Meet the Drone Pioneers: Skyports

Skyports is at the forefront of the burgeoning drone delivery sector. Moonrock meets its director of drone services, Alex Brown, to learn more about the huge potential for this growing application and find out his hopes for the innovative business.

Tell us more about yourself and your role at Skyports?

I’ve been with Skyports, which was founded in 2018, for about six years and, I think I was employee number two. Prior to that I was in Australia working for Virgin Airlines and doing consultancy for PWC. I oversee the drone services division for Skyports which sits alongside our other arm which works on vertiports, infrastructure for air taxis, electric, vertical take-off and landing aircraft sites. Everything from flight ops, to regulations, to business development, to safety to executions, that all sits under me.

How many people work for the business now?

We started with two, me and Duncan Walker who is CEO, and at first, we sat together in a co-working space in London figuring out the proposition. Now we have 100 employees across the world with about 60 in the drone services business and 40 in the infrastructure business.

London is global HQ and we have a few people in the US, around 30 people in Singapore, which is our APAC HQ. Then about five people in Korea, three people in Dubai and one person in Colombia. It’s quite spread out and all strategically driven by where can fly our drones using existing regulatory frameworks.

What are the priorities for the drone delivery service part of the business?

One is drone delivery and the other is drone inspection work. The one thing that probably differentiates us a bit from some of the more mainstream drone delivery companies’ people will have heard of like Amazon, Google, etc. is we’re entirely focused on B2B enterprise level drone services rather than delivering something to someone’s house.

Our drones are used deliver medical supplies, such as blood to rural Scotland or fly in vaccines to remote places in Africa. On the inspection side its work such as inspecting powerlines and oil rigs. It’s all about higher value services.

Are you looking at delivering packages with higher payloads too?

We’re working on a project in Cornwall flying the Pyka Pelican cargo vehicle. It is an STOL aircraft, so it needs a short runway of about 100m to take-off, and that can carry up to 200kg up to 400km. It’s a big bird and is the biggest electric cargo drone in the world, which is pretty cool!

We’ve brought it to the UK to deliver to places like the Isles of Scilly which are about 60km off the coast of Cornwall. Planes deliver there at the moment but using drones has a lot of additional benefits – you can fly in almost any weather; fog doesn’t affect it and it can be done at a lower cost without a pilot. Organisations such as the Royal Mail are really interested in how they can incorporate them into their supply chain.

Are you able to share more detail on the example of how Royal Mail is using your service or is there another real life example you can tell us about?

In the Orkney Islands we’re operating a daily ongoing delivery service flying from the Orkney mainland to two islands. With the drone delivery service we reduce the time it takes for residents of the two islands to receive their mail/packages by 24 hours. We can also carry up to 10kg of cargo per flight which covers most things, but there’s still heavier/bulkier things which continue be transported by ferry. It’s been tricky to maintain our uptime over the very wet and windy winter period in the Orkney Islands and we’ve just brought in an upgraded drone with better wind endurance to make sure we’re maximising flights even when the weather conditions aren’t as favourable.

Additionally – what work are you doing around ship-to-shore and how is that part of the industry developing?

We fly ship-to-shore (and shore-to-ship) drone delivery in both Singapore and Korea on a daily basis. We typically fly cargo such as components, crew welfare items, food bunker samples and even cash for the ship captain. It’s a great use case and often means we can replace a diesel boat which would have physically delivered cargo to and from the vessel. It’s developing well but the maritime industry is fairly traditional and lacks automation, digitisation and systemisation which can make bringing new, innovative services in difficult. We’re always developing our technology and getting more advanced regulatory approvals, and we’re just about to start doing winch-up and down deliveries to and from ships which is very exciting – and will open up a whole new portion of customers and demand.

What are the key challenges holding back drone delivery? 

At present it is regulation. That’s really the main reason why you still see quite a few proofs of concept going on today and they are a stepping stone to phasing in commercial operations. We are active in a couple of places but, in a lot of areas the stumbling block is beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS). Regulators are asking ‘can you guarantee you won’t hit something important, such as a powerline if you can’t see it?’

There are lots of ways to overcome this challenge and we welcome the recent Civil Aviation Authority consultation on BVLOS which exploring how itcan be delivered safely. For example, if there are strategically placed beacons which show where obstacles are and highlight where drones and other aircraft are operating there should not be an issue in being able to fly BVLOS. It’s a great opportunity for the industry.

To give the UK Government and the regulatory agencies credit, we’ve come a very, very long way in five years but on BVLOS there is a risk we may fall behind other countries. Some countries in Europe are really taking the lead around, enabling BVLOS. Germany has taken a really progressive position, for example. I do think that there is a risk if we don’t get our focus back on it and work with people like the CAA, Department for Transport other government agencies we will fall behind.

How hard was it to get insurance for Skyports?

Insurance is key and it is enshrined in regulations. We found traditional insurers reluctant to cover what we were doing so getting in touch with Moonrock was hugely helpful. We’re in constant contact about the various projects we work on and, each time, the team finds us a sensible insurance solution which helps us to operate with confidence. They offer a customised, innovative approach which is essential for a new industry such as drone deliveries.

How do you want Skyports to develop in future?

Offshore energy and renewables are a big opportunity for us. If you had to invent a use case for drone delivery, high value, hard to reach areas, and time sensitive, offshore energy very much in that sweet spot.

We can also envisage the opportunity for beyond visual line of sight linear asset inspection. We’re increasingly being hired by power companies to help with vegetation management to assess if trees need to be removed before they damage powerlines and we can use AI to determine which trees are the fastest growing and need cutting back sooner. We’re starting to overlay smart analytics to take our offering to the next level.