BLADE Urban Air Mobility recently announced that they will be extending their jet charter services to customers at operating cost to support those needing urgent on demand transportation from affected areas.

From a BLADE press release: “Given the unprecedented level of uncertainty regarding commercial flight travel restrictions, mandatory health screenings for international commercial arrivals (with hours-long waits), and seemingly random decisions regarding quarantines, many of our fliers are eager to transport family, friends, and colleagues home via private air travel.”

A typical aircraft coordinated by BLADE UAM, operated by JFI Jets. Image // Elite Daily

BLADE furthered the statement by outlining that they have been coordinating with federal authorities, full-time state and local government advisors, and operator partners to help customers navigate the confusion regarding current, planned, and in-process restrictions and processes that remain critical to making informed judgments regarding private air travel at this time.

The key announcement: In an effort to best assist our community, BLADE is now providing charter availability for our entire accessible fleet of long-range jets at operating cost to anyone in need of transportation from an international location back to the United States.

Additionally, given the shortage of available aircraft, and in an effort to help as many travelers as possible, BLADE encouraged that these flights be shared, either through coordination by BLADE or by fliers themselves, assuming travelers had taken necessary precautions to ensure that they were not infected.

Why it’s important: BLADE’s reduction in cost for charters and on-demand transportation services has allowed customers access to international travel when they may not be able to access via any other means due to restrictions placed on commercial airlines. Regardless, those who are in greatest need of traveling for urgent situations, or attempting to return home to their families, still have the opportunity to do so. This announcement also falls in concert with the larger direction of the commercial airline industry being hit incredibly hard by the COVID-19 outbreaks, causing reductions in carrying capacity, crew leaves of absence, and extensive delays, cancellations, and rescheduling of airfares.

Dr. Simon Briceno joins the aerial mobility startup, Jaunt Air Mobility, as their lead in UAM development, and will head Jaunt’s operational initiatives with Uber Elevate and their network of aerospace and infrastructure partners, according to a Jaunt press release. “The addition of Dr. Briceno to the Jaunt Air Mobility team is further validation of Jaunt’s leadership position in Urban Air Mobility.” said Kaydon Stanzione CEO of Jaunt Air Mobility, “With his years of aviation research experience at the highest levels and his depth of knowledge in transformative flight and Urban Air Mobility, Dr. Briceno is an important addition to the Jaunt team.”

Dr. Briceno previously worked eight years as Transformative Aviation Concepts Division Chief at the Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory at Georgia Institute of Technology. After receiving his BSME from Syracuse University and his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, he spent 12 years as a Senior Research Engineer at the Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory at Georgia Tech and 8 years as Transformative Aviation Concepts Division Chief at the Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory at Georgia Tech. 

Dr. Briceno has conducted several landmark Urban Air Mobility studies and has authored over 70 technical papers concerning the study of air mobility operations conceptual design, autonomous systems, and aviation safety and certification. His specialization is in the development of advanced design methods to assess electric vehicle technologies in emerging Urban Air Mobility (UAM) aviation markets and developing methods for Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) autonomous path planning. He is also an active pilot.

According to Dr. Briceno,  “I elected to join Jaunt Air Mobility because they are not only developing the safest, quietest and most operationally efficient, all-electric VTOL aircraft for the UAM mission, but their focus includes developing the complete Urban Air Mobility eco-system. This allows me to apply my years of experience and research directly to Jaunt’s business model.”

Why it’s important: Dr. Briceno brings a wealth of experience and research knowledge to Jaunt Air Mobility, and will greatly aid Jaunt’s goal of implementing a full aerial mobility ecosystem. With this addition, Jaunt Air Mobility looks to be one of the most promising companies that will offer such a service.

Source // Jaunt Air Mobility press release

From Volocopter Press Release

German Urban Air Mobility company Volocopter (Bruchsal) and Southeast Asia’s super app Grab (Singapore) announced that they will conduct a joint feasibility study on urban air mobility as part of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to explore the prospect of urban air mobility solutions in the region’s megacities.

Image // Volocopter, in Singapore

The feasibility study will look into the most suitable cities and routes to deploy air taxis in Southeast Asian cities; evaluate the best use cases for air taxis, and explore the possibility of joint flight tests, among other things.

The findings will lay the groundwork for potential future cooperation between both companies which could include launching services related to urban air mobility. Both companies aim to help solve mobility issues and improve the quality of life through technological innovations.

Florian Reuter, CEO of Volocopter: “This cooperation is another important step towards the commercialization of Urban Air Mobility in one of the most traffic congested regions of the world. Together, we will learn from unprecedented insights into the economic and societal opportunity of launching our services on the hottest routes in the Southeast Asian Market. This collaboration also offers the potential for a much larger cooperation which could eventually extend intermodal mobility to the skies.”

Volocopter has been pioneering the development of urban air mobility since the company proved in 2011 that electrically powered vertical flight is indeed possible for humans. With flights in Dubai, Las Vegas, Helsinki, Stuttgart, and most recently Singapore, the technology is maturing towards certification quickly. For the flight over Singapore’s Marina Bay, the company worked closely with the local Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS). Recently, Volocopter has been certified as a Design Organisation by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and works in close collaboration with them to receive the necessary permits to start commercial operations.

Chris Yeo, Head of Grab Ventures, said: “As a superapp that operates across 339 cities in Southeast Asia, Grab has gathered traffic patterns and customer insights in the region that can help our teams come up with the most innovative mobility solutions to plug the gaps in the transport landscape. This partnership will enable Volocopter to further develop urban air mobility solutions that are relevant for Southeast Asian commuters so they can decide on their preferred journey option based on their budgets, time constraints and other needs, in a seamless way.”

Why it’s important: This partnership is hugely important for both Grab and Volocopter since the TAM in Singapore and southeast Asia for aerial mobility applications is quite large – and the pace of aerial mobility technology development in those areas is extremely quick as well. Volocopter’s continued efforts to expand their global reach and become a commonly-known air taxi and mobility company (for now in the realm of the aerial mobility industry, at least) is furthered by the announcement of this MOU.

Swiss startup Daedalean, a developer of software for autonomous flight control, vision-based navigation, terrain guidance and landing, and Honeywell, a leader in the aerospace industry for avionics hardware, have announced that they have entered into a join technological and financial partnership. This partnerships facilitates cooperation between the two companies as they endeavor to develop fully autonomous AI pilots for general aviation and aerial mobility operations. While AI pilots are the ultimate goal for these two companies, their current hardware solution bridges the gap between fully crewed and complete autonomous flight decks.

The partnership is two-pronged: Honeywell Ventures has joined the Swiss startup’s pool of investors (terms and quantity of investment still unknown) and Honeywell and Daedalean plan to engage in joint testing and technological partnership to develop solutions for autonomous takeoff, landing and GPS-independent navigation and collision avoidance for GA aircraft and aerial mobility aircraft as well.

Luuk van Dijk, founder and CEO of Daedalean, stated that “Developing flight control software requires lots of flight data. That’s why the collaboration with prominent industry partners such as Honeywell is critical for us to speed up the development of our technology. We are preparing for the joint flights testing our solutions for various types of aircraft, and excited to carry out trials on the planes we haven’t tried before.”

This partnership aims to effectively solve the flight controls hurdles that must be overcome in order for the aerial mobility industry to become successful on larger commercial scales than the current charter helicopter industries.

It’s reported that Honeywell’s hardware package is roughly the size of a paperback book.

The Vertical Aerospace Seraph, powered in part by Honeywell’s flight control systems.

Daedalean is a Swiss company that has expertise in robotics, computer vision and machine learning. Daedalean intends on using those innovations to advance the flight control methodology and systems architecture for both general aviation and electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. The key development and IP of this partnership is a flight control systems’ ability to process visual images, similar to human-like situational awareness, which could theoretically simplify pilot operations greatly and allow pilots to focus on the most mission critical decision and Aeronautical Decision making tasks that are required of professional pilots.

Why it’s important: This collaboration leverages the considerable resources of Honeywell and the technical expertise of a niché company like Daedalean. The approach of hybridizing current crewed operations for flight with the ultimate goal of fully autonomous operations will become increasingly popular in the coming years as the aerospace industry finds a medium between a massive operation leap and smaller steps towards an ultimate goal of redefining the typical methods for manned flight operations.

Related:

• Vertical Aerospace Confirms Partnership with Honeywell
• Honeywell Releases Their New Compact Fly-By-Wire System for UAM
• Honeywell to Equip Volocopter with Autonomous Landing Systems
• Pipistrel and Honeywell to Collaborate on UAM Tech

Source // Inside Unmanned Systems