Aviation is a multi-billion dollar industry that gets us where we need to go, but with those dollars comes a lot of attention especially when incidents, good or bad end up on social media. As the airline industry navigates, rebounding, following the COVID-19 pandemic, as far as an investors and the traveling public are concerned there’s a lot that remains up in the air.
Anoop Brar is the CEO of Toronto based Star Navigation and an expert in aviation. He joined The Market Herald’s Simon Druker to discuss the aviation industry as it deals with well-publicized trials and tribulations amid increased demand for service.
TMH: We’re chatting aviation. It’s in the news left, right, and center. Some good, some bad things. First off, what do you make of these proposed new laws in the United States that would sort of scold rowdy passengers? Maybe put them on a no-fly list because you see it more and more it feels like just people misbehaving rightly or wrongly on an airplane.
AB: We live through such unprecedented times right now Simon. After the pandemic, human psychology has changed so much. We’re getting more anxious. Personalities have changed, customer service has gone down. So can we blame the staff? Can we blame the passengers? It’s really hard to tell. We’re just all really anxious right now. Our expectations are really high. We go on Instagram, we want to get the feed right away. I think the same thing’s kind of happening when we’re traveling as well. It’s been gone are the times when aviation was fun to travel. Everybody’s looking forward to it. Now it does get a little bit more anxious and with the new rules coming in, I don’t blame them. When you look at the safety of not only other fellow passengers but the staff, the pilots, sometimes you have to put those regulations in. It’s unfortunate that a lot of the other passengers are gonna suffer from that because I’ve heard rumors that they might ban alcohol completely. They might ban even entering an airport or airplane if you are intoxicated, it’s gonna ruin an experience for everybody but it’s just a very unfortunate series of events and it’s unfortunate these laws have to be put in place to tackle these incidents.
AB: They know that too and I remember flying myself and remember back in the day when they had shut down your phone, it’s got to be an air mode but later found out it wasn’t really a big instance. So I used to fly on other airlines where they didn’t really care and there’s some airlines. So you start becoming a little bit more antsy because your expectations are being set. Some rules are just meant to be rules and they need to be followed. It’s a tough time we’re living after the Covid pandemic.
TMH: I want to talk about like the rebound now financially, obviously we all saw those airplanes just sitting on runways and no one’s flying them. You have a lot of the bigger airlines, at least in the United States, American, United and Delta are saying we’re almost out of it, our finances are almost back to where they were but they’re all predicting big summer travel seasons that’s almost here. What do you think?
AB: I think according to the reports, the new travel quantities of passenger actually traveling are still not at the pre pandemic levels yet but we did see a big influx because everybody was so tired of just being stuck at home. Countries like Australia, New Zealand have started to open up to foreign travelers as well. So now you see a lot of Canadians going to New Zealand. So things have started to pick up but it’s still a lot of the pre pandemic level, the smoothness and operations still not there. We saw what happened at Christmas where one, two technology things not working kind of shut down the entire airspace.
TMH: Even Southwest Airlines, I think it was yesterday or the day before. Just right out. 24 hours.
AB: Oh, wow. Yeah. So, you know what things are starting to rebound. It’s going to be some operational challenges still pacing.
TMH: What do you think that passengers, aviation enthusiasts, investors, what do you think they’re gonna see in the next five years? Some of the biggest innovations like in the field of aviation, what do you think?
AB: In the field of aviation? I think you and I were talking earlier, we’re talking about energy. We’re talking about higher fuel prices, we’re talking about customer services, we’re talking about implementation of digital technology. Just yesterday you might have seen Bombardier talk about how they’re now working on getting a connected aircraft. It’s amazing how you and I have interviewed in the past and we’re talking about Start Navigation builds the connected aircraft and we’ve been doing this for so many years but it’s really fascinating and really I’m inspiring to see now OEMs starting to do the same thing. So what they’re doing is with the newer aircraft, what we can do is retrofit all the older ones to bring them up to speed. So a lot of technological innovations are going to happen. The advent of AI is going to come into place.
I think a lot of automation’s are going to come where now you’re looking at Dubai Airport where you can just walk in. Biometrics is going to take a major role. We’re looking at electric airplanes, hybrid airplanes, aircraft starting to come in. It might not be at the passenger level but you might see one to two passenger aircrafts now being electrified, you might see hybrids, a lot of good innovation. Mm-Hmm. I think as you know the industrial revolution 4.0, It’s just gonna be like a hockey stick. The more we innovate, the more money’s being flown into development and innovation in the airline industry as well.
TMH: It all boils down, like your technology is meant to make things safer but also to make it more efficient for operators. Everyone wants to save where they can and you mentioned the hybrid airplanes, the electric. I think we had the first ever electric airplane was tested here in Vancouver, a flow plane. What about the aviation fuel? We hear about sustainable aviation fuel as the world moves towards a cleaner future, hopefully. What’s your take on that?
AB: I think it’s here to stay. Definitely we’re looking for ways to move away from fossil fuels. Electric is going to be coming. I got my own mixed opinions in terms of how electrified cars are coming and Now electrified ships and boats we look at trains are pretty much electrified now and public transportation. So it’s going to happen that the aviation industry is going to slowly start pivoting towards electrifying and hybrid technology as well. So definitely I think pretty exciting times in the next 5 to 10 years in terms of how the changes that happen. You probably still do remember when Airbus A380 was invented?
TMH: Absolutely. The the world’s biggest passenger plane.
AB: Now that’s fascinating. To be able to get a double decker huge passenger plane but then we found out later that airlines and passengers weren’t really looking to have mega aircraft but they’re looking for more efficient, smaller so they can fly quicker, faster, more efficient, more streamlined, lighter weight. So it’s amazing the innovation, the technology, the money that’s being spent but sometimes the market isn’t ready for that.
TMH: I think the first Airbus, the first 380 that went into service has already been retired no more than 10 years later and it’s just fascinating how they are moving like you said, towards more single aisle, more fuel efficient two engine airplanes. So let’s talk safety. What do you think the biggest innovations are going to be safety wise from a world that’s always seeking to get safer, especially in aviation?
AB: Well, safety’s cool, right? We always talk about how flying is so safe every time you get in on aircraft as well. We never think twice of what’s gonna happen and it’s totally different than what I used to be 45-50 years ago. So absolutely blessed to be living in a time where safety is paramount But there are instances that still happen and we saw Air France go down. We saw MH 370. There’s so many other incidents like we saw in China, Pakistan, you remember when it crashed over in urban area? Now we were at the aviation conference in Kenya when a 17 unit passenger plane had crashed in the mountains and I’m not really sure if they found it or not but it’s really unfortunate those kind of incidents still do happen. If you just Google how many accidents happen, there’s still quite a bit more than people think.
Last month we saw all the close near misses that had happened and the FAA was panicking quite a bit. So one way to do that is to move away from the reactive way of extracting data from the black box and finding out what happened. Now it’s more about how do we become more proactive? How can we have a more connected aircraft? How can we start be developing that digital twin? Where on your computer, you can see how is an aircraft operating? What are some of the incidents that are happening in real time? So we can start visualizing, add more AI machine learning to that and I think we are on the next stages of innovation for enhancing safety.
TMH: How do you think the aviation sector is going to commercially be able to adapt, absorb these changes over the next 5-10 years. We see a wave of pilots retiring, we see aircrafts parked because they can’t attract crews to fly them and of course customers are complaining and we see that on social media. How do you think the companies are going to be able to adapt to keep people in the seats and keep the money flowing or are they?
AB: Good question. I think innovation. We’ve seen so many airlines go down, new ones emerge. They have new business models. Some are only focusing on international flights. Some are focusing on the hub and spoke model. So I think constant innovation, lessons learned, solving problems and we’ve seen that for the last 20-30 years. We’ve seen these big jumbo jets which were sometimes flying empty because they couldn’t sustain themselves now with high fuel costs, lower ticket prices than what we have in the past. Now we’ve seen more innovations happening and coming up with like the Dreamliner an excellent aircraft, more energy efficient, made out of composites. So I think innovations.
TMH: Those good touch windows too.
AB: exactly. Those are fascinating. Can you, can you imagine we never thought that would’ve happened And now we look at all these new prototypes that are happening where it’s going to be no windows to improve drag and efficiency but they’re gonna have a digital display so that you can see mountains and space but it’s all digitalized inside and so that’s for the passengers to get the experience that they’re sitting in a live plane and they’re flying but to improve the cost of windows and maintenance and leaks and all this sort of stuff, they’re engineering a way to reduce that as well. Now you just have this big fuselage traveling through space.
TMH: Do you think that innovation will drive competition and at least cap or reduce the cost to the consumer or does that innovation make it more expensive to fly in this future world we’re talking about?
AB: Well, I think completely opposite. I think it’ll make it even better. I think we’ll enjoy being on these nice airplanes, nice aircraft. Innovation is key. I’m an entrepreneur and I feel like competition innovation keeps everybody at the edge. We saw what happened with Kodak, why did the iPhone become the iPhone. Actually it is really funny Simon, I was watching this interview with Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa and they were talking about the iPhone and Regis was like, oh, nobody’s gonna buy this. Who wants to carry something along but look at it now. So sometimes there’s resistance. There’s resistance to change, there’s resistance to an idea and that’s why when you look at Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, it wasn’t easy for them to come up with ideas and showcase the value for them. Something that we are facing ourselves but we’re gonna be going through that, showing them the value of the connected aircraft, how we can help with enhancing safety, optimizing operations. We have the technology, the hardware, software ecosystem and with your help getting market exposure, I think we are on the right track here.
Anoop Brar is the CEO of Toronto-based STAR Navigation.
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