Regulations, infrastructure, supply chain; oh, my!

If you asked the industry what the biggest challenge facing drones or flying cars was just a year ago, you’d get a resounding, “REGULATIONS!” It was hard to see past the problem of immature regulatory environments’ especially as successful operations were taking place around the world.

Until recently, there were very few companies able to deliver goods with drones, fly beyond the horizon, and or support the types of demands that were needed to ensure the growth and survival of the fledgling uncrewed aviation industry; let alone autonomous passenger aircraft. Of course, technology has matured a bit around batteries, autonomy, perception technologies, composite materials, and navigation, but ultimately you would hear regulation, not technology, is the biggest hurdle. Today, however, we’re starting to see other blockers come into focus as companies tread a pioneer’s path to approvals leaving trails to follow for those close behind. While regulations continue to be a hurdle that companies contend with, it seems that everyone is pushing together and CAAs across the world are “open for business.”

For drones, we’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel that is aircraft certification, approval for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations in non-urban centers, and a harmonization around risk-based rules that make sense. Take this summer alone, just as soon as the BVLOS Aviation Rulemaking Committee delivered their recommendations, the White House hosted the first Advanced Air Mobility Summit. Leaders from industry, academia, government, and society came together to outline the road ahead – and all saw 2023 as a lynch pin year for flight. They all concluded that key technologies are set to decarbonize, connect, and expedite the human experiences. Supersonic aircraft, sustainable aviation fueled jets, hydrogen electric passenger planes, fully autonomous air-taxis, and delivery drones are all on the cusp of meaningful operations and that future relies not on regulatory change, but rather key blockers to adoption.

Infrastructure for the future

Infrastructure for the next generation of aviation faces similar problems to both driver-less vehicles and electric cars.

From a physical standpoint, the electric grid on the ground is not secure enough, reliable enough, accessible enough, nor supplied enough to keep the number of expected electric aircraft in the sky. Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) are not available in high enough quantities and the types of refinement necessary for their creation and delivery must be invested in today. Organizations like NASA and the World Economic Forum in partnership with industry and academia are working fast to change the situation and with some success. Regional airports and rooftops must be zoned and permitted appropriately, often requiring government action and rethinking of public assets, not something that comes easy though many cities – like Orlando, Los Angeles, Paris, and Singapore – are clearly keen to face head-on.

Beyond physical infrastructure, an aspect unique to aviation is centralized traffic deconfliction. Playing the role that air traffic management plays today and empowering the regulator to ensure safety in the sky is very much the opposite approach that automobiles contend with, where each actor deciding in their best interest, leads to far more throughput but far less safety. We’re used to air traffic management (ATM) keeping the skies safe, and so will Uncrewed Traffic Management (UTM) seek to deconflict the sky once multiple companies try to fly in the same environment. This requires an all of industry approach to generate industry standards for communication, behavior, and implementation and requires the government to maintain a highly robust, secure, and effective data backbone to plug into. It requires real-time decision making, and real-time dispersed propagation throughout the system. This is one tough nut to crack, but will be crucially important in realizing a safe and secure future aviation system.

Public Acceptance

An even greater challenge may not be in the technology itself, but in the way society sees the use of the sky and we won’t know the answer until we have more flights, helping more people, experience life better. In places where the major drone companies have been flying for months or years, the results have been very positive. Social Media is rife with thrilled customers receiving everything from birthday cakes and cups of coffee, to over-the-counter medication in a highly sustainable, highly personalized experience that negates the need to drive to a store. Of course, no location is the same, no population exactly alike, and so a community driven service must be the way forward. We’ve already seen that companies with loud aircraft, low flight profiles, or a propensity to outsource civic engagement simply don’t achieve their goals and a few are no longer flying for that reason.

Physical and Digital Supply Chain

We live at a time when supply chain issues are driving global inflation, causing intense harm to businesses, and exacerbating geo-political strife between highly integrated trading partners. Next generation aviation industries will continue to face increased costs, higher scrutiny, and an inability to access certain markets if this continues or the sourcing of material and finished goods doesn’t amend significantly. There are few signs, for example, that it will be easier to access rare earth metals or finished processing chips without some serious on-shoring. Whether it’s national security, protectionism, jingoism, or good old fashioned industrial policy, the aerospace industry is needing to redefine its entire manufacturing processes and it needs suppliers fast.

When we also consider the implications of data ownership, data sovereignty, privacy rights, and the immense need for transparency to the public and government stakeholders where your data is stored, how it is protected, and who has access to it will continue to be important questions.

Whether you’re set to launch that next big flying car company using lighter than vehicles or want to fly from New York to Sydney in under 6 hours, you should be excited to see progress and opportunity just around the corner.