Mickey Gamonal, John Williams, David Pearl, Jeremy Cox and I discuss the future of aviation in this “nonbook” book club discussion.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQHwknevkEQ[/embedyt]
Paula Williams:
Great. Well-
Mickey Gamonal:
Should we-
Paula Williams:
Mickey, we’ll let you …
Mickey Gamonal:
Go ahead.
Paula Williams:
Sorry. We’ll let you take it. Let me interrupt you while you’re …
Mickey Gamonal:
No, I’ve seen the meme where it’s just we’re in a constant loop of trying not to cut each other off the entire meeting. No, that’s good. So today’s book club discussion is about the future of the aviation industry. We’re going to go around and do our introduction pitches, say who you are and what you do. And then we’ll probably just take a turn.
Me, personally, I don’t have a ton of aviation experience at all, but my objective personally is going to be to ask you guys because you guys have all been very involved in the aviation industry, just so you guys know kind of where I’m coming from on it.
Paula Williams:
And where you’re literally coming from.
Mickey Gamonal:
Yeah.
Paula Williams:
Can you share that or not? I don’t know if that’s okay.
Mickey Gamonal:
Yeah, absolutely.
Paula Williams:
Okay.
Mickey Gamonal:
I’m presently drilling with the Nevada National Guard as a second lieutenant in the 100th Porter Master Unit. My commander gave me a little bit of time to come meet with you guys just because this was predetermined, and my drill kind of was last minute. It was scheduled months ago, but we didn’t know if it was going to happen because of COVID. So it’s like everything, you never know if it’s actually going to take place until it’s happening. So they’ve afforded me a good amount of flexibility to be here, so I’m happy to be here.
All right-
David Pearl:
Thank you, Mickey, for your service.
Mickey Gamonal:
Yeah, thank you for your support. I’m happy to do it.
So my name is Michael Gamonal. I am an ASVAB tutor, so if you’re interested in joining the United States Military, and you’re struggling with the ASVAB, or if you’re interested in joining the United States military and feel like you’re really, really close to where you need to be but you have some questions, feel free to reach out to me. Gamonaltutors on Facebook or Instagram, and we’ll make sure that we get all of your questions answered.
John Williams:
Nice.
Mickey Gamonal:
Go ahead. Mom, you’re going to be next, and then John, and then David.
Paula Williams:
Cool. Paula Williams with ABCI coming to you from very, very, hot and muggy Salt Lake City. I’m not doing anything really cool like drilling with the National Guard, but we are going to be in Las Vegas next week, so that will be fun for Mickey’s birthday.
Our big deal or our new project right now is our aviation sales training, and we are doing free live training in a private Facebook group every Wednesday at 2:30. So just about an hour and a half from now, we’ll be doing a live training on how to build your network in the aviation industry. So that will be a fun course, and we’ve got a really neat group of people that comes together every week and asks a lot of questions and is really kind of coming together, so that’s pretty nice.
John Williams:
I also work for ABCI. She’s being the rock star, and I work [crosstalk 00:03:47].
Paula Williams:
Okay. [inaudible 00:03:47] the boss.
John Williams:
I’m heavily involved in currently in construction of the new studio for her and all the backend stuff having to do with numbers et cetera, so that’s what I do.
Paula Williams:
Cool.
John Williams:
Dave?
David Pearl:
Yes, I’m David Pearl, the Fly Writer. I’m an aviation-focused writer. I tried to find out what businesses need, anything in a written product, and either help them do it better or create something on my own that’s going to meet their needs, elevate their sales, strengthen their brand. Whatever it is that they want to do, I believe I can help them do it better. My words put wings to their ideas.
I live in Atascadero, California. It’s pretty nice here right now, but it has been very hot. I love California, always have.
John Williams:
Cool.
Mickey Gamonal:
Excellent. All right. Well, so today’s topic is going to be the future of the aviation industry. As kind of an outsider, I haven’t done a ton of work with aviation, but it sounds like there’s at least two … Oh, we got one more.
Paula Williams:
Yep, [inaudible 00:05:02].
Mickey Gamonal:
All right. While he logs in, I’ll keep going for a little bit. It sounds like there’s two things that are going to happen, two things that are the future, probably with COVID and without COVID. I don’t know if that’s something you guys are going to be mentioning. I guess one would be considered more short-term future of the aviation industry, and the other might be more long-term, just depending on how you see it.
Hey, Jeremy.
Jeremy Cox:
How are you?
Mickey Gamonal:
I’m doing well. How about you?
Jeremy Cox:
Very well, indeed. Thank you very much for asking.
Mickey Gamonal:
Good.
Jeremy Cox:
Sorry, I’m just taking a screenshot of a spreadsheet. That’s why I’m late. I hung up the telephone with a good friend of mine, a fellow appraiser, and he was asking me how to do something, so I figured I would just take … I explained it to him verbally, and now I’m taking a screenshot so he can actually see my spreadsheet.
Paula Williams:
Fantastic!
Mickey Gamonal:
Yeah.
Paula Williams:
Always willing to help. Love that about you, Jeremy.
Jeremy Cox:
Always, always! Absolutely. Yeah, all for one and one for all. Come on.
Paula Williams:
Yeah. So you’re thinking two rounds, Mickey? Go kind of immediate future and then future, future, future? Or what are you thinking?
Mickey Gamonal:
Yeah. Actually, I was thinking if you wanted to cover it on your own because you guys are aviation professionals, all four of you, so you guys are perfectly capable of using your own vernacular. So if you want to talk short-term, then long-term, if you want to talk about aviation with business and then aviation with consumers, however you want to run it. I figure everybody should just have a point to say.
I said this earlier, but just for Jeremy’s point, I’ll be asking mostly questions because I’m not super aviation involved. Then before we get started, Jeremy, if you want to introduce yourself with your name and what you do and where you are.
Jeremy Cox:
Very much. I’m Jeremy Cox. I’m Jet Values Jeremy. I appraise airplanes for a living, and I’m good at it. So next time you have an airplane that needs to be appraised or helicopter, a warbird, a spacecraft, call me. I’d be happy to tell you what it’s worth. Thank you very much.
John Williams:
So, you’d appraise the Millennium Falcon?
Jeremy Cox:
I would if it was real. You bet. Thanks, John.
Mickey Gamonal:
Cool. Awesome. Excellent introduction. Excellent introductions all around. Everybody’s getting really, really good at this because we do it twice every two weeks, so that’s great.
Yeah, I guess we’ll go order of operations, so Mom, John, David, Jeremy, just basically your general thoughts on the future of aviation. I may look away. I’m going to try to take some notes so that I can ask insightful, powerful questions. So, go ahead. Take it away.
Paula Williams:
Cool. So I’m going to start with the immediate future of aviation because I think once you get past even five years, it gets so hard to project what’s going to happen. Things have happened that we didn’t anticipate. If you look at the last five years in aviation and you think about what you were expecting to happen versus what did, it’s totally different.
I’m just going to say for the immediate future in aviation, and a lot of folks … I’m just going to say, if I were starting out in the aviation industry or I were a furloughed pilot right now because of COVID or whatever the situation were, what would I do to prepare myself best for the future in aviation? And I think the answer is, especially if I were a furloughed pilot and I had a little bit of capital, I would buy a drone, the biggest, baddest, coolest drone with cameras and wifi and the whole nine yards.
And then I would go to the Chamber of Commerce meeting and say, “Hi, there. I can inspect fields, pipelines, signs, industrial equipment, anything you need inspected. And I can give you the footage, and I can give you the GPS of where that footage was. And I can save you a ton of time and labor in your agriculture or your industry or your whatever. And I will only charge you a tenth of what I would charge to either send somebody out there or hire a helicopter to go out there and look at it.”
That’s what I would do, I think, if I were … Then if I wanted to go back after COVID is over, if there ever is such a thing, and I got my job back as an airline pilot, then I still have this cool drone, and I have a backpack plan and a retirement plan and everything else. And I have a business, and I have a network, and I have all of those things. Or, I might choose not to if I get enough enjoyment out of that job or that profession that I just built for myself.
So I think that would be a short-term plan, and then long-term, I think I’m going to defer to some of the other thinkers in the group because I love the idea of interplanetary travel and all of those kinds of things. And do we consider that aviation? Absolutely. We would market to those folks. We’d consider them good clients. They takeoff off the ground, so it’s aviation, right? Same with drones. We consider that aviation as well.
Mickey Gamonal:
Cool. So that would be your job is, go pick up a drone, and then go to the Chamber of Commerce. It sounds like it’s all about business-building there. Are there any businesses that you think are going to go away in the immediate future or anything that’s kind of going away now?
Paula Williams:
I think a lot of the things that helicopters have done in the past, things like pipeline inspections and industrial things and stuff like that, unless they’re actually carrying people. But I think a lot of the thing carrying and a lot of the visual inspections and other kinds of things are going to be drones rather than helicopters. I think a lot of that is going to go away.
For movies, it’s already drones. You look at all of the footage from any movie that you’ve seen in the last five years, and it’s probably drone footage as opposed to helicopter. But I don’t think they’re going away, and I think charters are going crazy. There’s a lot more first-time charter passengers than ever before because if you’re a company that has to send four or five people somewhere, you might as well hire a charter flight as opposed to buy four or five tickets. It’s not that much more expensive, and you get right into where you’re going instead of having them buy two or three tickets with connecting flights, and have them out for a day longer than necessary, and have them rent a car and hotel and everything else. It ends up being a lot more efficient to use charter, and I think a lot of small to medium-sized companies are finding that out.
Mickey Gamonal:
Nice. Yeah, so I guess it’s implicit, what’s going away. When you say the best course of action at this point is to get a drone, it implies that a lot of the manned aircraft stuff might start to fade a little more.
John Williams:
Yeah, well, let me interject. They’re going to be using drones for rescue, and they’ve already got a drone that carries people over in Dubai. You just go. You sit in the thing, and the iPad’s there, and you tap where you want to go, and it takes you.
Paula Williams:
Right. And you think about search and rescue and stuff. It’s a whole lot easier to send a drone out, find a hiker or somebody who is stranded, drop them a package, mark their location, and then send somebody to go get them than to have helicopters doing a grid pattern looking for the guy. You know what I mean?
Mickey Gamonal:
Absolutely.
Paula Williams:
A lot less people time, a lot less gas, a lot less expense, and all that. I do think there are some things that are going away, and I hate that. And if I were an airline pilot, I would be concerned. That’s kind of my immediate future gloom and doom versus here’s what I would do about it.
Mickey Gamonal:
Gotcha. Solid. Good stuff. All right, John, did you want to take your turn?
John Williams:
Well, rather than look at it from what would an airline pilot do, I’m looking at it from what the public would be interested in doing. And there are flying cars coming on board. There’s electric aircraft. They’ve already got electric, private jets, turbofans, electric, that can go 600. Let’s see. If they take off like an airplane, they go 600 knots, 600 nautical miles. If they take off like a helicopter, they go 300.
That’s fine, but remember, Star Wars and the speeders? There’s a company producing speeders right now. They’ve got five gas turbines underneath them, computer-controlled, and they’ve got a half-hour range up to 400 knots. That’s crazy. We’re not even talking supersonic because I think as soon as supersonic gets here, where it’s supposed to be, the G700 and that sort of thing, they’re going to start making those things to go up into the ionosphere and very close to space.
All we’ve got to do is figure out the sensors, if you will, and the power supply to get us into closer to light speed. Once we do that, we’re gone.
Mickey Gamonal:
Geez. So that sounds like more five-year. It sounds like a little further down the road.
John Williams:
Well, that might be. The speeder’s here right now. So are the electric airplanes. They’ve got them. They’re already making flights, and they’re on the boards.
Mickey Gamonal:
Wow.
John Williams:
The electric drones, like in Dubai, that’s actually functioning as we speak.
Mickey Gamonal:
And they just punch in a destination and roll out?
John Williams:
They just put it in. They get in there, and it gives you a circle of where its range is. Within that range, you touch where you want to go, and it takes you there.
Mickey Gamonal:
Okay, so as things move more technological advancement and stuff like that, what is the best play if you’re in the aviation business? What do you want to do? What can you do, I guess?
John Williams:
Right now, I’d do a lot of research.
Mickey Gamonal:
Okay.
Paula Williams:
That’s helpful.
John Williams:
Well, because it’s like the speeders. They’re great, but they’ve only got a 20, 25-minute range, and they’re only paired to one person capable. But they are gas, so you can refill just as soon as you land. Problem with batteries, even Tesla’s saying it’s going to be a while before we get four-hour-
Paula Williams:
Four-hour range?
John Williams:
… recharge on the batteries for airplanes, so who knows? It will be [crosstalk 00:16:54].
Mickey Gamonal:
Gotcha.
John Williams:
The SST is right around the corner for business. That’s probably the next thing.
Mickey Gamonal:
What’s SST?
John Williams:
Supersonic transport for business.
Mickey Gamonal:
Okay. Shoot.
John Williams:
A couple of companies are together working on that, and they’ve figured out a technology so that they can fly over the States and not have the supersonic boom.
Paula Williams:
It looks like a long, skinny, straight Concord, if you’ve seen that airplane, with the bent-over nose. This one is smaller. It’s a business jet, and it’s just … We’ll have to find a picture of it so you can show it on the podcast when we publish this, but it’s really neat looking. I don’t know how it actually works, if it’s at all comfortable inside of it, or is it loud.
John Williams:
No, it won’t be loud, not inside. The thing that causes the boom is the compression of the air at the nose. What they [inaudible 00:18:00] do that, they figured out how to get that so they can fly it up around 1.8 mach without an appreciable noise factor.
Mickey Gamonal:
So almost twice the speed of sound without-
John Williams:
The boom.
Mickey Gamonal:
… making that sonic boom.
John Williams:
Correct.
Mickey Gamonal:
Wow. Well, right on. So it sounds like overall, you’re just saying technological advancement all over the place.
John Williams:
Oh, yeah. It’s everywhere. What hits first, it will depend on probably manufacturing the technology and what the FAA allows to happen.
Mickey Gamonal:
Gotcha. Cool. Awesome. All right, go ahead, David.
David Pearl:
I was listening to everybody talk here, and it just reminds me of all the things I read in my science classes and so forth, which is for life to exist on Earth, it has to be able to adapt to change. The species that can adapt move on, and those that can’t-
John Williams:
Don’t.
David Pearl:
… die out. They become extinct. So I look at what’s going on right now as saying, who’s going to survive, I guess, for the next six months? Who’s going to survive for the next few years? It’s going to be the aviation businesses that find a way to adapt. I think aviation is ideally suited for adaptation because that’s been the whole history of our business going back to the Wright Brothers, going back to how you learn how to fly.
You’re always making corrections. You’re correcting the nose up, down, rudder, all these types of things in the three planes that the pilots operate in. So I think we’re accustomed to it. Once we’ve becomes established, I think we’re reluctant to remember that it’s our adaptability that is going to determine our future. But I think that’s our basis. That’s what we’ve always done.
So looking ahead, I really hadn’t thought too much about the things that Paula mentioned with drones, but we see them all the time. I know the airline pilots’ union will probably be very reluctant to ever allow a passenger plane to take off without a human being in the plane, but I can certainly see that five, 10 years from now, that human being may be like the driver on BART, where there is somebody in the BART, the cabin, but he’s not really operating the controls. It’s done on the computer. He’s more of a monitor of the controls than he is a driver of the train.
I could see us going somewhere like that. The autopilots on the planes I flew weren’t particularly good, but we did use them. But we always had our finger on the switch to flick it off in case anything untoward happened. I could see maybe one pilot, a compromise between the unions and the airlines, being that that’s what it’s going to be. So you go from a two-pilot cockpit maybe to one. So I could see something like that happening.
Immediately, I think the airline business as we’ve known it is teetering. If the crisis continues for several years, I can see some of the big airlines possibly going down. But if the government’s going to prop them up like American wants them to do, at least that’s the news lately, throw in several billion dollars and prop them up for the next six months, and maybe by then things are done, maybe it’s back to business as usual.
But other things that I think were mentioned, there’s a big push about the carbon footprint and global warming and so forth. And I think that the only real answer for that is planes that are going to be flying with electric engines. We’ve seen tremendous progress there, so I can see electric planes being a big deal.
I also think that since I’ve been alive, I’ve seen a lot of change as far as the need for business trips. People become more and more accustomed to Zoom meetings and things of that type. If that becomes the norm, then a certain percentage of business travel, I think, is going to go away. They won’t need to do that. I’ve spoken for too long. I can talk for hours, and so I’ll stop it right there.
Paula Williams:
Not a problem. [crosstalk 00:23:07] good thing.
John Williams:
Your thoughts of pilotless aircraft, Airbus did that several years ago. Those Airbus aircraft are designed to not need pilots. They had the capability to be programmed to back away from the jetway once they’re loaded, taxi out, take off, fly en route, approach, land, and taxi back to the jetway with nobody doing anything. In fact, Air France … I think it was Air France … was starting to hire what they called systems administrators rather than pilots.
Paula Williams:
Right.
John Williams:
The test pilots didn’t like it. It scared them, and they said, “Don’t do that.” And so it ended up that they had a few, but that didn’t work. So they’re back to real pilots.
Paula Williams:
Well, and if you look at the Piper Mirage, it comes now with a Garmin system, if you buy a new one right now. It used to be that the Cirrus had the big button. If you push the big button, then a shoot comes out, and you just flip down to the ground. This is the backup plan.
The Mirage has a backup plan where you push a button, and it will return. It will go to the nearest airport. It will route itself to the nearest airport and land.
John Williams:
And make all the appropriate ATC calls en route.
David Pearl:
Right.
Paula Williams:
That’s your safety on a private aircraft, a little, tiny private aircraft. Not tiny, but small.
David Pearl:
It’s never been a question in my mind that the technology’s not there. I guess it’s the old, well, the guys that are making the buggy whips when cars are coming around, they’re saying, “Well, what about me? We don’t want to adapt to the change, so you’ve got to keep making buggy whips even if you don’t need them.” And I think the pilots’ unions and so forth are saying, “Well, it’s not safe unless you have a human being in the cockpit.”
I think any pilot knows that if a plane crashes, I don’t know if it’s 95%, 90%, but some ungodly high percentage of the time it’s not because of the plane. It’s because of the person flying it. I tried a lot of aviation cases, and almost every one of them, it was a mistake by the person flying it that caused the accident. So I know there’s going to be that tension because people’s livelihoods are at stake, and it may take a couple generations for the technology to be around for it to be trusted enough that the union will compromise and say, “Yes, we can have somebody.”
I don’t know if they would go with … At least initially, I can’t imagine that it’s going to be just an equipment monitor. I think they’re going to have to say, “No, this person has to be fully trained and capable of landing the plane, flying the plane, doing all that stuff.” It would seem to be that’s where they would start. But maybe there’d only be one of them instead of the two-person cockpit that we’ve got now.
Mickey Gamonal:
Two. Cool. No, you’re right. I like that you guys all have a similar theme going on here. So that keeps it simple. Jeremy, did you want to take a whack at it?
Jeremy Cox:
Yeah, absolutely. I’ve got quite a few things to really think about, talk about. As much as I think COVID is absolutely changing the world, where it’s manifesting itself, the greatest change of all is probably moving people away from corporate buildings and having to commute and having to be in one location to do their job. Therefore, I think what aviation needs is for that to settle out.
We all need COVID to end, and vaccine, whatever happens, whatever the solution is, or just have the election because probably the day after the election, COVID’s gone. But regardless, it needs to sort itself out. But also, the corporate world, I would say corporate America, but really the world needs to figure out from a corporate standpoint what it is they want to be when they grow up post-COVID.
Do they want to continue building these massive, great, ego-driven skyscrapers with their name at the top of it, or do they want to actually make more sense and have their workforce work remotely? Because I think everyone’s finding that when people work remotely, they are way more efficient. But it’s that fear as the corporate paymaster and overlord that you’ve lost control. But I think there’s a lot of manning up and womaning up that’s happening in corporate America, and they’re realizing that they’ve been overpaying for real estate and their situations way too long when they should have gone to the solution.
So I think once that plays its way out, then aviation can then target the areas of need. Near term, current-day technology, I think we’re seeing Wheels Up. They keep using the catchphrase democratizing aviation, and I think they’re going a long way in doing that. They’ve got a large fleet. I think they’ve got the largest fleet of anybody now anywhere in the world of private airplanes that can fly charter or on-demand or by the seat, however you want to call it. I guess it’s a membership program, but their rates are coming down so low now that it’s definitely reachable for anybody that is in business for certain.
So I think we’re going to see those kind of programs growing and really gaining market share because the airlines are in the toilet. It’s going to be a long time before they can take up the slack. You keep reading every day how different airlines … American just announced last week they’re dropping 40% of their routes.
In fact, I took a ride down to … I was on Southwest, who I dearly love, and I was on a 737-700 three weeks ago out of Saint Louis direct to Tampa. I think there were five crew members, two pilots, three flight attendants on a 700, and including me, there were nine passengers, which is not sustainable.
Paula Williams:
Wow.
Jeremy Cox:
On the way back, the same day … so I went down to look at Hawker … on the same day, that afternoon, I had four hours on the ground, or at the Textron Service Center to look at the airplane, got back on the airplane. It was a 737-800, and excluding the crew, there were 37 of us, plus a baby. That was it.
I hear this day in, day out from people that are still traveling, as I do from time to time. It’s a wonderful place to be traveling at the moment because you don’t have the normal problems that you had in the past when everybody’s traveling. It’s actually quite a pleasant experience. Apart from that, I think the airlines are not going to be able to pick up the slack.
So the reason I led with the real estate and working at home and remote workforce issue is because the traditional heavy loaded routes, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, those kind of routes I think they’ll probably still exist, but not to the same significance because people aren’t going to have to be filling airplanes and having four flights in the first four hours of the day to get all the people that need to go and do business in those places on those shuttle routes. There just won’t be the need.
Yeah, I think aviation will be democratized as Wheels Up and Kenny Dichter’s trying to do, but also, I think we’ll see a return of people like IndiGo. You remember IndiGo when they used to fly Falcon 20s out of, what is it, Chicago Midway to Teterboro, and they did scheduled runs, and they were selling by the seat? I think we’re going to see that. They tried it again with Embraer 145s.
I think we’re going to see a return of by-the-seat charter, to be honest. But once people figure out where the shuttle routes need to be. I don’t think anyone knows that right now, until we get past COVID. So that’s near-term, current, present-day technology.
Then, we’ve got the emerging technology, and you’re absolutely spot-on with the unmanned aerial systems, drones. You’re seeing that with a lot of the helicopter operators that lease helicopters to news teams. I would say now it’s probably a 50/50 split from what I understand from talking to people in that industry, in the news helicopter industry. I think it’s getting even heavier in the opposite direction, and that opposite direction is a reduction in actual helicopters, piloted helicopters to drones for catching the news. If you watch a Formula 1 race, the use of drone technology in covering Formula 1 is quite incredible.
Anyway, that’s here today, technology now. We are seeing a great push, especially with NBAA. They really showcased it at last BACE in Las Vegas, and that is the advanced air mobility. They had a whole section of the convention center set aside for advanced air mobility. And there are vehicles that appear to be getting there. I think more to your point, David, you’re absolutely right. People are nervous, and they’re not quite ready to get on an autonomous airplane, but we do it every day by getting on autonomous trams and trains and things like that.
God, we’ve been doing it forever with lifts or elevators.
Paula Williams:
Truth.
Jeremy Cox:
It’s a generational shift that needs to happen. Also, the people that influence technology, they’re usually pretty old, like I’m old. And your capacity to embrace new concepts gets harder and harder. Every time I order takeaway food, I’m still living in 1994. Every time they tell me how much it is, it’s like, “How much?” Because you pick a time that was really … You judge everything by that.
I think that’s a problem with autonomous flight, but autonomous flight is definitely going to be here. As John pointed out, Airbus has been spearheading it. But I can tell you for fact, because I know this, that not only is the Airbus A350 with the onboard technology already an autonomous airplane, but also the 787 is an autonomous airplane. It’s a matter of just flipping a switch. It’s not quite as simple as that, but it is as simple as that. That’s what insane about it.
The Asiana Airlines incident where you’re finding inexperience or the ability to actually pilot an aircraft, stick and rudder skills, are just not there on the transportation side of it. I read with interest, June 29th, 2020, in Aviation International News online, Airbus demonstrates autonomous flight with ATTOL project. It was an A350-1000, and they literally have focused on this.
Instead of fully autonomous flight, they focused on autonomous taxi, take off, and landing because of Asiana, because of lack of stick and rudder skills. So they’re eliminating the most dangerous phases. Well, taxi’s not dangerous, not generally speaking.
Paula Williams:
I was going to say. There have been incidents.
David Pearl:
Yeah.
Jeremy Cox:
But takeoff and landing is certainly dangerous. So the technology is there, and I think it is eventually going to be the way we fly. I really do.
Mickey Gamonal:
I got to ask a question, real quick, just because everybody’s kind of saying the same thing, and I kind of want to go around the room real quick. But, Jeremy, since it’s your time right now, I’ll let you go first, and then we’ll go around, and I’ll give it back to you. But my question is since everyone is saying that we’re switching over to these autonomous airplanes, these computer-controlled airplanes, what have you, no pilot needed. My question is, what’s going to change first? Is it going to become more commonplace for vehicles like ours, road vehicles, or is it going to become more common for airplanes to be unmanned?
Jeremy Cox:
I mean, that’s a great question, and my entire life is dedicated to aviation. I don’t know a bloody thing about cars other than I like Formula 1 racing. I like those cars, but I think it makes perfect sense that public acceptance and the technology will happen with ground vehicles first.
Mickey Gamonal:
Ground vehicles first.
Jeremy Cox:
I think literally, that will be number one.
Mickey Gamonal:
See, because we-
Jeremy Cox:
Airplanes will eventually follow.
Mickey Gamonal:
When you say aviation, everybody’s still scared of aviation and vehicles, and we’ve been doing it with lifts for years. It’s like, “Sure, but these are on tracks.” Trains are on tracks. Elevators are on tracks. Escalators are on tracks. Things that are on tracks, sure we have faith because the hardware would have to really malfunction, and it’s just going to drop you straight down. It’s not really something people enjoy thinking about, but it’s not like we could end up in the Pacific Ocean from taking an elevator.
John Williams:
However, if an elevator just gave up and dropped, you know it accelerates to 32 feet per second per second, and you would die when it hit the bottom.
Mickey Gamonal:
Well, yeah. But there’s something comforting about knowing where you’re doing to die.
Paula Williams:
You know you’re going to die in the building, not in the Pacific Ocean is what you’re saying.
Mickey Gamonal:
That’s exactly right. You’ve got a lot more phobias going on there if you don’t know where you’re going to end up. Okay, cool. Well, that’s great. Do you guys all agree?
Paula Williams:
I would say the difference is that motor vehicles, especially in some places on the planet like Morocco or even Southeast Asia, India, China, there are not the kind of regulations for motor vehicles as there are here. There’s not an agency that really oversees that has any kind of teeth. So I think it’s going to happen first with vehicles and not in the United States.
Mickey Gamonal:
Okay.
John Williams:
Well-
Paula Williams:
The FAA’s a whole other story.
John Williams:
I’m not sure I agree, and only because it is so damn difficult to make a car completely autonomous because unlike an airplane, which is on a runway, flies a route with GPS and doesn’t have to worry about a car coming around a corner, or something else. Programming an aircraft is easy compared to the car with respect to sensors and everything else because the airplane’s going to land on a runway.
Mickey Gamonal:
So you’re saying planes first. How about you, David?
David Pearl:
I guess I tend to agree with John I guess in some limited sense because I think the people that own the private airplanes, I don’t see this happening for big commercial operators right away because they’re going to have to fight pilot unions who have a vested interest in keeping their jobs. But I think the guys that either own their own airplanes or they have a small operation, and it makes good sense for them, I think they will be the first. The planes are smaller. They can do it.
My brother-in-law’s got the Cirrus, and he likes that security of knowing that if things get beyond his capabilities, he’s got a good backup. And I could just see someone like him going to the next level, which is, “Well, why should I have the plane plop down in a field somewhere when it can figure out where it needs to go and land me safely?” I can really see that because I don’t think there’s the economics issue as much as there would be with the larger operator where they’ve got to fight pilots afraid of losing their jobs, unions of that type.
I think that’s where it’s going to go, and maybe not in the United States first, but it’s kind of the independent businessman, the guys that have a pretty good paycheck, they’ve got the disposable income to put into things like that. I just think there’s a mindset that, “Hey, this is cool. This puts me out there. This is something I want the world to see me doing.” I think there’s a much stronger aspect to that, and there aren’t as many problems as John said.
You can have planes do that. They’re not dealing with the many idiot drivers that will do unsuspecting things. There are many idiot pilots, but when we compare it to the number of idiot driers, it’s not close.
Mickey Gamonal:
[crosstalk 00:43:05].
David Pearl:
So I think the smaller, the high-end, the Robb Report guys, I can see them doing it.
Mickey Gamonal:
Cool. All right, cool. I want to give it back to Jeremy because I know I swiped it from you, but [crosstalk 00:43:19].
Jeremy Cox:
It’s an interesting question that you’ve posed, and I do have more to say that’s fresh and outside of this specific topic, but I will continue with this in as much as I think we’re all in agreement, but we’re slightly talking cross purpose. Because I think your question, and the way I understood your question is what’s going to come first with passengers willing to ride in an autonomous vehicle. I think ground vehicles will be first. Airplanes will be second.
But let’s flip that and say technologically, we’re already there aviation-wise. We’ve got autonomous flight. And I’m not talking about drones or any of the peculiar things we’re seeing developing and emerging around the world for one, two, three, four people. I’m talking about big airplanes. We’ve seen Airbus and Boeing demonstrate it. Boeing has, I’ve just pulled it up on my other screen. Boeing, and I’ve known about this, but I wanted to pull it up so I could be accurate. Boeing has an $800 million contract to build the MQ25.
The MQ25 is a fully autonomous airborne tanker. It could grow into a 72-airplane order. Basically, what it’s going to do, it already has because I watched a video of it two years ago. This thing is taking off and landing on carriers. It’s being developed for the navy. This thing’s totally autonomous, and it’s filled with fuel to fly up to altitude to refuel F-18s and other machines, naval machines. It exists. It’s operating. It’s reality.
You look at the number of … There’s Bell 407s. I think the first was maybe a Bell 412, but the number of helicopters that have been turned into fully autonomous machines, working machines. And they’re working today! So the reality is, if you asked the question two ways, the first way, passenger acceptance, I think ground vehicles. But when it comes to actual technology, it’s here, my friends. It’s already operating. There’s no question whether it’s going to happen or not. It’s happening!
Paula Williams:
Oh, yeah. Small and bigger planes.
Jeremy Cox:
Yeah. So let’s go back to the advanced air mobility thing. I don’t know that much about it. I think it’s going to develop over time, but I think ground vehicles probably have to come in and be reliable for acceptance to the public to put their butt inside one of those things to actually be flown by a computer. I think there’s going to be a different way of looking at different vehicles. We’ve had drone technology for a long, long time, and it takes an operator.
We’ve been putting laser-guided missiles into the mouth of terrorists for a long time from Peacekeepers and other drones, but there’s somebody sitting back here in the United States or in another country that is operating that machine. They’re not autonomous. They’re operator-flown with somebody on the ground.
Of course, yeah, David brought up the pilot unions, and those are going to be some major paradigm shifts for employment of people that actually operate airplanes. But it’s going to happen. There’s no doubt. We saw it with the older airplanes that required a flight engineer. Everything now doesn’t require a flight engineer, and you’re going to get to a point where there will be only one pilot and not two pilots.
Or there may be two pilots, but one will be sleeping like they do currently for long [inaudible 00:47:32] flights. They’ve got the crew rest area, and they’ve got a three-man crew, and two of them are at the flight deck most of the time. One of them’s sleeping, and they trade out. Well, we’re going to see possibly down to two with one trading out sleeping, to eventually one, and then eventually none. You may have somebody on the ground that’s monitoring the flight.
So there you go with autonomous flight. But let’s go back. What’s his name? The guy from Switzerland, Yves Rossy. Yves Rossy’s using those little turbines. What are those things called? I can’t remember what they are. PBS Aerospace builds these engines, and I saw with great interest last year the French Special Forces in the navy, their equivalent to the Navy Seals, are actually physically using and have purchased the Yves Rossy-type jets. But it’s two cans or two engines per hand, and they’re using it to move personnel from one ship to another.
There’s a lot of variation for transportation, and it’s all aviation-based, even if strapping a couple of little turbines on each hand is the way you want to go. I certainly don’t want to do it, but it’s there.
David Pearl:
Iron Man, right?
Jeremy Cox:
The technology is there.
Paula Williams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Cox:
Of course, you talked about space flight. Now, I joke about appraising anything, but there will be a time. I’ll be 55 in September. There’s no way that I’m not going to work unless I’m struck down by God somehow. God forbid.
Mickey Gamonal:
You’re an unstoppable force.
Jeremy Cox:
There’s no way I’m not working until 70, and I may even work longer. So I’ve got at least 15 years in me, 15 years plus. The fact is, I expect before I retire, I will be appraising an aircraft. I guarantee it. It will happen. I know it will.
But the last thing I want to end with with my little diatribe, I apologize for dominating this. But I just read this yesterday. Aviation International News again, it came into my inbox. I don’t know if you read yesterday’s AIN alerts, but at the bottom, before they have People in Aviation, this is the headline, Self-Charging Diamond Batteries Set to Power Aircraft. Did you read that?
We are talking about this is a California-based startup, and they’ve created a battery that is a self-charging nano-diamond battery.
Paula Williams:
Lithium crystals. That’s fabulous.
Jeremy Cox:
Yeah, this thing charges itself. So the biggest thing preventing electric propulsion has been battery technology. Well-
Paula Williams:
And the weight of the batteries.
Jeremy Cox:
I think it’s increasing. I think the technology is slowly evolving. Anyway, so there you go. I’m done. Thank you.
Mickey Gamonal:
Awesome. No. Well, and I appreciate it, Jeremy. I think you went a little more in-depth into the COVID thing first, and then you were able to shift a lot of gears, so it was a very wide answer. Well done. And you cited the most sources of anyone, so [crosstalk 00:51:06] with that.
John Williams:
Let me just interject. One thing that Jeremy said, what was it? Two or three NBAAs ago, somebody in there at a forum said, “If you want to fly, find you an old airplane. Buy it. Put it together, and learn to fly because you’re not going to have a career in flying anymore.”
Paula Williams:
And he was almost booed out of the room. It was so deafeningly quiet. This is so not the room to be saying this.
John Williams:
But he was correct.
Paula Williams:
Yeah.
Mickey Gamonal:
Well, he’s getting more correct by the day too. Whether he was correct back then or not, he probably was, but he’s getting righter.
John Williams:
Well, he was projecting. He was saying, “If I had a kid now that said he wanted to be a pilot, I’d help him buy an airplane he likes, and he can go learn how to fly it. But then figure out what he really wants to do for a career.”
Paula Williams:
Yeah.
Mickey Gamonal:
Yeah, it’s an enthusiast. It’s kind of going the way of the typewriter. I love this discussion. I always think about the education field, and if we were to talk about the future of education, there’s so much less conversation about ingenuity and real, honest-to-God technology being developed. It’s a lot of hippy-dippy stuff. So I appreciate the cold, hard facts on the aviation side that you guys all at least recognize, and furthermore want to be on the front edge of. So I think that that actually speaks volumes to aviation as an industry and the direction that it has to go.
It can’t slow down. It is a technological industry. Therefore, it is dependent on technological advancement. And knowing the direction of that is paramount to any business success or aviation success. I just got to shout you guys out for that because you guys are all on the other side of 30, and you guys already know … You’re not trying to cling on to your muskets. You know what I’m saying? You guys know that things are going to change.
John Williams:
Now, there’s a phrase.
Jeremy Cox:
I’m going to wear that label for the rest of the week. The other side of 30, thank you.
John Williams:
But he there’s too, so don’t let him kid you.
Mickey Gamonal:
I’m right here with you guys. I’m right here with you guys. I just wanted to be one of the cool kids. That’s really all it is.
Jeremy Cox:
Thanks, Mickey. Thank you.
Paula Williams:
Right.
We were just talking-
Jeremy Cox:
[crosstalk 00:53:46].
Paula Williams:
… before you came.
Jeremy Cox:
… the fact.
Paula Williams:
Right. We were just talking before you came on about how Mickey just found his first gray hairs.
Mickey Gamonal:
Yeah. They’re coming in. They’re coming in pretty good.
Paula Williams:
You’ll look like George Clooney next time.
Mickey Gamonal:
That’s the goal. All right, cool. Well, let’s do some outros. I think that went well. I think you guys all had really great statements. Does anybody have anything they feel they need to say about the aviation future before we end it?
Jeremy Cox:
Yeah, I do. You may want to edit-
Mickey Gamonal:
[crosstalk 00:54:22] out there.
Jeremy Cox:
You may want to edit this out. I don’t know, but my wife and I, Kim, were watching television. I think, what is it Wednesday today? Yeah. Last night, and we watched a show on Amazon Prime that was a whatever you call it. It was a leader. It was a trial for a potential series, and it never made it to a series. But it was filmed in 2017 because I knew that from my friend out in Montana that I actually sold the airplane to, a Falcon 50 that actually appears in the show towards the last 20 minutes of the film.
He told me, “Yeah, it was filmed in 2017. I’ve been waiting for that to come out.” When you look at it on Amazon Prime, it’s 2018, but it’s called The Last Motorcycle on Earth. And it says season one, but there’s only one episode, and it’s 71 minutes long or 72 minutes long. But it’s about basically exactly what we’re talking about, getting people to accept that transportation needs to go away from being human-driven.
So they focus on motorcycles, and they basically pass this law that within a year, all motorcycles are banned and gone. And within 10 years, all petroleum-burning, internal combustion engine-powered ground vehicles, are gone. It’s all going to go to autonomous, artificially intelligent, operating ground vehicles, and personal vehicle ownership will be gone. The system itself will provide you with the ground vehicles.
It’s a complete paradigm shift. It’s terrifying because you know how I feel politically. I’m quite right-wing, and I feel this COVID thing is just trying to steal an election and everything else. To watch this show that was filmed in 2017 released in 2018, but it didn’t make it until public viewing until now on Amazon Prime, you watch it, and you think, “Holy crap. This is terrifying.” Because you could substitute the banning and criminalization of motorcycle use and replace those words with the COVID and the pandemic.
So it’s just fascinating. But anyway, I highly recommend you go watch the Last Motorcycle on Earth on Amazon Prime, and for a whole bunch of reasons, not just because of we’re talking about autonomous vehicles and artificial intelligence and the future of ground transportation. It also gives an insight into how close we are that we need to stand up and fight. Thank you. Over and out.
Paula Williams:
Okay.
Mickey Gamonal:
You had to be revolutionary at the end there. You’re like, “This is the platform.” No, that’s cool. That’s cool. It sounds worth looking into. Absolutely. All right, cool. Well, I’m going to do my outro.
My name is Michael Gamonal. I am an ASVAB tutor. So if you’re interested in joining the United States military, army, air force, navy, coast guard, or the national guard, let me know, and we’ll try to get you into the military at the highest possible level. I do live classes and sessions so that you get those hard-to-understand topics into easy, simple understand terms.
Yeah, I’ve helped a lot of students get the jobs that they want in the United States military, and I believe that their military careers have been better for it. So if that sounds like something that can help you, feel free to reach out to me, gamonaltutors on Facebook and Instagram.
Paula Williams:
Have you run into anyone who wanted to be a pilot in the military?
Mickey Gamonal:
No, I have some pararescue guys, but no pilots.
Paula Williams:
Ah, cool. Interesting. That used to be the pipeline for pilots, the easiest way to get into that profession if you were not wanting to spend a ton of money on training.
Mickey Gamonal:
Yeah. Well, I did have an OCS colleague that switched over to aviation. It’s really tough to get in as an officer. It’s definitely an enlisted route will better serve you. It’s a little easier to get into.
Paula Williams:
But you still have to have a good ASVAB score.
Mickey Gamonal:
Yeah, of course, ASVAB’s paramount.
Paula Williams:
There you go.
Mickey Gamonal:
It will help you get there.
Paula Williams:
Cool.
Mickey Gamonal:
All right, go ahead.
Paula Williams:
Paula Williams, ABCI, and our latest project is aviation sales training. There is a lot that is changing about aviation, but sales is always going to be necessary no matter what you’re doing, even if you’re selling interplanetary vehicles or whatever. So, later this afternoon, every Wednesday, we have a live course on Facebook Live in a private group, and we’ve got a really cool group of people that are starting to come to those, which is really a lot of fun.
Today, we’re talking about networking. Next week, we’re going to talk about closing sales. The following week we’re going to start out sales challenge to head up to our October start for our professional class, so that will be fun, aviationsalestraining.com.
John Williams:
I’m John Williams. If she’s the marketing piece, I work with business problems, with anybody that she doesn’t want to work with, and do the back end stuff for ABCI. So, we’re here. Dave.
David Pearl:
Yes, I’m Dave Pearl, the Fly Writer. I work with aviation businesses. If you’re in business, you have to communicate. And if you have to communicate, you need to use words. That’s what I’m good at. If you need some help with that, I’m happy to give wings to your words.
Jeremy Cox:
I’m Jet Values Jeremy. I’m signing out, but I want to give you a prediction for the future, your future. That is, one day you will own a spacecraft, and I’m going to appraise it for you. So, Jet Values Jeremy, anytime you need to know what something’s worth that flies, call me.
Mickey Gamonal:
Excellent. Great work, everyone. I’ll put out the surveys here in the next 10, 15 minutes. Go ahead and fill those out when you get a chance. I’ve got to get back to the commanding officer, but it’s been great. You all have a good one.
David Pearl:
Thank you.
John Williams:
Everybody stay happy and healthy.
David Pearl:
Bye-bye.
Paula Williams:
Absolutely. Thanks, everybody.
David Pearl:
Bye-bye.
Jeremy Cox:
Bye.
Paula Williams:
Bye.
