{"id":10608,"date":"2020-02-11T12:39:31","date_gmt":"2020-02-11T17:39:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/self-disruption-at-airbus-doubling-down-on-flying-cars-with-digital-ridesharing-platform\/"},"modified":"2020-02-11T12:44:34","modified_gmt":"2020-02-11T17:44:34","slug":"self-disruption-at-airbus-doubling-down-on-flying-cars-with-digital-ridesharing-platform","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/self-disruption-at-airbus-doubling-down-on-flying-cars-with-digital-ridesharing-platform\/","title":{"rendered":"Self-disruption at Airbus: doubling down on flying cars with digital ridesharing platform"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Facing disruption<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Airbus controls 45% of the global helicopter market [1]. The drop in oil prices and the introduction of drone technology for O&amp;G (and other industrial\/business) missions has translated in helicopter overcapacity, fleet underutilization and overall, low industry growth [2]. Moreover, the development of electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles (eVTOL) and Urban Air Mobility (UAM) initiatives represent an important long-term threat to the survival of the helicopter industry as we know it.<\/p>\n<p>Urban Air Mobility (UAM) became a mainstream topic, fueled in part by ambitious strategies made public by companies like Uber [3], which outline visions for intracity air travel as a viable alternative to ground transportation. The articulated strategies present 5-10 year development paths, and focus on the technological and regulatory innovation required to make urban air travel a future mass market transit solution.<\/p>\n<p>The big four helicopter OEMs, Airbus, Bell Textron, Leonardo and Sikorsky are all taking a different approach to UAM. While Leonardo and Sikorsky are pursuing a wait-and-see strategy, Airbus and Bell Textron included UAM as a strategic initiative in their agenda, making sizable investments in this space. Bell Textron has focused on developing the vehicle itself [4], while Airbus has taken an all-encompassing approach [5] to look at UAM. Airbus is investing in the entire UAM ecosystem, including next generation vehicles, unmanned air traffic solutions, city infrastructure and on-demand ridesharing platforms.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Airbus Urban Mobility\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4ufqwox1MyE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Venturing into digital platforms<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Airbus developed voom.flights [6], an on-demand service for helicopters operating in traffic-congested cities like S\u00e3o Paulo, Mexico City and, most recently, San Francisco Bay Area (the average traffic speed in Mexico City can be as low as 6km per hour [7]). The platform is accessible through a mobile app, which connects passengers with helicopter operators, and provide transport services to-and-from helipads in a seamless transaction. With this service, Airbus has made helicopters accessible to a broader base of consumers\u00a0by offering flights for around $200 us, a tenth of the price of a traditional air-taxi service.<\/p>\n<p>In order to offer affordable prices, voom.flights function as a dynamic, routed service with rush pricing. To maximize helicopter utilization the platform has been designed so that the lead time for journey bookings is a minimum of 30 minutes to enable passengers to be pooled in a journey, thus maximizing utilization. In order to minimize deadhead time (flying without passengers), the helicopter is routed to maximize the number of revenue generating segments per journey. In addition, in order to maximize fulfillment during times of peak demand, the price surges until the market reaches equilibrium.<\/p>\n<p>Voom.flights is increasing the capacity utilization of the current helicopter installed base. Helicopter operators who offer air-taxi services through the platform are doubling and, in some instances, tripling their total annual flight hours. Such increase drives growth in aftermarket revenues (spare parts, maintenance and repair services) for Airbus.<\/p>\n<p>Airbus is also using voom.flights as a testing lab for designing the new generation of vehicles. The development program of an aircraft is a massive investment. For example, the cost of developing the Airbus H160 (helicopter) was of $1.1 billion us [8]. Currently, there is no data about UAM, so perhaps the most valuable attribute of voom.flights is that it delivers granular data to Airbus on passenger and operator behaviors, for example. preferred platforms, load factor, optimal cost points for new designs, detailed fleet flight hours for improved aftermarket services, etc.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Winners in an uncertain future<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I think it will take at least a decade for us to see UAM at scale. Regulation and vehicle certification will take years, people need to start think differently about helicopters\/eVTOL and technology needs to keep evolving. There are many questions surrounding UAM. What will be the actual demand? What part of the value chain will capture more value? Who will capture this value? The OEMs like Airbus or Bell Textron? The digital platforms like voom.flights or Uber? Despite the uncertainty, I think Airbus is positioning itself to be a winner in the UAM space because of the comprehensive approach of its strategy. Airbus is developing the technology and is learning what they are doing. They are looking at the entire ecosystem doing in-house testing, exploration and engineering development.<\/p>\n<p>It will be exciting to see how companies like airbus transform our urban reality into a scene from the <span class=\"il\">Jetsons<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Word count: 708<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sources<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[1] Airbus. (2020).\u00a0<i>Helicopters<\/i>. [online] Available at: https:\/\/www.airbus.com\/us\/en\/helicopters.html [Accessed 11 Feb. 2020].<\/p>\n<p>[2] U.S. (2020).\u00a0<i>Airbus Helicopters deliveries up, sees no quick oil recovery<\/i>. [online] Available at: https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-airbus-helicopters\/airbus-helicopters-deliveries-up-sees-no-quick-oil-recovery-idUSKBN15B0O2 [Accessed 11 Feb. 2020].<\/p>\n<p>[3] Uber. (2020).\u00a0<i>Uber Elevate | Uber Air<\/i>. [online] Available at: https:\/\/www.uber.com\/us\/en\/elevate\/uberair\/ [Accessed 11 Feb. 2020].<\/p>\n<p>[4] Bell Flight. (2020).\u00a0<i>Bell Nexus<\/i>. [online] Available at: https:\/\/www.bellflight.com\/products\/bell-nexus [Accessed 11 Feb. 2020].<\/p>\n<p>[5] Airbus. (2020).\u00a0<i>Airbus Urban Mobility<\/i>. [online] Available at: https:\/\/www.airbus.com\/innovation\/urban-air-mobility.html [Accessed 11 Feb. 2020].<\/p>\n<p>[6] Voom &#8211; Helicopter flights for everyone. (2020).\u00a0<i>Helicopter Flights<\/i>. [online] Available at: https:\/\/www.voom.flights\/en [Accessed 11 Feb. 2020].<\/p>\n<p>[7] <strong>\u00a0<\/strong><span id=\"js-reference-string-6\" class=\"selectable\">Global Fleet. (2020).\u00a0<i>Mexico trends: Hybrids, Carsharing, Safety Improvements, Telematics<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[8] Airbus. (2020).\u00a0<i>H160<\/i>. [online] Available at: https:\/\/www.airbus.com\/helicopters\/civil-helicopters\/medium\/h160.html [Accessed 11 Feb. 2020].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Airbus controls 45% of the global helicopter market. Low industry growth and the development of Urban Air Mobility or flying cars represent an important long-term threat to the survival of the helicopter industry as we know it. Airbus is trying to disrupt itself, before somebody else does by taking an all-encompassing approach to look at Urban Air Mobility. Airbus is investing in the entire ecosystem, including the on-demand helicopter ridesharing platform, voom.flights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11333,"featured_media":10616,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[1423,830,381,572],"class_list":["post-10608","hck-submission","type-hck-submission","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-autonomy","category-aviation","category-future-of-mobility","category-ride-sharing","hck-taxonomy-organization-airbus","hck-taxonomy-industry-aerospace","hck-taxonomy-country-united-states"],"connected_submission_link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/assignment\/digital-winners-and-losers-2\/","yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Self-disruption at Airbus: doubling down on flying cars with digital ridesharing platform - Digital Innovation and Transformation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/self-disruption-at-airbus-doubling-down-on-flying-cars-with-digital-ridesharing-platform\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Self-disruption at Airbus: doubling down on flying cars with digital ridesharing platform - Digital Innovation and Transformation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Airbus controls 45% of the global helicopter market. 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