Advanced Air Mobility with Honeywell Aerospace

Transcript

Graham Warwick:

Hello and welcome to CAPA Live. I'm Graham Warwick. I'm the Executive Editor for Technology at Aviation Week and Space Technology in the US, and with me is Stéphane Fymat. He is Vice President and General Manager of Honeywell's business unit for Urban Air Mobility and Unmanned Aerial Systems. He's been with that unit since it was stood up in March 2020, and he's built the organization from scratch. And before he took on the task of creating this business unit for this new market, he was vice president in marketing and product development for Honeywell's BendixKing business, which is a name steeped in aviation history, and he there he was responsible from transforming from that legacy avionics manufacturer that everybody knew to a technology leader in a very important field. So, Stéphane, welcome. Thank you for joining us.

Graham Warwick:

We're talking about urban air mobility or advanced air mobility, as increasingly people sort of talk about it, an incredibly busy time for this new market. We are seeing a lot of investment flow into the industry, and we're seeing a significant number of the manufacturers who are developing vehicles in this market, not just passenger-carrying air taxis, but cargo-carrying unmanned aircraft, that are making solid progress towards certification and market entry, and you are involved with at Honeywell, involved with many of those leading companies.

Graham Warwick:

So, my personal experience is that I've been following this for a long time, and at one point I remember that Honeywell was pretty skeptical that the established aerospace supply base would be able to meet the price points that was being talked about by these eVTOL start-ups. So, fast forward now and Honeywell is one of the first of the really big aerospace companies to make a solid and very public commitment to UAM, not only the products, but with creating a business unit around UAM and UAS. So, for Honeywell, what changed to bring about that belief in the market?

Stéphane Fymat:

Yeah, so I think that what happened, and some of which you're talking about in terms of that skepticism probably precedes my time because I never saw it in Honeywell, not to say it may not have been there, but I haven't seen it. But nonetheless, really what happened is we looked at this opportunity, at this market space, at what people were trying to accomplish and we really believe it. We really believe that there is a huge opportunity here. A lot of the companies, the aircraft designers, be they the start-ups, be they traditional aerospace, aero frame companies, they really have, in many, many cases, credible designs, very credible engineering teams, credible management teams, and so we very quickly saw the opportunity, became believers, and decided we really want to make an impact here.

Stéphane Fymat:

And to make an impact, really more than just say as a traditional aerospace supplier or tier-one supplier that might sort of just say, "Hey, tell us your requirements, and then we'll respond with what we can do." But to really, to go further than that and to help drive and create this reality. And so if we have to sit down and partner with some of these designers to help them figure out what their vehicle should be, what our technologies can provide for them, then we were going to go do that.

Stéphane Fymat:

In terms of addressing the cost issue that you raised, it does take a different perspective. It takes a perspective that really two things in my mind. Number one is you have to start from what are they trying to accomplish? What are we trying to accomplish? Rather than, here's where we've come from, what we've come from, here are the big systems we've done in the past, and let's see if we can make those big systems work here. That approach doesn't work. The approach is, okay, what are we trying to accomplish here? What are you trying to get done? And from there, working towards what are the solutions.

Stéphane Fymat:

And then the second thing is really starting from the bottom-up, so if you can work on small vehicles, and then scale it up, you're much more likely to succeed than if you start from very large vehicles and try and work it down. So, taking that perspective, both in terms of system size, weight, complexity, as well as cost and price, then that really helps to put you in the right direction. And, that's not necessarily too easy. I mean, in some of these systems, every kilogram matters. Every dollar matters. And so, it really challenges us to apply our engineering skills to solve all of the problem, not just the functional requirements, but the function, the size, the weight, the target cost, the target price, really hitting all of those factors in one elegant design.

Graham Warwick:

And I think it's important for our audience to realize that we're not talking about simple systems here or simple vehicles here, we're talking about incredibly capable vehicles, advanced fly-by-wire, advanced envelope protection, simplified vehicle operation, multiplex redundancy on a scale that you'd see on a much, much larger aircraft, and obviously, safety targets that are really more like what we see for commercial aircraft and for the traditional general aviation aircraft.

Graham Warwick:

So, Honeywell has already made some bets in this market, you've partnered with some of the companies already, what attracted you to those particular companies, and it's like Volocopter, and Vertical and Pipistrel and Jaunt, what attracted you to those particular companies?

Stéphane Fymat:

So, to those companies as well as others that aren't yet public, a number of things typically attracts us to the company. I mean, we look at all these companies and we look at okay, what do we think of the vehicle design? What do we think of the mission that they're trying to accomplish? What do we think of the company itself? And we sort of mix all that together, and then we also look at what are Honeywell's strengths? There are certain companies with vehicle concepts that are fantastic, but they may or may not be complemented by what we can bring to them, and so we look at both. And so we look for vehicles and companies that we think have a really, really viable chance of creating something in the market, and making sure that that aligns with what we can bring to them, and it's the measure of those two things that will attract us to various companies.

Stéphane Fymat:

The other thing is that some of the companies that you mentioned and others, it's easy to say that oh, it's all urban air mobility, or it's all-cargo UAV's, so when you start digging in you realize that many of them have slightly different missions, slightly unique, and so some of them are focused more on intra-city air mobility. Some are focused on more inter-city mobility. Some are focused a little bit more on cargo or a particular kind of cargo, so like medical or something like this. And so, a lot of the companies we work with, although at the surface, may look like they're all in the same place, when you actually look at them with a more fine, a closer lens, actually many of them are going for slightly different parts of the opportunity, and so we like that too.

Graham Warwick:

So, is this combination of UAM and UAS, to Honeywell, is it a means to its own end, i.e. is it a big enough market to make this investment, and just stay in this market, or do you as Honeywell, see this as being the jumping-off point for a new generation in technology? The reason I ask is when you look at aerospace traditionally, there have been markets that are forward-leaning, and where you bring new technologies in, you gain experience, you get product lines developed, and then those technologies expand. I mean so business aviation's always been very welcoming of new technologies that's allowed you to get things like synthetic vision, and everything into the market, and then it grows out from there once you develop that capability, so when you look at UAM and UAS, and things like that, do you see it as really a jumping-off point for a new generation of capabilities or whatever that you can spread over a wider market over time?

Stéphane Fymat:

Yes, we do. We do. It was not necessarily the intention when we got into this market, our intention was to create this market, to create the capability, that was the primary goal, but it just turned out quite fortuitously that almost every single one of these particular technology areas that we are creating here have natural applicability to many of the other segments of the aviation market place. For example, if I look at something like sensors, let's take radar technology, unmanned aircraft who do not have a pilot on board to be able to visually detect and avoid other traffic needs some other means of detecting and avoiding other traffic, some kind of sensor. Our belief is that radar is one of those technologies that has a lot of capabilities here, and so developing radar technology together with the algorithms, the software algorithms, to be able to detect and avoid other aircraft in the airspace. Well, that starts as a technology that is required for unmanned aircraft, but once you have it, it is equally applicable to manned aircraft in general aviation, for helicopters, for urban air taxis, even if they are piloted at the moment, it crosses over.

Stéphane Fymat:

The same could be said for vehicle management system, and what we're doing with simplified human user interfaces. So, we're doing a lot of work in that area called simplified vehicle operations, and specifically, within that, one of the areas we're focused on is pilot vehicle interfaces that are much, much simpler. That whole idea has a huge genesis within urban air mobility, but it is equally applicable either directly, or with a little bit of extension, into general aviation, and into other areas. And so those are two examples, but there's many like that where it starts in one place, and indeed, it is naturally extensible to other areas in aviation.

Graham Warwick:

So, I've seen some of the work that you're doing on the simplified vehicle operations and it is extraordinary because if we can break this belief that we have to learn all the steam gauges to learn to fly, then in the long term, you can start to tackle getting people into the aviation training system, moving them up through it, that we can actually really make a difference, so it is extraordinary to see what you can do bringing these technologies to bear in a modern cockpit, approach to a cockpit.

Stéphane Fymat:

Yeah, sometimes I will humorlessly say that cockpits of years ago and some cockpits today are built by engineers to be flown by engineers. And that's fine. We've got professional pilots that are very talented and very well-skilled and for particular missions and kinds of aircraft where they're absolutely appropriate, and there are new segments that are developing where you have different kinds of cockpits that are built by engineers to be flown by maybe not so technical of a user, which will attract a whole new kind of person, of pilot candidates, a whole new segment of population who want to become pilots or operators, or whatever we want to call them, who for them, now, they look at this and this is intuitive, this is attractive, it's maybe what they grew up with as kids playing video games. And so, to that end, we believe it will expand the desire for people to become pilots.

Stéphane Fymat:

It will also expand the desire for people to fly in these vehicles. If I as a future passenger step into one of these vehicles that looks unlike anything I've ever seen before, and I look in the cockpit and I can begin to understand, okay, I think I know what that does, it's very similar to my smartphone app when I'm getting driving directions. Or, I think I understand that, that looks a little bit like what my car looks like, that familiarity that you get makes this a little bit more okay, I can begin to understand this, I can trust it. I think I'm interested.

Graham Warwick:

That may help, but obviously, long term with that getting across to the trust of autonomy and other things like that in the longer term. So, how do you approach this as Honeywell? Are you sort of like a market-facing single point of contact where you bring together everything from avionics to propulsion, and everything, and connectivity, and all that sort of stuff for this market? Is that what you're trying to do?

Stéphane Fymat:

That is one of the things that we do. There are a few things that we do. So, we have our own engineering team, we have our own sales, marketing, product management, program management, we have everything as a complete business unit, and we develop technologies that are uniquely applicable to this marketplace. And we also marshal all of the technologies and resources across all of Honeywell Aerospace as they are applied to this market. So, we do both. So, as an example, we, within our business unit, do not develop electric propulsion systems, but we have a whole division, engine and power systems that does do that, and we marshal those resources to apply into this market for electric and hybrid-electric propulsion systems. So, those are two things that we do.

Stéphane Fymat:

And then the third thing that we do is we provide a single point of entry for companies that want to work with Honeywell. It is not the only door. Any company who wants to work with us can enter through whatever door they wish, but if they don't know where to start, they can feel free to come through our door and we're happy to work with them, engage with them, and bring in all of the resources within Honeywell to talk with them as required, and really help them navigate through a big aerospace company, so we provide that function as well.

Graham Warwick:

So, you have a wide range of products that you're aiming at this, let's just say there's the cockpit avionics, there's the autonomy, there's the advanced flight controls, there's the sensors, the detect and avoid, propulsion that you mentioned, where are you in all of this? How far along are you in getting some of this stuff developed, flying, running in labs or whatever, or something like that?

Stéphane Fymat:

Well, so it's a mixture. A lot of things that we do are available commercially already, some of the underlying core components or technologies. A lot of the big things we're talking about, like compact fly-by-wire systems, or a vehicle management system with SBO in it, or so on, these are in mid to late-stage development. In many cases, we're already working with, in fact, in all cases, we're already working with leading aircraft OEMs in order to embed these technologies within their aircraft, so most of this is late-stage and in the timeline of being commercially available in the '23, '24 timeframe, lining up with when a lot of these designers want to have their vehicles and turn to service.

Graham Warwick:

And I think you've built, you have a lab now where you can bring all this together and do some integration testing of all of the pieces?

Stéphane Fymat:

Yeah. Yeah, we do. We do. We have several labs, but the one, in particular, you're referring to very much are oriented around the vehicle management system or the avionics, including the simplified vehicle ops, including fly-by-wire and control laws, fly-by-wire systems, and the control laws that go with it, as well as sensors such as the radar that I previously mentioned. We're doing a lot of work there. We test on small drones, and then we'll eventually field in large aircraft as well.

Graham Warwick:

Now, this is proving to be a pretty fast-evolving market. I mean we started talking about UAM five years ago. That was really all we talked about. Now it's AAM, and AAM is a combination of UAM and regional air mobility, and now cargo, express logistics, et cetera, do you have a cut-off point at which you hand over to another part of Honeywell, or are you going to follow this as it evolves and goes from just these intra-city vehicles to inter-city regional, whatever, are you going to follow that, where those technologies go?

Stéphane Fymat:

So, it is very much the latter. So, we're following those technologies to wherever they go, but if there were to be sort of a demarcation line between what is notionally with the charter of our business unit versus what might be within the charter of other Aerospace business units, if it has autonomy in its roadmap, if a vehicle or a company has autonomy in their roadmap, and/or if it is a eVTOL aircraft it will be within our purview. If it is a, let's say it's an electric aircraft that is always envisioned to be piloted, especially if it's a conventional take-off and landing, then we'll most likely land somewhere else within Honeywell Aerospace.

Graham Warwick:

Oh, right. Very interesting. That's interesting.

Stéphane Fymat:

Yeah, so really it's the identifying characteristics are is autonomy current or planned for that company? Is it a eVTOL vehicle, whether it's electric or hybrid electric? And is it serving one of these needs, an urban or regional mobility need either for people, parcels, or cargo?

Graham Warwick:

So, as we're seeing at the very beginning this year, really the first three months of this year, we're seeing a lot of money flow into that market, and that money's allowed these companies to make very firm commitments to getting to market by a certain time. You said, '23, '24. A lot of them are going to be not only manufacturers, but they want to be operators as well. As you watch this market, and you made an early bet to enter to the market, you clearly had a lot of internal due diligence on that, how do you see the market? How would you score the market now, as to where it stands now and where it's going in terms of is it making the progress that it needs to do to meet its goals? Are you seeing there the level of expertise in the company? Is the level of progress et cetera, that is getting the industry moving at the pace it needs to?

Stéphane Fymat:

Yes. Yes, we are. We're definitely seeing the pace. I think that the big investment that has just come in and that I presume will continue to come in, that's obviously been a huge boost to all of this. I think this would have happened anyway, but now, it's such a huge boost that it really, really helps drive things forward. So, on the financial front, which is oftentimes the biggest variable on all these things, the financial front, things are good. The teams that we interact with, deep expertise. It's not just at the top that you've got a visionary and a few good people, in fact when you look throughout the organization you see deep expertise from top to bottom. The companies that we deal with, I mean the pedigree of their engineers, and their designers, and people like that, a lot of them, they come from traditional aerospace companies that have been successful doing other kinds of aircraft design, and now apply their skills to this particular problem, and so we see a lot of that, in fact, that's the rule, not the exception of what we see.

Stéphane Fymat:

Sometimes what we see, which is also very, very interesting, certain companies have a mix of cultures, maybe they're mixing aerospace culture with say a Formula One culture, in one example. And that mix of cultures, we really like to see because it breathes innovation, it breathes new ideas, new thinking, and I think that's what this space needs, that's what this whole industry needs, and so it's very good to see that. But we are seeing that.

Stéphane Fymat:

The area where we'd like to see, and I think now it's moving, we'd like to see this happen too is a harmonization of the certification approaches across the major parts of the world. For these vehicles, in order to be successful, they need global markets, all right, and so to have global markets you need harmonized regulations and certifications, Certification Basis, so that they have those global markets and have it be reasonable and appropriate to what these people are trying to accomplish, so the harmonization I think is the big piece for that, and I see that coming too.

Graham Warwick:

So, you talked about the culture there, and I mean, you also said right at the beginning, that you are deeply involved with a lot of these companies, not just as a supplier, but as an actual partner and a shaper of market, does that mean that you've been able to create a culture within Honeywell UAM that kind of is of the same nature and has that sort of mix-

Stéphane Fymat:

Yes.

Graham Warwick:

... of both the traditional and this sort of entrepreneurial and more agile?

Stéphane Fymat:

Yes, absolutely. In fact, this business unit is its own business unit within Honeywell Aerospace and it reports directly up to the CEO of Honeywell Aerospace. I work for the CEO of Honeywell Aerospace, and there were a number of reasons that we did that. One of those reasons that we did that was in order to create an environment for a nimble organization that could move quickly, to move quickly, it would cut across all the technologies, that was the other reason, but to do that, without all the normal procedures and processes, we have all those processes, but in a much lighter way. Not because processes aren't good, but because if you're trying to move quickly, you need to move at that pace, and so we did that. And then, the talent within our group really kind of mirrors what I just described in the companies that are designing these aircraft. I mean people are in our business unit, it's a mix of traditional aerospace and non-traditional aerospace. People that come from software and internet backgrounds or other kinds of backgrounds, and that mix creates also an organization with different ideas, different points of view, question a lot of things, and is agile, as you say, and so we do that, A, we think it's important to do, and yes, it happens to mirror very well with the companies we do business with.

Graham Warwick:

So, I think that's actually why UAM AAM is such an important market to pay attention. I think it's going to change aerospace in some really big ways as it grows up. So, Stéphane Fymat of Honeywell, UAM, thank you very much for joining us here at CAPA Live, and I look forward to working with you again. So, thank you.

Stéphane Fymat:

Thank you.

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