­non Group have joined forces to devel­op Ireland’s Advanced Aer­i­al Mobil­i­ty (AAM) indus­try. Their goal is the estab­lish­ment of the country’s first air taxi ser­vice and Beyond Visu­al Line of Sight (BVLOS) drone oper­a­tions. The Ryder Cup in five years time is an ide­al focus. Julie says, “Some­one dis­em­bark­ing from a plane at Shan­non Air­port will then walk to a close-by ver­ti­port and take an air-taxi to Adare Manor.”

She believes such devel­op­ments pro­vide excit­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties for busi­ness­es and trav­ellers. “Trav­el­ling short dis­tance jour­neys of a few hun­dred kilo­me­tres by air will take min­utes rather than hours.” Adding, “eVTOLs could be trav­el­ling at speeds of up to 180 kms.” Julie points out, “Dur­ing last October’s Fedex tri­als, Swoop Aero’s Kook­abur­ra drones were tak­ing just 13 min­utes to cov­er dis­tances that by road might take 50 min­utes or more.”

The Beau­ti­ful Set­ting of Adare Manor Golf Course

These eVTOL ser­vices could be used across the whole West Coast of Ire­land, par­tic­u­lar­ly areas like the Aran Islands, West Ker­ry and West Clare which are rur­al and hard to access from Shan­non Air­port. The pas­sen­ger cost might be less than a road taxi.

Two months ago, a con­sor­tium includ­ing Avtrain, FMCI, Shan­non Group, Collins Aero­space and the Irish Air Nav­i­ga­tion Ser­vice Provider, were award­ed fund­ing under SESAR 3 JU to devel­op a ‘Dig­i­tal Sky Demon­stra­tor’, for aer­i­al Unmanned Traf­fic Man­age­ment sys­tems. The val­ue of this project is close to EUR7 mil­lion. It will be based at FMCI’s Advanced Aer­i­al Mobil­i­ty Research Test and Devel­op­ment Facil­i­ties at Shan­non and is to include a net­work of AAM routes across Ire­land.

So, which eVTOLs might be fly­ing at the Ryder Cup?

It seems pos­si­ble that FMCI may go “in-house” and bring on-board Ireland’s largest avi­a­tion lease-hire com­pa­ny Avolon. A year ago, Avolon signed a deal with UK-based Ver­ti­cal Aero­space (VA) to pur­chase “up to 500 VX4s” at a val­ue of USD2 bil­lion. Already, this ini­tial order has been placed with avi­a­tion com­pa­nies from around the world.

Giv­en VA is aim­ing for full cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of its craft by 2025, add two fur­ther years for the all-impor­tant increased pro­duc­tion, it is fea­si­ble the golf tour­na­ment may see a fleet of VX4s fly­ing over­head.

A VX4 Ready for Ver­ti­cal Take-Off from Shan­non Ver­ti­port? (image:aviation.be)

Mean­while, what does an ener­getic and busy Julie do to relax? “Boat­ing on the Riv­er Shan­non is my relief and go to place. I do lit­tle fly­ing now, but my ide­al is a sea­plane, one that can land on water and take-off again. I am also a sea­son tick­et hold­er at Lein­ster Rug­by Club.”

She doesn’t miss being a bar­ris­ter. “I loved it when I was involved, but this new emerg­ing avi­a­tion world, the most sig­nif­i­cant since the Wright Broth­ers, is just so excit­ing and to be a part of defin­ing this future, too… The enthu­si­asm I expe­ri­ence each day from those around me is pal­pa­ble. We are liv­ing it, breath­ing it, doing it. It is such an amaz­ing feel­ing.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://avtrain.aero

https://mobile.twitter.com/GarlandJulie1

https://futuremobilityireland.ie

(Top Pic: The Times)