AVIACENTER NEWS

The General Director of AVIACENTER, Anton Koren, has presented the report “The future of urban air mobility” at the “Integration of Unmanned Aircraft Systems into the Civil Aviation of Russia: Legislation, Certification, and Technology” round table, which took place at the Air Show MAKS-2019 on 28 August 2019.

In his report Anton Koren focused on the development forecasts for the global market of urban air mobility and named some of the projects that were already launched in the world, and the prospects of their implementation in Russia. He also dwelled upon a comparative analysis of regulatory development in Russia and other countries of the world.

The head of AVIACENTER outlined the research institution’s forecasts and international cases, which imply that the most commodious segment will be intercity transportation, which is commonly known by the Russian classification as commuter to neighbouring cities. In the initial stages the urban environment will envisage the development of Air taxi and Air metro business models.

Anton Koren emphasized that Air metro will develop more dynamically in the urban environment –referring to an air transportation functioning on designated corridors with fixed schedules and regularity. This type of transportation, due to a number of factors, including the fact that there is no need for a large number of landing sites or vertiports infrastructure, will ensure a lower cost per passenger-kilometer.

The head of AVIACENTER has also mentioned that unfortunately Air taxi requires a sufficiently large number of landing sites within walking distance of about two and a half minutes. As such, this cannot be implemented in all cities and megapolises.

Nonetheless, airport transfer would be another area of interest for business development within the Air taxi segment, according to Anton Koren.

The report by Anton Koren named some innovative projects, such as the testing of Ehang via a flight over Dubai and the plans by Volocopter to perform flights over Singapore this year.

Anton Koren emphasized: “An important aspect is that the annual market size by 2035 is estimated to be 32 billion dollars. Another important issue refers to the plans to create a regulatory environment for UAS urban air mobility.”

According to AVIACENTER’s comparative analysis of the regulatory framework development in Russia and other countries, Russia is currently behind by about 2.5 years. To eliminate such time lag in the future, Anton Koren stressed the need for closer cooperation between business and government in developing the regulatory environment.

The Center for Strategic Development in Civil Aviation also presented a development forecast for the global market of unmanned and optionally manned aircraft. According to AVIACENTER’s forecast, by 2035 the world should have 12,000 UAS units involved in passenger transportation.

Anton Koren pointed out that at the first stages all countries of the world should adopt the concept of UAS optional piloting for passenger transportation.

The round table “Integration of Unmanned Aircraft Systems into the Civil Aviation of Russia: Legislation, Certification, and Technology” was moderated by the academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Kronshtadt Group, Boris Aleshin. Other speakers included the Deputy Minister of Transport of the Russian Federation, Alexander Yurchik; the Director of ANCO Center Aeronet, Sergey Zhukov; the Director of the Center for Advanced Studies of the Kronstadt Group, Vladimir Voronov; and many other representatives of the industry.