After 20 years in commercial property, Duncan Walker set his sights higher, literally, when he left to set up drone infrastructure company Skyports 18 months ago. Here he reveals the company’s lofty ambitions and insists he would have no qualms about hopping into a passenger drone for its maiden flight.
This is quite the forward-thinking start-up. What made you leave commercial property to set it up?
It actually isn’t as forward-thinking as people here in the UK might assume.
Founding Skyports evolved from what we saw happening in the drone market overseas.
We don’t have great visibility in the UK yet but there is a huge amount of investment across both passenger and cargo-carrying drones coming out of the west coast of the US and the Far East but also in Germany where there is a lot of manufacturing.
We looked at the market and saw there was $2bn of investment going into vehicle research and development and this is led by the big boys.
We are not talking about the engineer in his garage tinkering around with bits and pieces. This is Airbus, it’s Boeing, Chrysler, Porsche.
These guys not only have huge technical engineering capabilities and massive balance sheets, but they also have the ability to push things through the regulatory environment and turn what was once a concept into reality.
But what they haven’t been through, because there has been no new form of aviation for many years, is the route to market. So by nature there will be a long lead time. And there hasn’t been enough focus on infrastructure either.
Is this a gap you are trying to plug with Skyports?
Yes. You need a long-term view. You need a leap of faith. You need a detailed understanding of technology.
Skyports really does what it says on the tin, delivering urban heliports on the top of buildings and skyscrapers designed to accommodate passenger and cargo-carrying vehicles.
If you think of a very miniature airport, that’s what you’ve got, including full interface with air traffic control and the Civil Aviation Authority, or whatever the body is in whichever country we’re in.
But the key to these ports is that they are in dense urban environments, the places where there’s the most friction moving people and stuff around. So highly congested city centres.
Then, all of a sudden, you’re going to have accessibility by air taxi for goods and people. It instantly changes the dynamic of how people and things move around the city. So we need the infrastructure in place ready to go.
How much would it cost, on average, to put a port on top of a building?
It depends on the stage in which you get involved in the building.
If you’re retrofitting one to a building, you’re looking at something like £3m-£6m. If you can be involved in the design stage, you can reduce that to £1m-£2m, depending on the scale of it.
One of the key drivers of vertical transportation is to get a lift up to the top of the building. And you will also need sufficient electricity supplies to recharge these vehicles.
If you can solve those two issues during the initial design and build, you’re a long way towards getting one of these on top of your building.
How many sites do you have currently?
In London we have 15 sites spread across Canary Wharf and the West End. We have looked at key commuter routes in and out of London and we have also studied passenger movement patterns within the city itself.
How does this all work in practice though? In terms of getting those ports in place?
There are lots of moving parts and a lot of education that needs to be done.
I have been trying to get landlords on board with this and I am sure when I walked out of a lot of the initial meetings I had, people thought I was nuts.
I’m fortunate I’ve had 20 years in commercial real estate so I’ve got existing relationships with a lot of the landlords, particularly in London, which at least gets me in the front door. And that means I’m not completely ridiculed.
People I think are aware of the broad concept more and more, so conversations are turning more towards implementation and we have got to work with landlords to identify the appropriate buildings.
We need to look at the structural engineering, navigate the planning system and work with local authorities. We also need to work with the aviation authorities who, in many ways, are more tuned into it.
What is your strategy for addressing public acceptance of these drones? Will people feel safe getting into them?
If you look back to 1940 and I said you were going to get in a tin tube and fly across the Atlantic, you would think I was insane.
And that was a really scary prospect for people but, as with most things like this, the key is to start with a defined and relatively modest route. London won’t be the first place this is trialled either.
It would be a very early adopter like Los Angeles, Dallas or Singapore where I can see these vehicles moving around within the next two to three years.
And once we see those vehicles moving around, once you build the safety record, once the public understand that the level of certification regulation is exactly the same as a jumbo jet, that’s the best way to instil public acceptance – to get people to see it happening.
Then suddenly one of their friends has done it and it evolves like that.
When the first passenger drone makes its way to London – the first one to leave from one of your ports – will you be in it?
What are trailblazers for if not to say yes to that question? I would be very happy to get into the first drone to have full aviation authority sign-off. Would I get in one that hasn’t got that sign-off? That’s a different question.
To send feedback, e-mail emily.wright@egi.co.uk or tweet @EmilyW_9 or @estatesgazette
