Listen: Drone developments in LatAm, global A321F growth

In this week’s episode of the “Cargo Facts Connect” podcast, Cargo Facts Editor Jeff Lee and Associate Editor Andrew Crider discuss watershed moments in the drone industry involving integration of unmanned aircraft systems into airspace. In North America, Reliable Robotics submitted data gathered with NASA to validate the reliability of existing radar systems in ensuring the safe separation of unmanned and manned aircraft. The data promises to help regulators in the United States develop methods to integrate drones into the airspace. In Brazil, Speedbird signed a partnership with Israel-based High Lander for the traffic management of its drones. The partnership will allow Speedbird to certify two of its drone types while prepping the company for expansion outside of Brazil. Meanwhile, new operators continue to emerge with the A321F platform. Malaysia-based Raya Airways recently took its first, while a new carrier in Brazil intends to fly the type. BBAM signaled it would take up to ten A321Fs by yearend , and Global Crossing also specified the latest delivery timeline for its A321Fs. Tune in for a discussion of these topics and more for the week ending April 28, 2023. A transcript is available below. This transcript has been generated by software and is being presented as is. Some transcription errors may remain. Andrew Crider Hello and welcome to this episode of cargo facts connect the podcast of cargo facts, the newsletter of record for the air cargo and freighter aircraft industries for over 40 years. I'm your host Andrew Crider, associate editor of cargo facts. Jeff Lee And I'm Jeff Lee, editor of cargo facts. Andrew Crider Our co host, Robert Luke is out again this this week, unfortunately, which makes me be feel rather absent in the studio. It's it's definitely a space that we will hope to fill next week when he returns and I'm eager for that. But while I'm feeling like me, me and Jeff are lonely, it brings up a good topic of having guest will last two weeks, we've been joined by a number of guests from the freighter industry and I want to share that invitation with our listeners. If you are a player in the cargo industry and airline about to receive freighters, and you want to talk about it. Lee's go ahead and reach out to myself or Jeff Lee to get yourself booked on our podcast be the best way to share with our listeners, all of your exciting developments. Beyond that plug, I do have a number of exciting developments for the unmanned aviation industry. And that would be news from reliable robotics. Reliable, like many of the Cessna 206 unmanned aircraft developers, that would be reliable X Wing and Merlin labs and partnered with NASA. Now, it seems that in the drone space, if you're not a last mile player, you're your middle mile player. Long range drones have a lot of or might be easier to develop the use case there seems to make a lot more sense. And you can implement technology that already exist onto these aircraft. The only challenge is the integration into the airspace. And now it'd be true of any drone type. This story from reliable robotics completing the test flights with NASA, I think is a watershed moment for the drone industry. Reliable had told us that they had their test will help validate existing FAA radars to prove that they worked ensure adequate amount of safety when you're integrating unmanned aircraft into the National Airspace System. Being able to validate the existing technology to say yes, it does work at Yes, it is safe and we can operate unmanned aircraft in our airspace effectively and even when challenged by manned aircraft. That's a huge deal. And that's going to open the door for regulatory authorities reliable seemed confident that the completion of the test would help their certification process and I don't blame them. Now these tests, of course, include a number of reliable robotics test aircraft and additional FAA ground radars. So the data has been sent to the regulatory authorities and we're all looking forward to see what happens there. Moving on in the drone space, we are following a number of leads. And I wanted to bring up one story that came up yesterday and that would be Speedbird partnering with Highlander to achieve certification. Highlander isn't Israeli based UTM provider UTM being unmanned traffic management. This is going back to the question that reliable was solving and how do we integrate drones to the airspace Highlander seems to have the answer and achieved a number of partnerships. Late Late last week, one of them being Speedbird. Those people bird has three drones currently one of them certified, and they operate in Brazil. In this was a this was a very fun story for me to write, because this would be our first cargo drone story from Brazil. But that's not going to be the case for law. Also this week, another drone manufacturer based in Brazil, that's the Goya They produce Evie tolls. They have a prototype Evie tall that's due to fly sometime this year. And it received its first order. This would be from Brazil, a helicopter operator heli Sol aviation. That's going to be an order for 15 with delivery starting sometime in 2025. Now we've reached out to them for more information. And I hope to follow up with that next week. But we're seeing a lot of developments into the drone space. I think, especially coming out of Brazil with this emerging market. The information that Speedbird was able to provide me gives me a lot of confidence in them. They already have one drone certified, they were the first to capitalize on the market, they have two customers, they're undergoing commercial flights in Brazil, which would mean that we have commercial operation successfully happening with the cargo drone industry in Europe, across Africa, Brazil and China. Speedbird hopes to expand so it's going to be my eyes are now zeroing in on the Latin American region for the drone activities in the future. That is enough unmanned information, rich Jeff, maybe we can graduate back to the man's space in a gradual step. We were talking about Cessna 206s, I don't want to go right to wide bodies. I believe we have some narrow body developments. Jeff Lee Yeah, I mean, in the narrowbody space, I think a theme this week has been just continuing the rise of the 321 freighters. Which is I guess, not surprising. But we are seeing more and more coming out of conversion. And we are seeing more companies becoming involved in getting interested in the type. And one of the largest customers for the 321 conversion is lessor bbam. They've already delivered five A321 P to Fs to lessees so far two Titan airways two to Lufthansa and one to Salam Air in Oman. But this year, it looks like they will be taking redelivery of up to 10 321 P to Fs, which is double the amount that they have in service right now. And so many of these will, I am hoping or I assume will be making their way to new operators of the type and certainly the one that is most, the one that they recently took is now in Alabama getting some work done and paint but this one will be joining a new operator, which is exciting. And I think that this will not only be a new operator of the 321 it will just it will be a new operator of freighters generally. But we will see and this will happen very very soon. And actually, this reminds me last week we after cargo facts Asia and we had the chance to go to the ST engineering facility in Singapore to get an up close look at all the 320 ones they're doing and basically the kind of work that is involved in converting one into a Freighter and that was pretty interesting, wasn't it? We got to walk inside walk around and walk inside these aircraft. And what did you think of that? Andrew Crider Well, I the first thing I thought was gee it is very hot. It's very hot in the hangar and I do not look very good in the helmet. The second thing was the all the work that ST Engineering does I you know, if you're not inside the industry, you would think that cutting a larger door in a freighter should be a simple business. However, what we saw we saw a number of aircraft at various stages of the process and they were completely stripped the conversion involves almost every component of the aircraft which was It's surprising to me. I mean, you, you, you have reinforcements on a number of bulkheads and a number of ribs, to the fuselage, you have a lot of electrical work that's being done. And it was really eye opening to see it in person. But what were your thoughts? Jeff Lee Yeah, I was gonna say that when you get inside the aircraft, you see all the wiring on the rewiring, and just, you know everything in that kind of behind the scenes going on. And that's just how complex a freighter conversion is. And of course with EFW's conversion, that front entry door is also modified and moved. So there's extra work around that. And the other thing was just how many a 320 ones they have, they're undergoing conversion at the same time. And it's not a lot of space. So a lot of creativity in just moving things around. And you know, how you you position these aircraft as they undergo conversion. So that was definitely a good experience. And we will hopefully be able to compare that with other conversion programs and work that goes on. But staying on the theme of the 320 ones. You know, global crossing Airlines is also quickly expanding, its a three twenty one freighter fleet. And this airline has will have a mixed fleet, both precision and EFW conversions. And so they had previously had I guess, a more ambitious target, but obviously, with various delays, whether that's to do with the supply chain, or the conversion or the certification, you know, they now expect to have six of these 320 ones. By the end of this year. They've I mean, they're the first operator of the type in the US. So they say that there's a lot of demand for this. And they're trying to build up their a 321 freighter feet as quickly as they can. So six by the end of this year, but further looking further ahead, they, they they expect to have upwards of 20 in their fleet. So that's that's going to be fairly substantial. And in a way they they kind of mirror what smartlynx is doing in Europe. And of course, the two airlines actually have some kind of partnership as well. So that's, that's all very interesting. And we'll continue to see growth there. But actually, we're talking about Brazil earlier. And you wrote the story about a new airline in Brazil, that is also looking at the 321. That's Avion Express, which is also part of the avia Solutions Group. To which smartlynx belongs. So yeah, it's interesting, because avion Express right now doesn't have any freighters. They only operate passenger charters and ACMI services. So obviously, they see the potential for more freighter flights in Brazil and they are also looking at the A321 because they are on the passenger side they they are sticking with the Airbus narrowbodies as well. So yeah, just a lot of A321 developments, which is probably going to be the case going forward as as more of these get converted. Andrew Crider Now we we right now Avion Express could potentially be the first a 321 F operator in the left hand market. And I say potentially because they're stiff competition for the spot. You know, I love good competition to find out who's going to be the first it reminds me of looking at races in India and Vietnam to decide who would be the first freighter operators there here we're looking at between Avion Express and then global crossings airlines with Columbia based Avianca which has ordered A 320. ones for ACMI service. We'll have to see who gets theirs up and running. Jeff Lee And we'll actually see very, very soon see a new country with a 321 operator because in Malaysia, Raya airways just took their first a 321. And it's funny, we actually saw the aircraft in Singapore, didn't we? So if we had been there two days later, or it had left, two days out, and we would have seen it fly off, which would have been cool. Andrew Crider Now you and you had just changed and brought it back to Asia, but with so much focus on Brazil, and Colombia, you you won't have any idea what that makes me want to bring up or do you? Jeff Lee I wouldn't at all Andrew Crider That's right, Cargo facts lataim takes place May 15 and 17th in Panama City. I'm really excited about that event. I know you and Robert are going to be going and monitoring several interesting panels with the top leaders and executives and air cargo for a truly exciting region of the world. We're just writing up our highlights from cargo facts Asia, something that I I'm really excited for because there's a lot of material there. But the theme for Asia was growth. I think same can be said of Latin America. But we you'll have to find out at the conference. With that being said that will be all of the time that we have for today. For those of you listening, thank you. For more multimedia coverage like this. Tune into cargo fats connect on iTunes and Spotify and search cargo facts.com. Thank you and join us again next time. Subscribe to Cargo Facts Connect on iTunes or Spotify , or download the episode on Transistor . The first Cargo Facts LATAM takes place May 15-17 in Panama City. Register today.

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