#50 Christiaan Hen, Assaia: AI and aviation's "pit stops"

[00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to The Vertical Space, a podcast at the intersection of technology and flight. We are your hosts, Jim Barry, Peter Shannon, and Luka Tomljenovic. And here we look at the most important forces shaping the market of advanced air mobility with a particular

[00:00:18] focus on why and how they matter to those building a business in this very exciting and growing industry. Very clear for us that North America has a culturally very different stance towards technology and opportunity and entrepreneurship than Europe. I think North American market is much more

[00:00:38] driven by opportunity and try things, and also some optimism, I would say, versus where big parts of Europe are much more driven by fear and safety and what if it fails? What if it doesn't work? The innovators and the early adopters are generally well

[00:00:56] represented in the US and Canada, so North America. And I think the European airports and airlines are looking towards the US market. And that gives them the confidence to see, okay, it works over there. So now we're sort of ready to try it ourselves. Many of the

[00:01:12] European airlines, they come from a position where they were a national carrier, right? And so they were basically, to a certain extent at least a monopoly for a very long period of time. Within the US, just because of the shared size of the market, the

[00:01:24] airlines come from more of a competitive background and therefore have a bigger drive for innovation, for efficiency. Because they know if they don't, it's going to be punished. Welcome back to the Vertical Space in our 50th episode. It's hard to believe we're getting

[00:01:44] close to two years since we started this podcast series. And given the milestone of 50 published episodes, here's a quick thank you to all of you guests, listeners and sponsors who are making this possible. We appreciate all of you who are reaching out

[00:01:56] to us and supporting our efforts in various ways. Today, we're talking about something that has great relevance to traditional aviation and that will become increasingly important to drone and other AAM concepts as their operations increase in scale and complexity, which is utilization of the most important physical

[00:02:11] assets in aviation, aircraft and ground infrastructure. We have the pleasure of doing a deep dive into this interesting topic with Christian Hen, chief customer officer at ASIA, accompanying with the vision to improve safety, efficiency and capacity of the air transportation system by bringing transparency and order

[00:02:29] to ground operations. We start the conversation with an analysis of the process of turning aircraft around at airport gates, the different parts of the process, the relevant metrics, the various stakeholders involved and the limitations of existing methods used to manage the turnar on process and

[00:02:46] broadly gate management. As the scale of commercial air operations increased over the past several decades with the corresponding commoditization of air travel, the pressure on the air transportation system to increase efficiency while maintaining safety has never been higher. Add capacity

[00:03:02] constraints at airports that are responsible for the majority of traffic, labor shortages and the ambitions to decarbonize aviation and you quickly realize the importance of doing more with less and to do it more predictably and consistently. Most of our conversation with Chris is

[00:03:16] about how to achieve that. As we discuss the benefits of ASIA's solution to existing aviation stakeholders, we also draw parallels to AAM and how this is a market that will require greater transparency and optimization of ground operations as it matures. Think high density drone

[00:03:33] operations but with the benefit of freedom in infrastructure models and technology stacks that are not burdened with outdated legacy IT systems. We also talk about the differences between Europe and North America as it relates to airport operations, state of the market and willingness to

[00:03:48] invest in new technologies. Chris spent his entire career in the aviation industry. He worked for over eight years at Amsterdam Airport Skippal in different functions, including airport development, capacity management and operations management. The last three years at Skippal, Chris was head of

[00:04:03] innovation for Skippal Group. During this time he crossed paths with ASIA discussions about a partnership between the airport and ASIA evolved into a partnership between ASIA and Chris personally. At the end of 2018, Chris joined ASIA to become their chief customer officer. In this role,

[00:04:20] he is involved in both business as well as product development. Chris uses his extensive knowledge of the aviation industry to further enhance the apron AI ASIA product to make aviation more efficient, safer and more sustainable. Enjoy the conversation with Chris after a quick sponsor message.

[00:04:37] This episode of the Vertical Space podcast is brought to you by Uavionics. Uavionics is the leader in low size, weight and power certified avionics for manned, unmanned and advanced air mobility aircraft. Let Uavionics help you achieve your goals, whether that be

[00:04:53] type certification, airspace access or beyond visual line of sight operations. Uavionics has certified and certifiable communications, navigation and surveillance avionics for your aircraft. So head over to uavionics.com or Google it to see how you can start flying safer and move your platform forward into shared airspace.

[00:05:20] Chris, thank you very much for being with us on the Vertical Space. Welcome. Thanks. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited. It's my first podcast experience ever actually. Okay, we'll make it very enjoyable. So let's start with the easy

[00:05:31] questions. Is there anything that very few in the industry agree with you on? Related to the work that we're doing, I always like to think that pretty much all delays are avoidable. And it's a bit of an extreme stance that even internally I have some colleagues

[00:05:45] that you know, they won't agree with me because they just have a less optimistic view on things. But I actually think that most of the delays that we're seeing in aviation can be avoided, especially because originator not all but a lot of it originates

[00:05:58] from the same place actually. And so when you say that all delays could be avoided, are you also including weather related events? Yeah, that's that's the weak spot. I mean, ultimately, potentially if you look what the Chinese are doing influencing

[00:06:11] the weather, but no, I mean, there's these categories of the weather and security related delay origins. And I mean, that's only 5% together. And the other 95% is I think all influenceable to a certain extent. And will we ever get there?

[00:06:26] Probably not. But I think that's a nice goal to aim for anyways. You mentioned Chris that they come from the same origin, they originate from the same place. What was that? Yeah, so if you look at the FAA reports on delays,

[00:06:38] there's this category on carrier delays, which is roughly a third. And then there's another category that says late arrivals, right? But late arrivals in itself not a reason for delay because there was also reason why the aircraft arrived late. So I believe that typically the bulk of late

[00:06:57] arrival delays, which is another one third, actually also finds its origins in carrier delays or something else. And then there's the national aviation system delays, which is all due to bad planning and to not have enough predictability in order to do a good job in

[00:07:13] planning. That's another 25% roughly. So I think those three major categories are actually avoidable if you have the right data and have the right tools. Let's take a dive into the turnaround process itself. Tell us what's involved in a typical turnaround process? What are all the moving parts?

[00:07:30] Yeah, there's lots of them. I think that's for me at least the exciting part is that it's almost like an orchestrated dance. There's so many different people, different stakeholders from different companies that need to perform their part before the aircraft can go again. Because

[00:07:44] you know, from arrival, we've got chocks, power needs to be connected, preconditioned air bridge needs to be connected, cargo doors open, loaders connected, catering, fueling, and then everything inside the cabin as well cleaning. And all of this needs to be coordinated in order to get

[00:07:59] the best possible outcome, especially because these things are often interdependent. I think easy example is you won't board an aircraft until cleaning is done. Or if you want to do catering at the front of the aircraft, at the same time as you want to load bags

[00:08:12] there, then you're just in each other's way. But the catering company is a different company than the company that provides the loading teams. If you want to get it right, you need to orchestrate and coordinate all those moving parts correctly.

[00:08:24] And what kind of data is used in the process of turning an aircraft around them? Where's this data coming from? Originally, aviation in general, and therefore also the turnaround process was much simpler. There was airports that just had a handful of flights a day, so everyone was always

[00:08:40] aware of what was going on. But over time as flying has become a commodity, the required efficiencies have gone up and we want to do six, seven, eight turnarounds per day per gate and aircraft need to fly as

[00:08:53] many legs as possible. So the pressure on the system is actually much higher. And therefore the need for this coordination has also gone up. And I think we're still seeing a lot of airlines that either don't have data on

[00:09:06] these operations on the ground. Or if they have them, they're typically the result of manual data collection. So there's literally people that need to press buttons within an application on their phone or need to scan QR codes to log that a certain activity has started or

[00:09:23] finished. But yeah, there are some issues with that. Yeah, we'll get to this part of how the process is managed today. But before we started recording, we were talking briefly about the evolution of the pit stops in

[00:09:35] Formula One and how back in the 1950s and 60s pit stops would last, you know, maybe 60 70 seconds almost, whereas now they're two second pit stops. So if you look over the last 1020 years or however long you want to extend the timeline here, how has the process of turning

[00:09:56] aircraft around changed? And what's the most important missing element today? Obviously, there has been some change. But the key issue is that there has not been enough change. And if you look back how we're turning around aircrafts in the 60s, and how

[00:10:09] we're doing that now, and literally looking at the processes, but also the equipment that are being that's being used, it's quite similar. And given that the required efficiency has gone up so much, I think that that's where there's a big opportunity to improve

[00:10:24] still. And I think the example of the Formula One is a good example where they've really done it right and they've optimized it to the millisecond. And, you know, we won't turn an aircraft around in two seconds. But I think

[00:10:37] there's a lot we can learn from Formula One, to be honest. So at the end of the day, one of the airlines said a couple years ago, aviation and the airline business is a real estate game. And you know, those who have the

[00:10:47] gates win, right? So the gate turn process is so important. I mean, from one perspective, you want to be able to turn it from just a sheer efficiency of the turn to reduce cost. On the other hand, if you are

[00:10:59] really effective at doing it, obviously you might be able to get more gate turns and more gate opportunities throughout the day. And when you can do that, you can increase the schedule. It has an effect on increasing revenue for the

[00:11:11] airline. It has an effect on reducing costs. But let's step way back. I guess even before the plane is, let's say you got somebody come from SFO to let's make it LAX. What is involved with the preparation of that plane that's coming from SFO?

[00:11:27] What is that gate prep at LAX? At what point do they start to prepare for that plane that's coming in? And what's the steps along the way as the aircraft arrives? You mentioned all the different above wing and blowing elements. But if you

[00:11:42] could talk about that, because my sense is to answer Lucas questions. Part of this is, you know, since the days of the 60 second turn to the two second turn in Formula One, a lot of the improvements that have been made on the

[00:11:57] airline side could be probably very nicely explained as that plane is pushing off from SFO and arriving at LAX. Is that a fair question? Yeah, no, absolutely. I think the right preparation is half the work. And we obviously starts with the planning. Right? So how many

[00:12:13] flights are you expecting on a day? How does your resource planning look in conjunction with that? And then on the day, how are you planning that staff according to when these planes actually arrive? And the better you know when the flight is arriving, the and then with

[00:12:28] better, I mean, the more predictability you have. Because even if it's late, as long as you know in advance, that's not necessarily an issue because you can still adjust without having a negative impact. So yeah, you need to have, you know, the people

[00:12:41] and equipment ready stage. First of all, the gate needs to be available, right? So if the previous flight was delayed, you want to know that early on so that the next flight, the one coming in from SFO is not having to hold. But it goes to an alternative

[00:12:55] gate, for example, the gate needs to be free of any GSE or equipment or even FOD so that when it arrives, it can basically directly taxi onto the gate. So there's a decent amount of planning and preparation required for that to basically have a smooth

[00:13:12] arrival of the aircraft that they end up to turn on process itself can start on time. I will put a plug in real quickly for companies like Passer Aerospace to give really good and very exact DTAs. You mentioned the schedule is one thing.

[00:13:25] Anytime there's any change that schedule, knowing exactly what that time is playing coming in is extraordinarily important. And there's you know, there's many companies that do it. But I know Passer is often referred to as is the best and I am partial. So the you know

[00:13:39] the plane is coming in, you know, you know, almost to the second what time it's coming in. And then just explain those steps as it's getting ready when and why is this coordination so important? Talk about it both from the perspective of the arriving aircraft, but also from

[00:13:57] the perspective of what's going on within the terminal. You know, what's going on is first the people who are getting ready to go on that plane because I know it's a kind of a two way street there isn't it? And you've

[00:14:07] talked about in the past. This has been manual. You also have implied some of this is being automated. Yeah, it's having people ready and resources ready. And I think a good example is you need a jet bridge driver to connect the jet bridge still. I mean, there's

[00:14:22] initiatives underway for automated jet bridges, but we don't have them yet. And this seems like something that's that doesn't matter too much. But if there's no jet bridge driver, nobody gets off the plane on that arrival delay will result into departure delay

[00:14:38] as if it takes long enough. So the people inside waiting for to get on their flight are going to be impacted if that person is not there. And there's a lot more of these examples right because if there's people that have reduced mobility on the plane

[00:14:52] they need to have wheelchairs on arrival because if we don't get these people off the flight again that will impact at some point to departure leg of that flight. And this is, you know, on time performance all related to passenger experience. But I think there's

[00:15:06] another angle as well for sustainability for example, because as the flight comes in it will have its auxiliary power unit on which is a generator that creates energy for the aircraft. And the idea is that after arrival you plug in the ground power

[00:15:20] so you can turn off this very inefficient generator engine in the aircraft. But what we often see is that this happens very late into the process or sometimes doesn't happen at all. And that means instead of using potentially green energy from a ground power source

[00:15:35] the aircraft is running its APU engine which creates carbon emissions, which creates noise pollution and therefore not being ready to start the turnaround and not being ready to start handling the aircraft also has a negative sustainability effect. From an operation standpoint is the turnaround process more about shortening

[00:15:57] the duration of the turnaround or is it more about enabling the airline to be accurate in their prediction of when the turnaround is complete and when that aircraft is ready to go. Given that this flight has a cascading effect throughout the rest of the day for where that

[00:16:12] aircraft is going to be used and all of the other interdependencies in the airport ground environment and in the air routing environment which objective dominates in the operations aspect of the turnaround? That's a great question and I would say it differs a bit on what kind

[00:16:30] of airline you are if we're talking airlines now. Right? If you're a low cost airline that typically flies passengers point to point, then shortening the term as much as possible up front, so having the shortest possible scheduled term time is key because the aircraft will be flying more

[00:16:47] and therefore creating more revenues. If you have a more traditional airline that has a large share of transfer passengers, it might be different because it's part of a hop and spoke system and winning sometimes somewhere might not mean you can fly an extra leg because it's a

[00:17:03] flight, it's either a long flight or it's a feeder flight and therefore that benefit might not be achieved. But that's about the scheduled term time. So once you have a scheduled term time, then I guess it's all about making sure that you don't catch

[00:17:17] delay relative to the scheduled term time. And again, being able to depart early, there is cases where it could make sense, but I would say it's rather about just reducing delays and leaving on time and trying to leave early, which you often count because

[00:17:33] of passengers that are not expecting or dissipating. And I guess a delay has different impacts. One is the direct operational impact on the airline and the use of that aircraft later in the day. And the other is the perceived impact by customers and for their individual flight, whether

[00:17:51] they are significantly delayed and what that means from a customer opinion standpoint. But for turnarounds where we are trying to keep the aircraft on schedule, where we're trying to minimize the amount of time consumed in the turnaround, you know, obviously a lot of steps happened

[00:18:08] during the turnaround. You have a lot of different stakeholders that are involved in making that happen. Where are the bottlenecks in that process? Some things like maybe like baggage handling or those aspects have slack capacity there at the gate. Others like catering might be capacity constrained. And if

[00:18:29] there's a delay that causes a bunch of flights to come in at the same time, maybe the caterers are capacity constrained to get the food to all of those different flights. How does that look at the typical, you know, target airports and airlines that that you're working

[00:18:46] with where those bottlenecks are? I think the key word or the key concept here is this critical path. So there's some activities that even if you're late, it doesn't hold up everything else. So at some point it will still become a problem if it's

[00:19:00] delayed for very long periods of time, but especially those activities that have dependencies, those are the ones that are typically driving delays. And again, that might differ on an airline per airline basis. So for example, we know there are some airlines that won't board passengers until

[00:19:16] they've finished the catering process on the front of the aircraft because they don't want to have the door opposite to the boarding door open at the same time and have the catering operator loading the cards as passengers are boarding. If that's the case, there's a

[00:19:32] dependency there and you will wait with boarding until that's finished. And therefore if that catering process is late, you know, they will have a knock on effect inside the turnaround. Another example is fueling for example, where on an airport per airport and even airline per airline basis

[00:19:47] there's different procedures around fueling. So some airlines again, they won't board aircraft until fueling has finished. Others will say we'll board the aircraft, but it needs to be supervised by the fire department or people are not allowed to put their seat belts on. But again, if they

[00:20:04] won't board until fueling has completed, there's a dependency that's a potential source for delays. And another one is cleaning. So typically, you know, you need to have the cleaning process finished before you can start onboarding the passengers for a departure flight. So it's typically those kind of

[00:20:19] processes that are on this critical path that have the highest chance of creating a delay. A couple of different paths we could go here. Just really good question by Peter. So one is it, you know, if it's, is it important to turn it fast? Or is it important

[00:20:34] to turn it a lot almost in a way as Peter was what you were asking? So it partly depends on on schedule or off schedule operations. If it's on schedule, you want to be able to turn it within the timeframe that you've been allotted. If it's off

[00:20:47] schedule, you want to turn it as quickly as possible. I mean just the other day, I was picking my daughter up at the airport. And I saw that she had a plane going into LA that it was really delayed. And it was her plane

[00:21:00] that was going in. And I wanted them to turn that bad dog as fast as possible, because I knew if it did that would allow her to be able to take off on time. And I think it was a it was a Delta plane. And

[00:21:12] boy did they turn that fast. Frankly, when I saw it was Delta, I thought this, you know, they are so good at this. They're so good at the turns and they turned it really quickly. So in that example, Peter, you know, they turned it fast because it was

[00:21:26] off schedule. They got it out quickly. The other thing that I think is really interesting in Chris, you were referring to it earlier. I love the idea that listen, if you get really, really good at it, and you can count on it and it's

[00:21:37] predictable, then I can get more gate turns throughout the day. And then that affects the schedule, Peter and Chris. Now, if you can affect the schedule and you get more turns throughout the day, now you're affecting the revenue piece of it. That's why this

[00:21:50] is such an exciting topic. And we've had many guests, Pasha, for example, from Alaska talked about, you know, the importance of the efficiency here of the gate turns. Alaska is very good at it as well. All right. So I have not asked one question out of that whole

[00:22:04] little few minutes soliloquy. But I couldn't I'm sorry, but I couldn't agree more with you because you also said earlier, it's a real estate game. And to be honest, it very much used to be the problem today is that many airports are running out of physical

[00:22:20] space to play the real estate game. Airports and airlines, they need to look for different solutions to get more turns per day out of the same amount of infrastructure. So it's really bricks and bites these days. So that being the case, and that's why we're having this

[00:22:35] podcast, it's so interesting. And also there's an advanced air mobility component here that we have to talk about. You know, we're going to have we have to talk about in a few minutes, the electric planes, what's the requirement for charging? How would they charge?

[00:22:47] Because that's going to add an element of, I'm going to call it opportunity, but also complexity to the process. But we'll talk about that in a few minutes, Chris. The other thing that hit me, that whole process that you just described, you know, above wing, below wing,

[00:23:03] the passenger component, the like, there's a lot of different organizations involved. When my daughter's plane had to be turned, that wasn't just Delta Airlines. Now, I should say it depends, right? Some airports Delta may control almost everything. And in some other airports, the airport is involved.

[00:23:20] The FBO may be involved with a review and the like. So there's a lot of different organizations that are part of that term. How is that managed? And I don't I don't want to ask a leading questions to what your company does. But how has that done?

[00:23:33] What kind of collaborative processes are involved in what kind of visibility is involved for all those different players? So we see obviously different models, but I think there's general consensus that you need a certain level of control, operational control. So in the airline, even if they've

[00:23:52] outsourced many of the actual turnaround activities or turnaround processes, there's typically someone who works directly for the airline that's in charge of the turnaround process as a whole, or responsible for the on time performance of flights. This is either a turnaround controller or departure manager.

[00:24:09] They have different names and there's very different models there. There are some airlines that literally have one person per flight, you know, on the on the gate, manually overseeing everything, which is obviously a very costly solution because you need a person for departure and you have departures sometimes

[00:24:27] around the clock. So these people work on shifts. So that's a very costly role to fail and more and more difficult, especially with the staff service that we're seeing in the industry. The other airlines have more sort of efficient models where they, for example, use zonal managers.

[00:24:42] So that's a person who's responsible for departures in a specific zone, which can be a terminal or a pier or one side of a pier. And then there's, you know, sort of a full remote kind of model where all the turnarounds are basically managed from a remote location

[00:24:57] from a central operation center. We've even had one airline that we've seen move from the, you know, the one extreme where they had one person per departure and tried to move to the centralized model. They didn't have the right tools and the right information and data to be

[00:25:12] able to do that. So they saw a massive drop in their operational performance. And as a result of that, you know, they needed to move back to the original model. And now we are working with them to try and help them to move back again to the more

[00:25:26] efficient centralized model. But by actually providing them with the tools and the data to even in a remote location have this ability in real time but what's going on to be able to be alerted to deviations from the desired process and therefore basically yeah, control your operation

[00:25:44] phrase that we really like is you can't manage what you can't measure. So on that note, whether this is a person of the gate or in a zone or just a fully remote model as you describe, what is it that these people measure today

[00:25:59] and how does that measurement and I'm thinking perhaps off block time and certain other predictions, how does that then propagate throughout the rest of the air transportation system? Yes, I think this like you say, there's two things. There's one measuring when individual activities start and end.

[00:26:18] And the second thing that they're typically involved with is trying to estimate what when are we going to be ready for departure? And if we look at the performance of these humans as human estimations, they're unfortunately not very accurate. And to be honest, that's not

[00:26:33] that's not even strange because these people are doing many things at the same time. And even if you're as a person at an aircraft, you have one person per departure. If that person is on one side of the aircraft, you won't see what's on the other side.

[00:26:46] If you're inside the jet bridge, you also don't know what's going on outside. So even though having a person at a departure sounds like, you know, you've got eyes everywhere, you typically don't. And therefore making these estimations continuously is anyways impossible because you're doing other things as well.

[00:27:02] But making accurate estimations based on knowing everything that's going on is definitely challenging. And furthermore, we're also seeing is as a result of the stop shortages, which again are a result of many airports and airlines laying off staff during the COVID crisis. We're seeing that the people

[00:27:20] that are there today are typically less experienced. So whereas before you would have someone who would be working for the airline or the ground handler for, I don't know, 20 30 sometimes even 40 years. And just by the smell of the kerosene, they would know that the aircraft is going to

[00:27:36] be three minutes late today. These people sort of were laid off or left the companies. And the new people come in in a period where there is a stop shortage. So training periods are cut. They don't have the experience, but they're required to do the same job.

[00:27:50] And obviously they're not as good as as there are more experienced colleagues that were there before. Chris, let's talk a little bit about the integrated software that's used to be able to coordinate the process. That's something that we are offering the industry. But before that, there really wasn't.

[00:28:07] And that's I think the hold that we're jumping into. So what we saw before is that each individual company that plays a role in the turnaround, they will schedule their resources and they have their plannings. But there was no integral view of who's doing what at which time.

[00:28:21] And I think now for the first time in aviation history, we're solving that. And you know, we're using exciting AI technology to basically create a comprehensive overview of everything that's happening in the aircraft turnaround process, regardless of who's responsible for actually doing the task or activity.

[00:28:40] Who else provides this kind of software? Yeah, there's definitely different companies, you know, in involves and resource planning, but in also in creating the data about the different activities. It's a relatively new development before this was all manual data collection, literally people manually creating timestamps.

[00:28:56] And now for the first time, this happens in an automated fashion because of development in computer vision that have made this technology is a realistic tool for this use case. So explain then how it works. And also you mentioned AI. What is it?

[00:29:10] Is that a dream that AI would be applied to the turn or is it a reality today and how is it? So we're already seeing that was we're already doing that today. How does work specifically for us is that we're using computer vision technology and

[00:29:24] airports are environments where there's loads of cameras out there already, right? So we can use that existing camera infrastructure. We don't need to put in any special cameras or new cameras in many cases. So we tap into these existing cameras and the software can then basically analyze

[00:29:41] the video images coming from the cameras and detect the different turnaround processes and events. And that specifically is AI technology that's already at use today, that many different larger airports in the world, like for example, Seattle Airport. So you got to give people a

[00:29:58] little bit more than that because I so what you're saying is there is CCTV and different cameras around the airport. Some of it may be owned by the airport. Some of it may be owned by the airline. So they have rights to that data, I'm assuming from

[00:30:11] the camera. OK, cameras that have been installed, you're getting the feeds and then you're applying AI to those feeds. Explain to paint the picture for our guests what you're doing to that because that's a very cool process. And then what are you doing? What was done before when

[00:30:28] you weren't applying AI to that kind of the data stream? OK. So before really people were either looking at videos themselves and manually recording times. And this still happens at many airports in the world today. The technology we use is very similar to what

[00:30:44] you would have on your phone in your photo library, right? So typically in your photo library, you can basically tag people. And if you enter someone's name, you know, your photo library would show you all pictures of that person. And the underlying technology, which is computer vision, basically

[00:30:58] recognizes people in your entire photo library based on you tagging them. And that's actually exactly what we're doing is just that we're not tagging people, but we're tagging jet bridges to connect to an aircraft or cargo doors opening or catering trucks coming on to the to the stand

[00:31:14] or fuelers connecting to the wing of the aircraft. So as all these things are happening in real time, we are basically creating a timestamp for those activities. And then the product that sits on top basically shows users everything that's happening in the turn. So regardless, who's actually

[00:31:32] performing the task. But more importantly, we rely on alerts to basically signal situations of interest to the user so that they don't have to oversee all operations, but that the software can actually pull them in on those situations where an action is required.

[00:31:49] So you can imagine that these people become much more productive because rather than trying to oversee all the operations, the system does it for them and they're only being pulled in as there is a situation that that requires an action from them. You're ingesting data from the

[00:32:04] cameras, you're ingesting data from people predicting what time the plane's coming in. So you're ingesting an awful lot of data. That's your platform that's doing that? Yes, it is. And then you are conducting the AI and the film and you're seeing what would otherwise have been done

[00:32:18] manually and probably a lot of those activities are being missed. But with you, it's automated. You're doing calculations on, I assume the critical path and then you're feeding information back to you, said the users. Describe the users. How is that information going out to them?

[00:32:34] How are they being updated? And then what are they doing different, Chris, based on that information you're sending to them? I think a good example might be an airline user that works in an ops center. This is a departure coordinator. And previously, if for one

[00:32:50] of the terms that this departure coordinator is responsible for, let's say the catering truck didn't show up or didn't show up when it was supposed to show up. Previously, the departure coordinator would only learn of this as the cabin crew would at some point say,

[00:33:05] you know, catering is still not here. And they would go to the captain disturb the captain during his free flight check and ask the captain to radio into the ops center to report this. So by the time this departure coordinator learns that the catering truck isn't

[00:33:19] there, they already lost 10, 15 minutes, right? And then this person starts to chase the catering service provider to ask where they are and if they come, come as quickly as possible. Now with our system, we see in real time when a catering truck is or isn't there.

[00:33:35] And we have the logic for each individual airline to define when it should be there. So as soon as it should be there and it isn't there, we alert the departure coordinator that can take action directly. So we take this 10, 15 minute latency out of the

[00:33:50] equation and we allow the departure coordinator to be much more in control of the flights that he or she is responsible for. And she can act directly towards the catering service provider. And at the same time, they can be sort of like an information service provider

[00:34:06] to to the captain and say, sorry, catering is late for your flight today. They're on their way to be here in five minutes. But so even the working relationship between all the stakeholder improves as a result of this improved visibility of what's actually going on.

[00:34:21] And so then as a result, what's happening? We talked earlier about what's really important to the airline, you know, with off and on schedule operations and the like. So are is there a lower cost to the airline for being able to conduct these activities?

[00:34:35] Is that the primary benefit or is the is the faster turn the primary benefit? What are the results getting back to Lucas question? What are the metrics that are improved for the airline as a result of the process you just outlined? Yeah, yeah, let's make it full circle.

[00:34:50] So I think the key benefit in this example is definitely the on time performance, right? Because if things go wrong and you start fixing them with a 1015 minute delay, whereas your scheduled term time might be 45 minutes, that is going to have an impact on on time performance.

[00:35:06] And we've actually proven with multiple airlines that we can on average improve their ground delays with four to five minutes as a result of them being more in control of their departures or reducing the delay for the airline is a cost benefit on one side

[00:35:21] because there's a cost to a minute of ground delays or cost to a minute of delays in general. It also isn't revenue opportunity because if you can shorten your turns, reduce the buffer between turns, you could potentially do more turn arounds per day, as we mentioned before.

[00:35:35] And then for the airport, they can handle more flights per day per gate, which is also revenue drive on the airport side. So tell us a story, you know how this all came together for a given airport or given airline that you've worked with and the observed

[00:35:50] advantage that this data and approach gave and how that fit into the bigger picture for that group. A good example, and you guys mentioned Pasha before, who I know was in the podcast as well. And we do a lot of work with Pasha and with his team

[00:36:05] at Alaska Airlines and they benefited from our technology to reduce their ground delays with 3.9 so roughly four minutes on average. And that's one example of how we drive value for airlines. There's definitely other ways as well like on the sustainability front where we can help them identify where,

[00:36:27] you know, as I said before ground power is not connected directly after arrival. Sometimes that's an issue with the infrastructure on a specific gate. And just by having all the data about all your operations, you can all of a sudden get these insights that

[00:36:41] drives value in either costs or in sustainability or even safety because there's standard operating procedures for each airline that typically prescribe how things should happen. And then traditionally there is auditors that go and do visual checks if the operating procedures are being followed. We can automate those.

[00:37:02] So we can not do only spot checks, but we can literally check 24 seven on each turn if those standard operating procedures are being followed. So all of a sudden you have the super rich safety database where you can do root cause analysis and find out actually

[00:37:19] why people are violating certain safety rules. Just because you have enough data to dig that deep. So I think that's another way where we can also drive value on the safety side of house. Before we we talk a little bit more about your company,

[00:37:33] let's talk a little bit about the electrification, let's say of aviation. How is that going to affect the turn process? What has to happen to the gate turn process with more and more electric airplanes being introduced to the system? Yeah, that's an exciting

[00:37:49] question. I'm not sure I have to full answer on that one, but charging is obviously is obviously a challenge. There is developments into new battery technologies that should allow for quicker charging, but the gate capacity at many airports is a limiting factor. So it's in everyone's interest

[00:38:06] to have the planes on the ground as little as possible. So if the charging is going to take longer than turnaround processes are in general taken today, that could potentially be an issue. I'm personally not aware exactly of what kind of times are being estimated for

[00:38:25] charging planes, but there's definitely some challenges there that need to be solved, I think. Chris, who benefits the most from improvements in the turnaround processes? Is it airports? Is it airlines? Is it ground support services providers? So I won't make a choice between airports and airlines

[00:38:44] because I really think it's on an equal level, but definitely the key value sits with the airports and the airlines. This also depends a little bit on the operating model of the airport, like you have the US model where it's slightly different, but for airports, capacity is key.

[00:38:59] An expansion is expensive, it takes forever and is more and more physically impossible. So the only way for them to grow is to become more efficient. So that's really on the airport side. And I mean, for the airlines, it's like we discussed, it's the cost of

[00:39:14] delays, but also being able to fly an extra leg, right? There's many airports that even have night curfews, which might mean you cannot fly an extra leg because you're short 20 minutes short in the end of the day. Oh, if we can shave

[00:39:27] off a few minutes of each turn during the entire day, then you might be able to fly that extra leg and that's a big step up in additional revenues. From an operational risk management perspective, in real life, how do airports and airlines make the tradeoff between sticking with

[00:39:43] existing methods that are well known and then adding some kind of a buffer to their processes so that the entire network works or investing in adopting a new technology that promises to reduce errors, but at the same time might open up new kinds of risks.

[00:40:01] It's a I mean, what we see is like obviously they come from buffers, right? So there is a certain amount of uncertainty unpredictability and the traditional solution for this is is buffers. And since that's the status quo, there is definitely an amount of change management

[00:40:20] required in order to make people see and make people believe that there's an alternative approach because buffers are extremely expensive capacity. So it's I think it's our job to show to the industry the potential of looking at things in a different way and to use

[00:40:39] data and technology to improve things like predictability and then also showcase what kind of impacts that can have on the way you run your operations. And I think we're well underway, but we also still have a long way to go. Just talk about the market

[00:40:53] that you're in and then what's the total available market for companies that are helping to solve the the gate turn process? So the entire entire market is not extremely big. I said we're a software company and there's many other software companies that are in the beach

[00:41:10] B sphere that potential customers have every other company in the world for us because our customers are airports and airlines. And there is a certain size of airport or airline under which it doesn't make sense because you don't have the operational pressures to benefit from our

[00:41:25] system. The market is somewhat kept. You know, we're typically talking about sort of the three to 400 largest airports in the world as being our main direct target group. And there's different providers of turnaround management solutions. But what I think is interesting is that a lot of

[00:41:42] them they focus on optimization. However, you can only optimize well if the data that goes into the optimization is there and is accurate, right? So I think gate planning is an interesting example where you can have a state of the art optimizer that automatically finds the most optimal

[00:41:58] gate plan for an airport for a day given a certain flight schedule. If that optimization that assumes arrival and departure times for each flight, right? If those are off, then the outcome is still going to be so it's garbage in garbage out. I

[00:42:12] think what we come from is is the data side where we say, you know, we can create accurate data accurate predictions and from there on try to optimize things like the turnaround and potentially a gate plan for an airport. Luke asked a good question earlier, which you answered.

[00:42:29] It depends on the on the model. He asked, you know, who cares the most and who benefits the most? You know, you mentioned you have the US model, which is essentially, you know, the airlines benefit because generally speaking they manage the gates, although there's many

[00:42:41] exceptions to that, right? There are US airports where the airport manages the gates, although the ultimate beneficiary probably without exception is the airline. Internationally, that model changes a little bit where I mean, you know a lot better than I do, but the airports very often manage the gates

[00:42:58] internationally, although the ultimate beneficiary is the airline. Have you ever had a situation? You said there's the market's about 400 or so, but I'm assuming when we get electrification, when we get the EV tolls flying and the like in the next five, 10 years, there's going to be term processes,

[00:43:14] opportunities for you there as well, I would assume. Is that correct? Yes, I think so. It's to be very honest, it's not something that we are actively looking into working on today. We have our hands full on helping the traditional aviation industry transition

[00:43:27] to a more data driven state of mind. But absolutely, I mean, it is going to create even more interdependencies between extremely close transport modes, medium hold transport modes and long hold transport modes. And therefore the system as a whole is potentially going to become even more complex

[00:43:46] and intertwined. And that means that every single piece of that system will have to work efficiently for the whole to function. How well those aircraft, the EV tolls turn could be a function of whether that was a profitable route or not. Getting back to Lucas'

[00:44:01] question of the risk and the beneficiaries and the like, have you ever been able to work out a pricing model? I mean, at the end of the day, we talked about some really significant cash generation for an airline as a result of this being done effectively, especially

[00:44:14] if you can get another gate turn in right during the day. Have you been able to work a model where your pricing is a function of the ultimate value to your customer? Honestly, we'd love that and we've proposed that in the past. But unfortunately

[00:44:29] until today at least, we haven't found a customer that is willing to go for such a model. The main reason we've been pointed so far is that procurement departments have a more traditional view and they like predictability and the cost that they're engaging into. And this model doesn't

[00:44:45] allow for that. But I mean, to me personally, it's an absolute no brainer and we've haven't pushed it, especially also during the COVID crisis where the no pain, no gain kind of model, it makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah. Yeah, you've mentioned some

[00:45:00] names already from airlines who are super sophisticated people who may be willing to look at something like that. That's an exciting opportunity. You both win or you or neither of you win. But it sounds like what you're doing is pretty interesting. I'm assuming there's a lot of other

[00:45:14] companies to do something maybe similar, but it sounds a good cool opportunity. So tell us about your company. We already know kind of what you do. We already know got a sense for what the value is. Just tell us a little bit more about

[00:45:25] the company. Yeah, I mean, we're still relatively young company as the solution that we're providing is also still relatively young where we've been there since 2018. We spent the first year or so really working out the tech second year 2019, developing the product. We did pilot

[00:45:41] projects pretty much all over the world. And then as we were going into 2020, thinking that delivering all the projects that we were expecting to sell was going to be our biggest headache when we entered the COVID crisis, which put us a bit in a

[00:45:54] holding pattern. But we did send our first few big customers before that. And if anything, it did give us the time to sort of properly implement the necessary processes to be able to implement near mission critical software at large airports with many stakeholders heavily intertwined and integrated

[00:46:13] into other systems as well as further develop the product. And since 2020, and especially this year, we're seeing that the industry is bouncing back that the willingness to invest is again there. And what we also quite happy to see is that the concept of using artificial intelligence and

[00:46:33] computer vision in order to track the turnaround process and all the benefits that this can generate, the maturity of that concept has evolved even though there was the COVID crisis. So where the excitement that we saw back in 2019 2020 was very big. It was still also

[00:46:51] met with a lot of uncertainty and questions. And I think the interest that's there in the market today is much more solid. So when we talk to customers today, it's no longer about does this technology work or can we actually get benefits by having this? I think that's

[00:47:08] a very big differentiator between, you know, between them. So European company, we have a headquarter in the US, a global presence. We're about 50 people. We're an aviation pure play. We got a lot of carries in junkies on the team. Yeah, if anything really excited about

[00:47:26] what we do, we believe in what we do. And we really think we can make a big difference to the industry's run. Just give us a highlight of the other leading providers in the term process. You know, who are the companies and what

[00:47:37] do they do as part of the turn? So from our perspective, companies that we really like to see and work with is, for example, a company like Spring Shot, they have an application that's also focused on turn management, but they're different from us in a way

[00:47:54] that we really focus on the data generation parts of bringing the data about the turn, whereas they really focus on the collaborative aspects of their applications really focus around facilitating a chat and communication between the different stakeholders, which is not something that we're very

[00:48:10] strong on. And we've been working with them for quite some time. And it seems that we finally have some joint projects coming up as well. It's a really natural match of two companies with their core characteristics. And on the other side, there's companies that are really

[00:48:25] good at resource planning. But as I said, if you want to have an optimized resource plan, underlying data sets are really important. So companies that are really good in resource planning are also really good natural partners for us and companies to work with, because they

[00:48:41] can shine in the way they optimize resource planning, whereas we can shine in credit data and insight about what's actually going on. So Christian, one of the insights here is that the company really has to master how to bring the solution all the way through for the customer.

[00:48:58] It's not just the technology, but it's navigating how to deliver that benefit through to their bottom line. What do you see broadly as what's required in order to do that in this space? Or how might that look for other parts of aviation, like advanced air mobility, where

[00:49:16] we might head next? Yeah, I think there's a really good observation. Like we cannot just deliver the technology and step back. And that's especially because it's something novel to most of our customers. So we have to work both on the operational level to make to ensure that there's

[00:49:32] adoption by the people that need to work with the solution, as well as work on a strategic level with management and executives in order to make sure that they understand the value that we're getting from and also sometimes make them understand the changes that they need to go

[00:49:47] through. Because sometimes it's really a different way of working, whereas it used to be much more reactive. You know, we wait until somebody radios me there's a problem and I start solving it where we try to make people more proactive to sort of start fixing problems

[00:50:01] before they arise or at least in the moment that they arise. So that requires quite a bit of change management and that's definitely yeah, that's definitely an activity that that costs us quite a bit of effort. But we're seeing that it pays off and we

[00:50:13] also believe that if we start having the examples and we can share those examples with the rest of the industry, that ultimately is kind of a snowball effect. And I honestly believe that someday in the next one to three years, this will become common practice. And with

[00:50:28] regards to new developments, it might potentially be easier because there's no legacy. We even see that in operational teams in our user groups, where people have been doing the job for forever, they have a much harder time changing the way they work, or someone who

[00:50:43] comes in fresh, they don't know any better. So as long as they're being trained properly, they don't have any resistance, they don't need to change that it just need to learn the job in the new way. And I think that's also an opportunity when we have innovations coming

[00:50:55] into the aviation industry, we have an opportunity to do it right from the beginning, rather than trying to fix something that that's not working as it should anymore. Chris, for all of the aspiring entrepreneurs in the audience, what's it like to do business with airports and

[00:51:11] airlines? How are they as a customer? I mean, I personally think it's exciting. And isn't anything it has pros and cons, right? I think in this industry, there's a lot of enthusiasts. And if you're an aviation enthusiast yourself, they'll be nice to work with other people

[00:51:25] who are as enthusiastic about aircrafts and planes and airports as you are. So that's definitely something I really enjoy. Maybe on the other side, it is a somewhat traditional industry. And to change things, it does require persistence and does require some time that

[00:51:40] will be an advice to at least be prepared for that, because it doesn't have to be a problem as long as you expected and cater for it. Chris, funny, I was talking to an airline board member recently. Here you might be of something as it

[00:51:53] relates to selling to airlines. And I think it's probably something that is really important for our advanced air mobility customers to know they're probably experiencing as we speak. But when you sell the airlines and you claim they can improve a process, which is something you claim, right? Which

[00:52:10] you and you've done, they will always have more data than you. And these are data driven organizations. And these are some of the smartest people on the planet with this data. So this is a really smart informed customer who's been doing it for 50 years. So

[00:52:26] selling to an airline as you're experiencing and with your success, you must be good at what you do. And so when you have an advanced air mobility company, the Joby, the archers and others who who want to work with the airline and some of them, the

[00:52:40] airline is their direct customer and you claim that you can lower their costs or improve the experience and like you're dealing with extraordinarily informed people. I assume you've experienced that. Yeah, I mean, we definitely see very big differences in sort of how digital ready

[00:52:57] an airline or airport is. And it makes it really hard to work with some that are not on one side, just on the vision and the understanding of the opportunity and the potential. But also on the very practical level where flight data to know which

[00:53:11] aircraft we're looking at. How is that being shared? Are API's in place that can easily be set up? Or do we have to make super traditional, very effort intensive, other sorts of integration? So there's really big differences, both on the practical as well as on the

[00:53:26] visionary front. And I look forward to work more and more with innovative companies that basically come from a mindset of technology and data. And I think in that sense time is with us because if you look at executives on airports and airlines, they're typically somewhat

[00:53:44] older and that's totally fine. And many of them embrace innovation and they understand that it take the effort to understand how it works and what kind of potential it can bring or they rely on people who work for them to do that. But there's also some that

[00:53:56] don't understand and therefore have a barrier to invest in it. And I think over time, it's something that we're already seeing as more and more people that grew up with the internet that grew up with mobile phones and applications and data are moving into higher positions.

[00:54:09] And the discussion becomes easier because we're talking more and more to people who understand what we're trying to do. Can you generalize or talk a little bit more about this? Is it oftentimes about the individual at airlines or airports that you're having conversations with?

[00:54:22] Or are there other notable differences, whether this is because of regional differences or legacy versus low cost carriers or some other classification and segmentation of the market? Yeah, it's a good question. I don't necessarily see the division sort of versus traditional versus low cost, but geographically, absolutely.

[00:54:43] So it's it's very clear for us that that North America has a very different culturally very different stance towards technology and opportunity and entrepreneurship than Europe. North American market is much more driven by opportunity and try things and, you know, also some optimism, I would say,

[00:55:05] versus where big parts of Europe are much more driven by fear and safety and what if it fails? What if it doesn't work? You know, the innovators and the early adopters are generally well represented in the US and Canada, so North America. And I think the European

[00:55:21] airports and airlines are looking towards the US market and that gives them the confidence to see, OK, it works over there. So now we're sort of ready to try it ourselves. So at the end of the day, you have to follow the money

[00:55:34] as it relates to the value of what you're offering. And those who will most financially benefit are going to be the ones who are most receptive. I would also plug the American Airlines and at the end of the day, the strength of the operational analyst and the

[00:55:51] leverage of the operational analyst within the airline is almost one to one years to your success. And if they are being listened to by the senior executives, as in my opinion, most of the major airlines here in the US, they do listen to them, the greater the

[00:56:05] opportunity for the success there. But at the end of the day, you outlined two things that are really interesting. One is you have to first make the play and you first have to convince the senior executives of the airline that this is important before you even

[00:56:18] talk about who you are. This is important and this is the cash you can generate. And this is the improved that promoter score or the customer satisfaction that's going to come from what you do. If you get that, then number two, convincing them that you may be

[00:56:33] more effective than somebody else is a whole lot easier. But at the end of the day, expanding your market is getting to what's the cash that's generated by the airline? And it sounds like I've learned a lot on this call. It sounds like the US

[00:56:48] airlines are the ones who are driving the process. And boy, the worst market arguably are those who say I don't need to improve. And I'm just concerned about not making a mistake. That's not the most attractive market for you. It sounds like this is a thought that

[00:57:00] literally just popped up in my head. I think one of the reasons for this difference in behavior besides being culture driven might also be competition. But I think many of the European Airlines, they come from a position where they were a national carrier, right?

[00:57:16] And so they were basically, to a certain extent, at least a monopoly for a very long period of time. And I think within the US, just because of the sheer size of the market, the airlines come from more of a competitive background and therefore have

[00:57:29] a bigger drive for innovation, for efficiency, because they know if they don't, it's going to be punished, right? Whereas Klan's or Lufthansa's for a very long period of time, that competitive pressure wasn't there only until sort of the open skies agreements came in place. And actually some competition

[00:57:43] was invited into the industry. The other thing I got to say, the whole conversation with Luke and Peter around Formula 1, going from whatever it was, 60 second turn to two second turns. What a great opportunity for you and for improving the financial bottom line for the airlines.

[00:58:00] Wow, over the next couple of years. And like I said, I think on the advanced mobility front, those who are going to operate their vehicles, that turn will be a very big deal. So I assume that's going to be a good market for you and others as well.

[00:58:14] Well, certainly in the airline scenario, the choices we have compared to Formula 1 are kind of limited because you have to work within the existing infrastructure. You can't completely overhaul what the gate looks like. But looking ahead to high scale drone operations or other types of advanced

[00:58:30] air mobility, the operators have more vertical control of what that stack looks like. And arguably the flight density and the pace is going to be much higher. And there's going to be this huge impetus to make greater and greater utilization of the assets because, you know, especially in

[00:58:47] passenger mobility, the asset utilization of a vertiport is never going to equal that of a modern airport in terms of passengers per day relative to the infrastructure. So there's a lot of demand for it. And as you look ahead into that mode, a lot of options to really

[00:59:05] architect for throughput and for leveraging technology such as this to manage it. Yeah. So in some ways, you're not in the business of gate turns. You're in you optimize assets or asset utilization. I mean, that's a maybe they'll make people more little more aware of the value

[00:59:20] of what you do. And as Peter said, Chris, you have the optimization of the drone, you have the optimization of the EV tall that fast turn has enormous value. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. If you fast forward five, 10 years, what does the industry look like? How when

[00:59:35] are we going to get closer to Formula One as it relates to asset utilization? I think there's a natural pressure for it to move that way. And I five to 10 years, it will look different. I'm convinced of that. We tend to underestimate what we can do

[00:59:50] in the long term, whereas we overestimate what we do in the short term. And I think if you look at the forecast of how many people are, you know, want to fly and how many more people will be able to afford flying, the pressures

[01:00:00] are going to be there in order to make sure these efficiency find their ways there. And part of these efficiencies are also totally new innovations like like drones and personal flight. On the other hand, I also believe and honestly hope that the industry is also going

[01:00:14] to become more sustainable. That will maybe take a little bit more time than five to 10 years. But I think there's also already a lot can be done within five to 10 years because we're often talking about the electric flight or hydrogen flight, which are really big opportunities with

[01:00:27] a huge impact. But I think we have a long timeline. And I think even if you look at the way we do things today, there's already a lot of opportunity to improve and at least make flying a bit more sustainable so that people

[01:00:38] don't need to feel bad to learn what our cultures are like or what other countries look like because I think there's a lot of value in that. We often ask what advice we need to give to somebody starting a business and advanced air mobility. Let me

[01:00:49] change it a little bit. What advice would you give to somebody who wants to start a business in selling to technology, the airlines and airports and recognizing that a lot of what they'd be doing also may apply to advanced air mobility? I'd say bring some patience

[01:01:05] for sure. But I would also say show people. I think in order to change something, you know, people need to see it. Seeing is believing and we invested quite a bit to show what can be achieved. And it's a step to approach as well. So

[01:01:22] not everyone will come at once because some people like we discussed before are innovators and they will be believers and they will go with you from day one. And you need to work with those people to show the early adopters what can be achieved. And you need to

[01:01:36] work with those people to show the early majority to show them how safe it is or how secure it actually is, which takes away their specific concerns. So really look at your target groups, split it up, work with the innovators, show what can be

[01:01:48] achieved to sort of unlock the next cohort of potential customers that that's a nice piece of advice that I would give. What's the common misconception when it comes to addressing aviation capacity bottlenecks? I would say that, you know, the most common misconception is that there's just one

[01:02:07] solution and that's build more capacity. That's the traditional solution for the problem. And there's other ways. And sometimes it's difficult because, you know, building a new terminal, building new piers, building new gates and aircraft stands, you know, it's nice and many people come

[01:02:23] from the sort of same city mindset, right? Like we built this huge airport and architects and everything. But I think there is, as we discussed, there's other ways and efficiency is definitely part of the other solutions. And it's not just we cannot just solve capacity issues by building

[01:02:39] more capacity. You know, at the end of the day, if there's a river of cash of opportunity here, the kind of work that you're doing in improving asset utilization is the low hanging fruit. I'll also add you're probably low hanging fruit as it relates to

[01:02:52] sustainability as well. You know, when a plane sits out there for 15 minutes, as you were saying, Chris, and that those engines are running that, you know, rather than the power that that's at the gate. Come on, I mean, you're affecting some real things today.

[01:03:07] And you're doing it as we speak, as opposed to, you know, others there are sometimes in advanced sustainability that someday I may reduce, you know, I may improve sustainability. I may improve the environment. You know, I may be able to have an effect on profit.

[01:03:21] You're doing it today or the area that you're in you're doing today. So wrap up this bad dog. How would you? How would you summarize the podcast and what do you want to leave with our guests? Thanks again for having me really enjoyed the conversation. Like I said

[01:03:33] at the beginning of you know, it's nice to work with people who have an intrinsic interest and enthusiasm about aviation. And I believe that that was apparent in the conversation we had today. We need to be positive, optimistic about what we can achieve. There is a lot of

[01:03:49] low hanging fruit. There's bigger changes to come. We need people to to believe in that and to put their efforts and energies into that in order to keep this industry as exciting as it is. Well, we're glad what you're doing what you're doing and other companies as

[01:04:02] well, Chris. So thanks for being on the podcast. Thank you very welcome. Thanks for having me. All right, that's a wrap for today. Thank you for listening to the Vertical Space podcast. Reach out if there are topics that you would like us to discuss and

[01:04:16] goodbye until the next episode. Unless mentioned, this podcast is in no way endorsing or promoting any person and or company mentioned in all opinions within the podcast or solely that of the presenters. The vertical space makes no guarantees warranty or representation of any information given in this

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