Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I think it's truly going to take collaboration between industry, between government, between regulators and public, for that matter. Right. Because we got it. You know, we have to instill public trust. You know that these things are safe to fly. You know that they're safe to fly in, they're safe to fly overhead.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Welcome to Hangar X Studios, where former fighter pilot and host John Ramstead takes.
[00:00:25] Speaker A: Us on a journey across aerospace as.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: It enters an historic period of innovation and transformation.
Our guests include aviation experts, pilots, financiers, military leaders, and innovators of all types.
Buckle up for another episode of Hangar X.
Welcome to the Hangar X podcast. We're excited to explore all innovation in aerospace. New technology, powered lift, everything, VTOL and trends right now that are shaping air mobility and transportation of the future. There's so many exciting things happening, and today we have a. We have a great guest on today, Gene Heyman, the CEO and founder of Stratify Aerospace. Gene, welcome to the podcast.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: John, thank you. Pleasure to be here.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Now, Gene, you have an incredible background that we're going to be going into, but I would definitely put you in the category of a visionary leader. The collaboration that you've done in the industry, from your past experience to what you're doing today, has been phenomenal. The insights that you're giving to some of the biggest players in the industry right now, you're just a key part of their. Not only their strategy, but their execution moving forward in their success. So we're going to be digging into some great stories around that, and I also just want to share with the audience. Here's some things that you've been involved in. The Canso Complete Air Traffic System, Global Council for Future Skies.
You're chair of the AIA's Air Transportation System Committee, and you've also participated in the FAA's Global Leadership Initiative. You're gonna have some just phenomenal insights as we dig into a lot of the infrastructure needs that all of us are we're gonna have to tackle. The government, every company, the users, the charter operators, whoever it happens to be. These are critical problems that are not only being solved, but there's some big challenges and big opportunities there. So with that, Gene, I'd love for you to share a little bit about your journey, your background and what is Stratify and what are the capabilities you guys have now. And if you have any stories around some of the work that you've done, I'd love for you to maybe even start and just share with that.
[00:02:34] Speaker A: All right, Absolutely. John, thank you. And thank you for that intro. And I have to tell you, it's been a journey, but it's been a great journey. I mean, the passion that I continue to have been in this business for more than 30 years. I think I'm on my 34th year in this business and I still wake up every day looking forward to the new challenge, you know, looking forward to the next thing to tackle. I've seen a lot happen in our industry over those last 34 years.
I mean, a lot has taken place. But, you know, I think something you said is key is the future of our aviation, right? I mean, what does that look like? I mean, we all wake up every day, we read the papers or look on the news and you know, if you're watching the news not too long ago about New Jersey and all these little drones that are flying everywhere, you know, now they're popping up in the Midwest and you know, they're even popping up here in my local county. And you think about, you know, hey, you know, what Uber was trying to create around Uber elevate that is now Joby. You know, when Joby bought the concept in the aircraft about being able to get into a four person or six person autonomous vehicle that can take you from, you know, a local vertiport down the street to your local airport or in cases like Joby, where, you know, you got LA and a lot of LA traffic, you know, being able to get from point to the airport in less than 10 minutes. And John, I don't know if you've driven in and around LA in the last few years, but you can't get anywhere in LA in 10 minutes. Right?
[00:04:05] Speaker B: You know, a friend of mine from LA goes, you don't talk about anything in LA about distance. It could be two miles, could be eight miles, doesn't matter. So, you know, that's an hour, no, that's, that's an hour and a half to get there.
[00:04:16] Speaker A: It's all about time.
[00:04:17] Speaker B: It's all about. Everybody knows the, the time that it takes there. Yes.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: Well, I gotta tell you again, it's, it's. These are the exciting things that I love getting up every morning and looking at these challenges of tackling. So a little bit about my, my background. I was thrown into this business back in the 80s and early 90s where went to work for a company that had a couple contracts with the FAA and you know, great people, great ownership, but, you know, they just weren't growing, John. I mean, they just, they were, they were struggling with, you know, an identity, you know, whatever you want to be when we grow up, those kind of things. And they brought me in to fix a single contract.
And I was young, I was energetic, you know, wanted to conquer the world. They brought me in and they put me on a particular program because they were having some struggles with the previous management on this program, and the customer wasn't happy at all. So I come in, I build the relationships pretty quickly.
About six months later, customer was extremely thrilled. Everything was going well. Owner then brought me back to corporate and said, hey, look, maybe you can help me kind of grow this company. And, John, it was right then and there that I realized that one of my core skill sets is strategy. I mean, you know, I was doing it without knowing I was doing it. It was, you know, it was great. And so we sat back and we created a vision for this business. And, you know, at the time, I think we were probably, Gosh, I think 45, maybe 50 people on staff. And, you know, we were looking at, okay, how do we grow? And, you know, so we sat down and created a corporate vision and a mission. And we really looked at, you know, where are the trends going from a. From an information technology perspective, because we're more of an IT company than anything else. We started looking at congressional budgets, you know, hey, where's all the government contracting going to, you know, who's flush with cash, things like that. And when we really kind of started tying the trends to our capabilities, we realized that DOD and the FAA, from an aviation perspective, were probably two of our best targets. So, John, fast forward about five or six years.
We went from 45, 50 people that we were hovering somewhere around 1,000, really grew the company quickly. It was through other great leadership we had brought on. We had some great managers, great people and more. So, John, we have some really great customers, you know, folks that were really open to us being a small business, letting us in the door, you know, helping fostering, you know, our organization into what it. What it became.
Then, John, I left a small business and went to work for a company I think we've all probably heard of called Boeing. And I'll tell people right away, this is what I call the Boeing before, right? I mean, it was around early 2000 time frame.
I was brought in to kind of help lead their air traffic management division.
You know, all the, you know, eight and a half to nine years or so working for the small company. About 90% of our effort was within the FAA. I got to make some. Some great relationships.
Very, very good people learned a lot about aviation in that eight and a half to nine years. So I brought that over to Boeing with me and we stood up this air traffic management division. And John, it was simple. Our goal was to create capacity. If you can remember back in the late 90s, early 2000s, on the front page of every Newsweek or Time magazine, this is back when we had magazines, you know, you could see airplanes just stacked up on a tarmac or a Runway. And you know, it was delay after delay, you know, and air travel was really becoming hard.
You know, it was more about, hey, it may be a two hour flight from this city to this city, but man, you had to bake in four to six hours sometimes because you just didn't know the delays that we were having, right? So the capacity wasn't keeping up with the demand. And so Boeing, being an aircraft manufacturer, really wanted to look at, hey, how can we help the government, how can we help the airlines, how can we help the community create capacity in the airspace, right? Because for Boeing, it was simple. The more airspace, the more capacity, the more demand, the more airplanes you can sell, right? So it's a very strategic way of kind of approaching a problem. The problem is capacity. So let's stand up a group, let's focus on doing air traffic management.
We actually work a lot close with the FAA and Congress and we stood up what became known as NextGen, right? NextGen was focused on the next generation air transportation system, right? What are the concepts from when we kicked off the initial vision in 2020, or, excuse me, 2005, we were looking at a 20 year lead time. You know, what was 20, 25 going to look like?
[00:09:25] Speaker B: And so does it look like what you envisioned better or worse?
[00:09:30] Speaker A: I got to tell you, we've seen a lot of great things come to fruition. We've seen a lot of great things happen from an efficiency standpoint.
But I gotta tell you, things change quick.
I remember sitting in conference rooms and we were talking about these things called very light jets, right? These little tiny 4 and 6 seater Honda clip jets. You know, they're gonna be about a million bucks. Everybody can own one, everybody can fly one. These very light jets were gonna darken the skies, right? So we were off working concepts. John around, man, what is this gonna look like, right? General aviation, business aviation is gonna explode with these very light jets 20 years later. Do you even hear about the very light jets? Do you even see a Honda or Eclipse anywhere? No, it's about drones, it's about urban air mobility with the taxis, it's about commercial space. So We've seen some drastic changes happen. What we've learned through that is we as an organization, we as a government, we as a community, need to learn how to adapt and adapt pretty quickly because just like the information technology age, John, we don't know. I mean, I, you know, my kids kid me because, you know, I still have an AOL email address, right? My kids have no, no idea how AOL started. Right?
You know, the little disk that you get in the mail for free that you used to plug in and used to have to share the house phone for your modem. Right. They have no idea what it's like. But look how far we've come. And look at the technology today. So really, it's about how do we integrate those technologies while keeping the most safest form of transportation known to man, which is aviation. So did a lot of that around the world with Boeing. It was great. It was a great opportunity. Again, Boeing being a global company, this was a global problem, John. It wasn't a U.S. problem. This was a global problem. And then you had countries that were just coming up on the scenes. China was exploding, especially in Midwestern China. You had the Middle east coming on board. You know, India was just exploding with, you know, great economies happening. And when great economies happen, people want to fly, you know, whether it be for business or pleasure. So we were seeing explosive growth everywhere. It just wasn't here in the States. So I spent, I spent about a decade. I tell people I know exactly what the inside of a Boeing triple seven or an Airbus 340 looks like. I spent a lot of time traveling around the world, really talking to ministers of states, ministers of transportation, a lot of senior government officials worldwide, talking about the need for capacity, the need for an upgraded, modernized air traffic management system that allowed us to create efficiencies in the system that then could open up the capacity to grow. So, you know, obviously each, each segment, each region was tailored a little differently because not everybody's got a very complex system like the US or maybe Europe, you know, Australia got a lot more open sky than we do, but yet, you know, still about how to modernize their systems, right? So I spent about a decade flying around the world focused on air traffic. Modernization came back. It was great. I had a great time. My twins were born at the time. And I made a personal decision, didn't want to fly every three or four out of four weeks, you know, to some cool place around the world. I want to spend a little bit more time at home with the kids, you know, I want to be at the softball games and the volleyball games and the school recitals. So took a step back and actually went to work for L3. John, this is before all the divestitures and integration, all the M. And as that happened within L3, this is what I call the legacy L3 communications.
I was asked to kind of come and grow their space and aviation division because they had seen what I had done at Boeing. And again, great people, great technology, great engineers.
Had a lot of fun with L3. And with L3 is. That's about the time, John, when we started using this word called drones a lot, right? I mean, there was a lot of drones coming back from the desert, now that we were returning from the war over there in Afghanistan.
Didn't know what we were going to do with these drones. Were these drones going to be useful from a commercial standpoint, or were they strictly military applications? So L3 did a lot of great work at looking at, okay, how do we commercialize some of these? How do we take them from being flying true missions in the desert to suddenly flying commercial missions here? So things like railway inspections, utility inspections, agriculture, we were finding all kinds of different use cases and business cases. So spent a lot of time at L3, kind of working with various different governments. Again, the FAA being the biggest player, but really looking at some of the R and D stuff with NASA.
We spent a lot of time with U.S. forest Service, U.S. department of Agriculture, looking at different ways that aviation was touching the different parts of our segment. Now, now that we were having these things called drones kind of come into play, L3 was great. Loved the challenge there. Yeah.
[00:14:54] Speaker B: And with all that experience, what is the core mission and capabilities of Stratified today that you started, John?
[00:15:03] Speaker A: That's a great question.
We wanted to look at how to create an organization that was staying in tune with the trends.
So we look at where all the global trends are happening, right? All these big corporations, they're great. They've got great capabilities, great products, great services.
But turning a company like that sometimes is almost like staring at a battleship, right? A little bit at a time. You know, huge investments in the current infrastructure and things. One of the things I really want to do is I want to put together a very small, flexible, nimble organization that can really stay on the leading edge of technology and the aviation trends that are happening. So we could then partner with other companies, with other government organizations here in the US as well as global, and start really kind of defining what that future looks like.
Part of the reason why I'M on Kansas. Global Cats or the complete air traffic management system is to define the future skies.
And the future skies has got to include everybody, John. It's just not the drones. It's just not the urban air mobility. It's just not commercial space. We can't forget about the bread and butter and how we move people and goods today, which is commercial aviation. So what Kansas is doing with future skies, what I currently have done with the FAA and NASA even on their new vision 2040 and really working with the regulators, a lot of the industry folks who are OEMs building either aircraft or avionics or other parts of infrastructure, really taking that forward look of how do we look at a harmonized, modernized airspace system going forward? How do we integrate drones? How do we integrate these new vehicles that we have today and how do we mix that in with commercial aviation?
[00:16:59] Speaker B: Right. We were talking a little bit about that when we started. I was just saying, you know what, let's say, you know, a longer range VTOL is flying right now and you got to file an IFR flight plan. I can't file an IFR flight plan today from just my backyard or a parking lot or. I mean, there's so many. I mean, that's just a small example and with the FAA's recent ruling on powered lift or an operational considerations and pilots training. But they're. They realize that this is something they have to tackle. They've prioritized it. And I know you're working with companies like Joby and other, but what does it look like, what needs to happen over the next five years to allow from drones to EVTOLs to longer range VTOLs like we were developing and some other companies and then commercial airspace. I mean, there's a lot of change in regulation and infrastructure and training. That's all going to have to happen. It seems very complex.
[00:18:00] Speaker A: It is, John. It is very complex. And you know, I think we're taking a little bit longer than we probably should investigating the problem, if you want my personal opinion. But we got some really smart people in place now. I think the governments and as well as the industry itself is looking at the power of this market. And I think a lot of people want this market to start happening. So I think there's a lot of pressure. We're seeing it globally, not just locally from congressional and big, large industry investors, but we're seeing this pressure globally of how do we start really kind of setting out the right regulations, right policies and the right standards. And John, you hit on a few different Things that are really key and near dear to my heart. Things that we work with a lot of manufacturers on, Joby being one of them. Some of the others as well, you know, Archer, Lilium, you know, some of these others that we all have the same problem. And that problem is, you know, when you look at the aircraft certification part, I think we've got that down pretty well. We kind of understand a little bit about the aircraft, the avionics, what it takes to certify them.
You know, a lot of people tell you that maybe we don't have a single pilot thing figured out yet. I'll tell you, I think we do. I mean, just look at the military, right? I mean, look at how the military trains, right? So I think we're, we, we have an understanding of how we do single pilot operations. I think purely autonomous operations needs a little bit of focus, a little bit of work. But from an aircraft perspective, I think people figured that out. I think the FAA as a, as a regulatory body, I think really large platform manufacturers, including Joby and others, I think they figured that out pretty well. The key is the infrastructure piece, John. Right? I mean, how do we build the infrastructure and how do we determine what that infrastructure looks like? Right? So we have a massively large air traffic management system in place today that's been built over 40 years that manages the commercial aviation aspect. Great, fantastic. But what happens when you're flying at 800ft and not 8,000ft, right? That's a different set of surveillance, that's a different set of comms. Is it vfr? Is it ifr? Like you said, you know, there is no IKEO point for your backyard, right? So how you file a flight plan, if you want to take off in the back 40 and you want to fly to, you know, the local airport, right?
[00:20:33] Speaker B: So, you know, just as a question, let's just say a helicopter doing a life flight mission and they land in a field and they got to fly back into a city. Do they have to do that VFR or can they fly ifr? There's got to be some precedence to this, right?
[00:20:49] Speaker A: There is. And I think it really depends on location and I think it really depends on the surveillance piece of it too, Right. Are they completely on the radar scope where controller knows where they're at, where they're going? Right. So a lot of this takes place in coordination with local air traffic control, right? So if I got it, if I got a life support system, that I've got to go fly somebody out, in fact, a really good friend of mine and I were riding our motorcycles one time and he unfortunately had a wreck. Right. And we were, John, we were out in the middle of nowhere, right. And you know, so they had to medevac him out. And so. Right. It was the, it was the helicopter pilots and the emergency crew doing close coordination with ATC to make sure, hey, here's the field I got land in and then I'm going to take off here and then this is the hospital. So you know, I need clearance and I need a clear trajectory from here to there, you know, so it takes a lot of collaboration from the operators and local ATC to make those things happen.
I think one thing that will it's got to happen, John. We've seen it happening. A lot of the future plans are driving it this way. But it's really digitizing our current infrastructure and making sure that as we lay out new infrastructure for the new vehicles that we're digitizing that as well too. Because data is key. You know, data is going to be a really key factor in how we design where these vertiports are at, where these, these EVTOLs and VTOLs can take off from, you know, how they can fly either VFR or IFR from point to point. So having a fully integrated ubiquitous infrastructure that is completely connected and talk to each other really going to be key in the future. And I'm not just talking about today's air traffic management systems. I'm talking about any kind of traffic management systems that are built for, you know, uncontrolled airspace, you know, anything below a thousand feet. Because even those kind of platforms and infrastructure need to be able to integrate with the larger ATC system. So I tell people it's if I'm a GA pilot, it's easy for me to take off and you know, try to stay in uncontrolled airspace.
If I'm a VTOL or an evtol and I'm trying to do passenger lift from point A to an airport, I'm most likely flying at 1500ft. So I'm in controlled airspace. Right. So it's that blending of controlled to uncontrolled airspace that I think that integration piece is going to be key.
[00:23:19] Speaker B: Well, yeah, when you have to be under positive control. And I'm now adding a whole bunch of flights, you know, low altitude flights coming in, let's say to an airport. Yeah, you're going to have to entire separate set of controllers that have to coordinate with the traditional commercial controllers or come up with a solution that's completely out of the box that blends the two together somehow using technology or automation or AI? But is that fair?
[00:23:44] Speaker A: Yeah, that is absolutely fair. And we think that that automation coupled with AI, John. And again, going back to the data piece is key and critical because it can't be a one for one, right? I mean, if suddenly, let's use Atlanta. If suddenly we put a vertiport on rooftop at Atlanta, you know, suddenly I can't have 20 VTOLs taken off landing, right. I've got to do proper coordination with atc. So what does that system look like? What is that visibility? And I can't just hire more controllers to take care of the problem. That's not, that's not always the answer. The answer is how can I create true situational awareness? And what automation tools and what AI tools can I get in place that really help me manage that terminal airspace in a much more efficient and better fashion? So do I bring in the commercial aircraft in a different trajectory while I've got evtols taken off from the heliport?
[00:24:42] Speaker B: Yeah, that's some fascinating things there. And now, you know, the FAA just published an article and they're concerned about outwash and downwash. Yeah, right. I mean there's some very unique characteristics.
We know what they are with helicopters. It's going to be different. Whether it's Joby or Archer or Trifan, 600 of six, eight engines out there producing thrust straight down. What are some of those concerns and how is that affecting how you're thinking about infrastructure? Invert a ports and heliports.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: Well, I think in the beginning, John, it was can we use the helicopter rule 50 by 50, right?
[00:25:23] Speaker B: Now when you say 50 by 50, that's the size of a, of a standard helicopter landing pad, right?
[00:25:29] Speaker A: Yes, it is. Yes it is. Because of the outwash is taking effect. Right. Everything's got to be, you know, 34.5 or below. You know, from a wind perspective. If not, you get into gust and gales. Right. So it's got to be below 34.5. So helicopter communities figured out for a long time. That's where we came up with the standard of 50 by 50. But you're right, you now got different vehicles that have different configurations, right. Some are going to probably have less than a, you know, a 50 yard radius. Right. Some may have more. Right. So when you look at some of these aircraft that got six or eight, you know, motors on them, are they creating more thrust? And the answer is and most likely yes.
So when you look at and talk about vertical design I think one thing that's going to be key, John, is we have to take all vehicles into consideration and then find out what is that right requirement, what's that right regulatory piece that we need to put in place that actually gives us the ability to build a vertiport where the vertiport's not hanging itself onto one platform or one vehicle. Right. So because you've got. Everybody's got a different business model, people got different aircraft, but they all have the same requirement. They want to land, they want to take off. Right. So that downwash and outwash is going to be very, very key. I know the FAA is very concerned about it. I think there's some research going on right now to try to figure out what that looks like. Because again, you can have a really beautiful Joby aircraft coming and landing, but you know, if you got six motors turning at the same time, you know, what's the circumference of that distance you need in order to contain that outwash?
[00:27:08] Speaker B: Yeah, that's going to become a design constraint once that gets standardized. If I want to land on a standard vertiport in any urban area, I'm going to have to be in compliance with that or find my own option that I'm going to have to build.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:27:24] Speaker B: Interesting. Now, with Joby expanding its partnership with the Department of defense to deliver EVTOLs for the military, you know, for testing and mission awareness, what. What's your role in that and what implications does that have? Because that's a big development to this, to the broader industry. Love to know your thoughts on that, Gene.
[00:27:45] Speaker A: Yeah, so. So what I can share with you is, is, you know, as a partner of joby's, one thing that we help them with is everything from congressional insight, you know, so, you know, working the hill, working the policy side of things.
[00:28:00] Speaker B: And you guys do that for your clients, right?
[00:28:03] Speaker A: We do some of that for our clients too. Yes. Yes, we do. You know, working very closely with FAA and safety as well as FA engineering, you know, studying some of these rules, studying some of these things.
We also look at what are other regulations or what are some challenges, you know, so if the military, you know, wants to buy, and I think it's a great idea, you know, a lot of the Joby aircraft, where are they going to fly those missions at, you know, so what we do is we take a look at what the ConOps are. In fact, our true portfolio, John, is everything from developing front end concept of operations for VTOLs, EVTOLs, new aircraft, all the way through Engineering design work. We help with aircraft and avionics certification. Right. We help do a lot of the data gathering, the data analytics and analysis. For that, we actually help again partner with Joby and others looking at again the policy, regulatory requirements, what's in place today versus what needs to be in place tomorrow. We've gone to the extent of even writing waivers to set up flight tests.
We have built and installed safety management systems for various test test areas. In fact, Vantis, which is a very, very successful, you know, UTMA effort sponsored by North Dakota, we actually implemented the SMS for that. So we created a safety management system and created the baseline that they measure everything against. We're currently have a project going on right now with, with the state of Massachusetts through a department of transportation vehicle where we're doing the same thing. We're building out the safety management system. So then we turn to, you know, we help build quality and flight test procedures.
You know, we again will participate in those flight tests. We'll do lessons learned based on those flight tests. So we truly partner everything from what I call the full life cycle of getting a new entrance into the airspace. So everything, you know, now I don't have guys that go and do the design, you know, that's what they do. They do it extremely well. But from a certification standpoint, from an infrastructure standpoint, you know, from again, a regulatory policy standpoint, you know, getting waivers to do BV loss flight test today. Right. We help write those waivers. We've got some other clients outside of Joby that we're doing the same thing for. So. So that's been kind of our history, really kind of looking ever since the Department of Defense started bringing those aircraft back.
I believe it was around 2011, 2012 Timeframe is when we first got involved in what does the concept of operations and flight operations look like for those various vehicles.
[00:31:02] Speaker B: So given all that concept of operations, certification, infrastructure, that all needs to be developed. Some things you talked about, some of the airframes, you know, some of the gaps that we have opportunities in the air, aerospace, beyond visual line of sight, BV loss, which is typically going to be for, you know, unmanned aircraft, but there's a lot of those coming in, from cargo to drones to people.
What do you, what do you see? You know, if you're looking at both the faa, Eurocontrol, Iko globally, what are some of the biggest short term, I think, opportunities that maybe the industry needs to really focus on with some of the other stakeholders, from the regulatory bodies to manufacturers, developers.
Love your thoughts. On that?
[00:31:52] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question. So there's a lot of work going on globally and there's a lot of good organizations, Cancer being one of them, IKEA being another, trying to pull these together from a global harmonization standpoint. Right. So if we're doing some test work out in the Middle east, how does that compare to airspace here in the U.S. right. So, you know, kind of a. Hey, can we learn from other areas? One area I think that's doing some great work in is under the European Commission, there's a program called cesar Sasar, stands for the Single European Skies Research Initiative.
SASAR is a collection of industry and various air navigation service providers, John, working together to solve airspace problems. There is a great effort right now going on in Cork, Ireland, right around Shannon Airport. And the reason they picked that area is because of the location to the airport, the density of the population. Right. It's got a lot of different use cases where they can start actually flying both line of sight, but beyond line of sight where they can start carrying cargo as well as passengers. So they're gaining a lot of data, a lot of really good stuff from, from that program, I think.
[00:33:18] Speaker B: Well, we just had Dave Stepanicom from Bristow, which is one of the largest helicopter operators in the world, and they're starting a test in a few months out of Stavanger, Norway with the Beta aircraft to see how that fits in both operationally and cost wise into. Is this a platform they adopt as an actual operator? Yeah, in the industry. One thing I love about Bristow is he said, hey, I'll come back on as soon as we learn, you know, what we learn and share it. And I think there's also a really good spirit of collaboration as we're all trying to figure all this out too.
[00:33:55] Speaker A: There is, there is, there is.
I have to tell you, hats off to NASA. NASA has been great about pulling different parts of the world together. John, around this, right.
The folks at Ames have been really focused on not just UTM and AAM here in the States, but, you know, really participating, you know, in the international efforts and then how to, how to, you know, collaborate and bring those lessons learned, you know, back here and then redesigning the concepts, you know, based on what we learned.
I think this has got to be a worldwide, global effort for us to do this. If this market's really going to mature, we're going to learn a lot here in the States and we've got a lot of different use cases here in the States, but there's other areas that have been doing this test and research, John, that we should learn from, you know, that we shouldn't have to recreate the wheel, if you will, you know, so we could take the lessons learned and incorporate that into our concept of operations here in the US So what.
[00:34:57] Speaker B: I'm hearing is to really facilitate adoption and growth. Right. And you look at, you know, Morgan Stanley and what they're saying by 2035 and 2040, this is a multi, multi billion dollar market and most of these airplanes are still in development today.
We need a fully connected digital aviation ecostruxure to really allow this.
Where does it start and how long do you think that takes realistically?
[00:35:28] Speaker A: If we were trying to do this on a global scale, I think it would be faster.
I think what happens is politics, regions and money get in the way. Right. I will tell you though, there is a lot of great people, including my own staff who sit on different committees, different boards that are looking at how do we really global and I global, you know, harmonize globally. Because having that connected aviation ecosystem is absolutely 100% cross critical and needed. Right. You heard me say earlier, ubiquitous infrastructure. It's also ubiquitous comms, right? Continuous, ongoing communications and that could be.
[00:36:10] Speaker B: Voice or that could be data and it's established procedures.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:36:14] Speaker B: Protocols. Because I'm gonna have to train my pilots, I have to train my dispatchers, I'm gonna have to train air crew all the way down from early flight schools and getting my, you know, they said it's, we estimated it's about 22 hours. Take a commercial pilot and do a transition into the tri fan once it's flying because of the transitional flight, the vertical and horizontal flight at a minimum. Now we, but all of that is going to have to be part of everybody's training protocols.
[00:36:46] Speaker A: Right. You know, if you look at what the faa, NASA has put on paper, they want to, they want to accomplish this by 2040.
If you look at where Canso's going, they're talking 2035, 2040.
[00:37:02] Speaker B: And what does Canso stand for again though, Gene?
[00:37:04] Speaker A: Canso is the Civil Air Navigation Services Organization. Okay, so Canso is the organization that represents the world's ANSPs, right? The Air Navigation Service Providers. So the FAA is a participant.
You've got all the ASPs throughout Europe, you know, whether it be UK's ASP, which is called NATs, Italians, you know, Enav, Africa, Middle East. So this, this single organization is the representation of all the world's air navigation service providers, all 170/ I think are members.
So and again, Kansas is looking at, from a global perspective. And so in their future skies concepts, it is not Europe focused, it's not US focused. These are concepts that can be applied globally. So again. And NASA is a heavy participant. Is that as well? That's again why I want to give NASA some kudos because NASA has been participating in various global forums trying to get us to harmonize. So is the faa. But cancer has really kind of been, in my opinion, the big driver of, of this from a global perspective. And I have to tell you, going back to what you said is key, that, that that global connected ecosystem is, is critical. Like you said, John, it's not just training, but it's, it's how do we train, how do we communicate, right?
Do we have to have different radios and different comms aboard different aircraft if we're flying in the US versus if we're flying in Europe versus if we're flying in Asia. Right. So, so how do we start harmonizing all those infrastructure pieces so they can talk to each other? Right.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: I'm also thinking, yeah, the infrastructure from different radar sets or additional radars, different comm towers, positive control in certain areas, all of this has to be figured out. So, you know, you know, all that said as we kind of wrap up here, Gene, what are your.
There's a lot of stakeholders that are every day waking up like you're doing, like we're doing. So many companies, they're all in on this. What is going to, you think, create that alignment to allow this vision of not only this ecosystem and this infrastructure that's going to facilitate success.
What allows that alignment to take place? What would be your advice for people listening who are sitting in my seat right now? And like a lot of your clients.
[00:39:42] Speaker A: I use the word collaboration a lot, John. It's really us as an industry coming together, collaborating.
I don't think there's a single organization, I don't think there's a single government body. I don't think there's a single country that can just on its own create this wonderful world of future connected aviation ecosystem. I think it's truly going to take collaboration between industry, between government, between regulators and public for that matter. Right. Because we gotta, you know, we have to instill public trust, you know, that these things are safe to fly, you know, that they're safe to fly in, they're safe to fly overhead. Right. I mean, again, going back to a conversation, what we started with is, you know, all these drones up in New Jersey, right? It has everybody in a panic, right? But hey, they're safe, right? They, you know, nothing's fallen out of the sky, nothing's caused any harm. So it's getting the public trust. I think we all have to do it collaborative now, John, I'll tell you one story I tell a lot of people.
We can either all get together, collaborate and define our future, or our future will be defined for us. And a story I like to tell is.
So Jeff Bezos, a few years back, Amazon, of course with Amazon prime, is growing like crazy. One of the largest companies in the world had a contract with FedEx. And you know, they. FedEx honestly went back to Amazon and said, hey, Amazon, you know, we, you know, you're a bulk of what we do today, right? So we're gonna have to raise our rates. And, you know, Bezos being, being, being. Bezos said, yeah, no, I don't think that's gonna work for me. And the CEO of FedEx says, no, you don't understand. I mean, you know, we move your packages all around the world. You need us. And Jeff says, no, no, I don't. And what he do, he went out, bought, you know, several hundred acres out in Kentucky. He's gonna build his own airport. He's buying his own aircraft fleet right now called Amazon Prime. Right Again, I use that story as an analogy because we can all come together and collaborate and help move this market forward, or there will be people or events that will define it for us.
I'd rather do the former. I'd rather collaborate with my partners. I'd rather collaborate with the government. I'd rather collaborate with an industry. I think together we can really define and design what that future aviation ecosystem looks like.
[00:42:23] Speaker B: Well, yeah. Okay, final question then.
If you're looking at just the next 12 to 24 months in the. You're looking at the strategy to get all this done, what do you think the top 1, 2, 3 priorities are that we need to. Absolutely. As an industry laser focus on. In the short term.
[00:42:43] Speaker A: Maybe I'm a little biased, but I have to tell you, John, I've talked to a lot of people about this. Faa, NASA, Canso, others.
I don't want to downplay the. The engineering part on building a vertiport. I don't want to downplay the certification part for avionics and the aircraft. Those are all important. But I personally keep asking questions about infrastructure. And I get some people tell me, well, Gene, the infrastructure is already in place. Well, no, it's not. Maybe some of it is, but I have to tell you, my personal feeling, John, is what's the requirements for comms for air ground comms? Now, in a commercial sense, I know what those requirements are. But if I'm talking to an autonomous vehicle, do my requirements for air ground comms change? Because where am I communing? I'm not communicating with the aircraft, I'm communicating with the pilot. Pilot could be somewhere else. You know, with the onset of data link, you know, be able to push data up to the FMS and the aircraft kind of use data link to push it up to an autonomous aircraft to give it guidance for clearance for departure, things like that.
Surveillance.
How do I handle surveillance at 400ft? Right. What about micro weather surveillance? Right.
You know, downtown city of Houston is by far different than downtown city of New York. And it's certainly different than my backyard here, which is the country. Right. So what's the requirements around weather and weather surveillance?
You know, we've tried remote id. Is there a requirement to have every aircraft have some type of remote id? Is it ADS B? What is it? What does it look like? Right. And those are all things that I think a lot of people are focused on. But it's the supporting infrastructure that really has to come together, John, in my opinion, to really allow these things to help. I just don't think we've done enough work around that. So if I were present for a day, I'd say, yeah, let's really focus on are there gaps in the infrastructure to make this market really happen, really enable this market to kind of grow.
And hey, look, if we can use and leverage the current infrastructure in place today, great, but how do we do that? I'm just not sure there's been enough work around that.
[00:45:11] Speaker B: That's a great answer. So, Gene, thank you for your time and coming on and we'll definitely have you back on. I think as things progress, it'd be great to, as we're looking at some of these identifying gaps, what's the industry doing? What can the stakeholders be doing? Could it be a call to action? Maybe even putting together, you know, a panel with some of the stakeholders to focus on that really here in the US I think is currently our focus, but love to do that, so. And thank you for your time and keep knocking them alive out there, brother.
[00:45:42] Speaker A: Hey, John, I gotta tell you again, thanks for having me. I could talk about this stuff all day long. So next time you want to have me on. My pleasure. It's been great. I love the questions. I enjoy it. And again, I think getting the message out there, getting us as a community really focused on collaborating on how we can make this thing happen. I think the numbers that, you know, Bloomberg, McKinsey, all those have put out about what this market can be, I think, John, that just scratches the surface, in my opinion. I think it's going to be much larger than that. I go back one last story. I'll let you go. Who knew in the 90s when we created this thing called the World Wide Web, right.
What kind of commerce it would create, not just for this nation, but for the world, right? We had no idea. You know, again, you know, that that old modem where we used to have to use the phone that was off the wall and, you know, dial up, and little did we know what we could create. I think we're at that precipice right now with this market. I think we see some great things that can happen, but I think we've only scratched the surface.
[00:46:49] Speaker B: John, I would completely agree with you, and the opportunity is immense. It's game changer, really is.
All right, Gene, well, you're the best man and we will definitely have you back on soon.
[00:47:02] Speaker A: John, thanks. Looking forward to it. Have a great afternoon.
