Emerging Tech Panelists L-R: Ameriflight CEO Paul Chase, Sabrewing CEO Ed De Reyes, Beta Technologies Chief Revenue Officer Patrick Buckles and Reliable Robotics CEO Robert Rose With Part 135 the increasing focus of attention for operating electric and automated...
Emerging Tech Panelists L-R: Ameriflight CEO Paul Chase, Sabrewing CEO Ed De Reyes, Beta Technologies Chief Revenue Officer Patrick Buckles and Reliable Robotics CEO Robert Rose
With Part 135 the increasing focus of attention for operating electric and automated vehicles, as Ameriflight CEO Paul Chase indicated during a much- anticipated session at last week’s RACCA meeting, the issue is not just about the cargo industry becoming an enabler of the next generation technologies but reducing the cargo industry’s environmental footprint. Chase noted forecasts show that commercial applications for emerging technologies will see a 10% to 14% compound annual growth rate.
“All this attention,” said Chase, “certainly illustrates that what we do is essential.”
The three closest to the finish line – Beta Technologies, represented by Chief Revenue Officer Patrick Buckles, Reliable Robotics’ CEO Robert Rose and Sabrewing CEO Ed De Reyes – discussed the potential for realizing the varied missions emerging technologies have been given. For the three that included making aviation even safer, expanding cargo service to areas that are now inaccessible and improving logistics.
$19 to fly 160-mile leg vs Caravan at $800 fuel. Beta is prioritizing on developing its cargo aircraft first, arguing the reduced operating costs makes short hops with limited cargo more economically viable. However, it is working on longer ranges and has already invested in charging technology at airports.Beta Technologies, said Buckles, is not focused on the passenger side where 80% of the eVTOL developments are targeting. “The bigger market for the new technology,” said Buckles, is in cargo and military logistics. “We are going after that market and forecasts indicate 80% of new technology will be deployed in that arena. We are trying to change how cargo is moved in order to cut fuel costs and open a lot of new missions that are not economically viable today. We’ve seen cargo be incredibly transformative in the past few years. We have to further transform it, not from carrying 1000 shirts to Macy’s, but to delivering 1000 shirts to 1000 households. With electric and eVTOL you can get cargo there faster and more economically.”
Like Beta, Sabrewing started by designing its Rhaegal aircraft specifically for the cargo market. De Reyes noted RACCA members were instrumental in helping to tweak the design to make it more useful. “Air Cargo is the low hanging fruit,” he said. “But, in reality it’s the ability to deliver that cargo not just to doorsteps but doorsteps that have never had access to any transportation at all. The ability to get to any destination is the battery and operators need to plan to complete the mission on a single charge. While we have designed it for 1000 nm with max cargo, what about the mission that starts at one airport and goes to five different airports before returning to base. Our aircraft can go 24 hours a day and it never gets tired. You can’t do that now with crewed operations but you can with a UAV.”
One of the first companies to receive Air Force Agility Prime backing, Sabrewing decided to concentrate on commercial rather than military operations. De Reyes indicated if the military saw value in Rhaegel operations that would be the icing on the cake but the company sees commercial operations as leading the space. Bringing that home was a statement during a conference by the Air Force that it didn’t have a logistic mission.
“There are far more logistics aircraft than fighters,” he said. “The military really has to wrap its head around conquering logistics if they are going to win wars. In fact we found the hardest part was getting the military to understand how much they have in common with air cargo companies than anything else. Their defining issue is where they have to go has no runway and that’s were we come in. If we can provide solutions for air cargo carriers, then we’ve solved it for the military as well.”
He noted that with many of the emerging technologies the wait is years before it is introduced into service but the need in the cargo industry is immediate. “We can put it in the fleet and start operating and still get the ranges and payloads we have right now,” he said. “We have achieved that and sold 138 Rhaegel Bs and we just booked an order for 53 Rhaegal As. Our tech is moving quickly.”
Rose noted Reliable Robotics Electric Caravan was a way to introduce advanced automation to improve the safety and economics of regional air cargo. He emphasized regionals say they want more flexibility and the company was responding by offering flexibility on how they design their routes and how they manage their networks.
He also stressed the safety aspect of the new technologies as Airbus has argued in continuing its development of autonomous airliners. “Really safety needs to drive the changes,” said Rose. “We will have autonomous planes but we need to focus on certification and the practical reality of the challenges before us. This will only happen for safety and certification is for safety. We have to have an exclusive focus on safety to get through the certification process.”
Why Part 135?
Chase asked what it was about Part 135 that was attracting so much attention from the cargo-oriented emerging technology and the three panelists all pointed to the regulatory infrastructure already in place. They noted the passenger-oriented new technology aircraft faced not only the development of certification standards and rules but also the integration into the National Airspace, two daunting challenges that are expected to forestall the ambitious timelines set down for passenger aircraft.
Reliable Robotics is based on existing aircraft to speed certification. This is about more than replacing the pilot. It is also about a computer system deciding how packages are delivered. A lot of it is the flexibility and enabling you to do what you can’t do today with new routes and really working those planes to their maximum capability.For Reliable Robotics it was basing its technology on existing aircraft and focusing on automation and removing the pilot in favor of the control center with the autopilot flying and the pilot managing the flight through an advanced flight management system. He reported the company has made great strides with the FAA toward certification which includes an entirely new navigation system.
Sabrewing chose Part 23 certification specifically for its known pathway and certification allows operation in Class B and C airspace. “We have 10 detect-and-avoid sensors that allows us to take off and fly under IFR conditions just like conventional flight,” he explained. The only difference is the pilot sits on the ground and we can land vertically or conventionally. Out of the 200+ regulations, 60% deal with flying human beings and we do not have to certify to that.
Rose agreed adding: “We don’t have a pilot on board, we have a set of avionics that can do this all internally and we’ve made great progress in certifying that and the autolanding system that brings the aircraft to the ground. “This is not new technology for Part 25 or Part 23 aircraft certifications. Cat III is already there but for us you need the capability and the procedures that go with it. We have auto take off and the capability for rejected take off. We tackled those first and then we addressed the management of emergency conditions and turning that into software so we can finally move the pilot out in favor of developing detect and avoid and loss-of-link procedures. We see it as an incremental process in building the capabilities.”
Buckles noted Beta’s experience with the Air Force Agility Prime program provided lessons learned and flight test data which ports directly over to the FAA to ease the certification burden. “The FAA is learning as quickly as the industry and finding the right parts of industry to enable a data-based, safety-based approach,” he said. “With cargo, we will be building the social acceptance by getting the aircraft out there. That contributes a lot more than something written in a powerpoint presentation.”
Solving the Pilot Shortage
Inevitably the conversation turned to whether or not the new technology would ultimately solve the pilot shortage but for Rose, it is about more than that.
“When you think of true autonomy and fast forward to the future, it is also about a computer system deciding how packages are delivered but that’s a long way from where we need to be for that. We need to ask the question what the incremental small bits are that will contribute to the solution. There are very few examples where there was a giant leap forward in aviation except maybe the Wright Bros.”
Sustainability
In discussing emerging technology’s role in sustainability, Buckles said it will come by applying the right technology – hyrdrogen, electric, SAF – to different problems rather than going for a moon shot out of the gate. For its electric solution, it began early building out the infrastructure and investing in ground charging stations. It has already completed 12 airports and is targeting the completion of 60 more by the end of 2023.
It also requires thinking differently about power. “On a mission with a 190 nm leg the fuel costs $700 for the Caravan but $13 for a recharge,” he said. “If you think about utilization and how many times a day you can run the argument becomes better. Then think about the fact operations and maintenance are far less expensive meaning you don’t have to wait for a full load to be profitable. This opens up a lot of other business opportunities for carriers. There are a lot of companies who need airlift but it was not economical before. Now we can give them what they need through aviation which is now much more affordable. The next question we get during discussions like this is whether we know of any experts to help them rethink logistics. You could end up running a flight department for them.”
Payloads Important
De Reyes discussed the barriers he faces to market penetration. “The biggest issue is operators don’t want to buy an aircraft that carries less than a SkyCourier or a Caravan,” he said. “To build an aircraft for that kind of load is huge but we approached this from the path of least resistance. We adopted Leonardo’s flight control computer meaning we only need a TSO to do that. We have commercial off the shelf technology where they provide the engineers and tech support which reduces our production costs and your acquisition costs.”
He asked for a show of hands on how many operators could make a profit flying 300 pounds of cargo – only one hand went up. “This is a viable form where we are getting people who are thinking about drones within a drone. You get Rhaegel to a destination and smaller drones fan out from that destinations to smaller destinations,” he said. “You have a fixed cost of $200 minimum to launch a flight. You cover a 50-lb payload with $4 per pound. These fix costs and higher loads make for higher profit margin and that is how we’ve approached our product. We carry more weight than a SkyCourier but we have a far lower cost per hour.”
FAA Progress
Rose noted there is a lot of doubt the FAA will accept the new technology or that it will be too expensive. “But we are seeing a lot of movement with the FAA and on the cost side we discuss how much pilots really cost,” he said. “It’s not all about the costs. A lot of it is the flexibility and enabling you to do what you can’t do today with new routes and really working those planes to their maximum capability. It’s also about pilot utilization. For us, once they are done flying a route, they can virtually fly other routes, the same pilot could oversee operations regardless of time zones.”
As for airspace integration, De Reyes noted drones have been flying in the airspace for 30 years so ATC knows how to deal with it. For new technology, he said, we need to follow the same procedures by filing a flight plan. This is not something new or unknown to the ATC.
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