Professional Pilot, October 2018

PROFESSIONAL PILOT October 2018 15 It is essential to establish protection All of this can be mitigated against and in fact companies like Satcom Direct are establishing services to do just that Whether hiring such an outside service or setting up your own in house due diligence it has become essential to establish protection Yet studies show that less than half of the organizations interviewed in 2017 had conducted a cyber security review We need to do better I for one have decided to wrap my laptop in duct tape assuring that hacker rays cannot penetrate my cache of data I am then reverting to paper and pencil for all my data exchange needs leaving the hackers in the dust Its possible there are better approaches but my job is to warn of the dangers and let you figure out how to resolve them Speaking of electric airplanes I read recently where Volvo is presupposing that self driving cars might replace short haul air travel In their words a 2016 survey indicated that 48 feel that driving is safer than flying Dont yell at me Volvo said it Anyway they are developing a self driving car with a coffee table writing desk a reclining seat not unlike those in an airliners ultra 1st class and even an airbag designed to protect a sleeping passenger The target market is the 200 mile and under air traveler The theory is it takes so much time to get to and from the airports and these flights that people would rather ride in a car At the risk of making each and every one of you mad I must say Id pick the car Is this vehicle electric You betcha Since I brought up Volvo another of their nifty projects is an all electric stone quarry Google Volvo emission free quarry to see the prototypes in action Just to see the video of their HX2 load carrier is worth the search This is an autonomous electric 4 wheel steering mega dump truck To see it moving around the quarry with no cab no driver no sound and no emissions is downright spooky Follow the money Im going to cap off this writeup with the adage Follow the money In other words the new aviation related developments that have been attracting venture capital These are presented in no particular order so dont go putting all your money into the first 3 I discuss on the theory they have attracted the most money and are therefore the most investment worthy In addition do not put any stock in any comment I might make about any development as it pertains to investment potential I know not what I am talking about 1 Autonomous Systems Based at least in part on Lidar pulsed laser light measuring technology they provide for autonomous navigation collision avoidance and landing zone assessment Kind of a no brainer when you consider the flurry of activity surrounding urban autonomous flight for such projects as Uber Elevate let alone the driverless car frenzy 2 Supersonic transport Im still a skeptic But again what the heck do I know 3 Unmanned aircraft Lots of money goes toward development with cargo being the initial target market Many are skeptical of pilotless flight but like the 100 ton boulder coming down Pikes Peak theres no stopping it 4 Electric aircraft This has the attention of venture capitalists The opportunity to apply electric propulsion to planes is almost infinite in its variations and offers the potential for improving on operational costs and emissions Why wouldnt this field attract money 5 Urban air mobility Or how to Uber your way from A to B without touching the ground in between No doubt the emphasis on this mode of transportation by Uber brings a lot of money to it but there are a lot of other major companies betting on some form of this business model as well Should it not come to pass it would be shocking May all your investments be Amazon like in their returns Bob Rockwood has been in the aircraft brokerage business since 1978 During his tenure at Omni Intl Jet Trading Floor he began writing The Rockwood Report which discusses the corporate aircraft market In 1986 he joined Bristol Associates as a managing partner Volvos Concept 26 enables the passenger to choose from 3 different modes Drive mode to manually drive the car Create mode to make calls write e mails etc shown in picture above and Relax mode with the seat reclined to take a break during the trip Fast forwarding to the future of on demand urban air transportation the uberAIR program was introduced with the goals of operating VTOL demo flights starting in 2020 and beginning commercial operations in 2023 Launch cities are Los Angeles Dallas and an international urban center yet to be announced