Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey therein Welcome to Tech Stuff. My name is Jonathan Strickland. I am your host, and how the tech are you. I have a very special episode today. It is rare that I get to do interviews, and it's more rare than I get to talk to C suite individuals in my interviews. But today I get to do that because I have Sudan Shahani from surf Air on my show. Welcome to Tech Stuff.
Thank you, Jonathan. It's great to be here.
I'm so excited to talk to you because I remember hearing about surf Air almost a decade ago now while I was just following up on tech and back in those days, the business plan and the approach and the company mission statement was a little bit different than what you are pursuing now. So I hope we can kind of talk about sort of the history of the company while the original vision was and how that has evolved over time, because I'm really excited about where you're headed.
Yeah.
Absolutely. So the short version of this is, you know, the early days of Surfair, the business model, it started to serve business travelers and it started to serve business travelers with a subscription all you can fly type product for really the frequent flyer that was going on routes like La de San Francisco and Santa Barbara de San Francisco and wanted to go from a small airport to smaller airport and get call it, two hours of their.
Life back on a day trip.
So don't spend a lot of time in the big airport, get there five minutes before, get on a small plane, hang with other members of like a like minded travelers club. And people were doing it three or four times a month, and we were giving consumers back time.
It was a great experience.
It was one of the few times I think people actually enjoyed their their their flying experience, or we kind of tried to bring that back, if you will, and along the way we kind of realized that, you know, while that was great to serve a particular audience that was paying a small premium to kind of domestic business class to get an experience that felt more like a private flying experience, that was still a pretty limited I mean, we could do that on roots like La San Francisco
and a number of other kind of high traffic you know, commercial hubs, on each end, business city pairs with all these business travelers. But we realized that if actually there's five thousand airports in the country, and if we could create something that took away the barriers, like if we could make a similar experience affordable to a much broader audience, that would be great. That would be the big the big idea, like how can we make this affordable and
how can we make it greener? Because we look at the two barriers to entry that people had, they were either like, that's still a little bit expensive for me, I don't fly enough to justify it, or like do I really want to seem like I'm flying on a private plane? Like that doesn't really go well with my
carbon footprint. And the reality is we're now entering an error where we're moving towards the world is moving towards green aviation is that's sort of the way we look at it, and regional travel, at least over the next decade or two, we think is about to be reimagined because all of the innovation in this space is coming around small planes flying short routes and that's where our.
Specialty is, that's what we do.
And if we could very simply, if you can make smaller planes electric, a lot more people can afford him.
Yeah, and you've covered a lot of ground, which is only fair for a company that flies everywhere. But I want to dive into a couple of those things. One of them is, you know, we're starting to hear about this concept of regional air mobility, this ability to travel to relatively short distances, far enough where driving would still take several hours, but short enough so that smaller aircraft can make that in a single leg as opposed to
multiple hops. And this approach to trying to make that more accessible and also reduce carbon footprint makes a ton of sense to me. It also comes in line with some other business plans we've been hearing from with other startups that are looking at even shorter distances right Like, we're looking at companies that are starting up in the space where they're using kind of the quad copter sort of approach to take passengers from a centralized location to
the airport. To me, like, this is the next step out from that. We're not talking about coast to coast travel, but if I here in Atlanta, if I need to get to Western Tennessee, well taking booking a big commercial aircraft seat for that can seem like it's a bit overkill, but it's still too far to make it a convenient drive to get out there in a day, do some business come back, or even just on a short weekend
trip if it's like a recreational thing. So I get where the appeal is and I'm really excited to learn more about this. At what point in the phase of surf air where you start to look at this as being the next step of kind of migrating toward this approach of how can we enable regional mobility when we have all these different airports that are underused or sometimes they're just going dormant for a while because they're just
they're catering to like local pilots, and that's it. When did you start really kind of ideating on this.
Yeah, it's a good question. And actually, and you covered a lot of ground there too. I think that in our case, unlike a lot of other people in the space in the aviation of the airline space, in the early days of surf air, we were one of the few companies that was actually building a brand and a consumer service around flying smaller airplanes. The industry at a whole when they think about when they thought about the new technology happening. So a couple of different trends are
coming together here. To your point, regional air mobility is now something a lot of people are talking about. You'll see NASA reports and McKinsey reports and kind of it's sort of becoming a thing that that's where a lot of the innovation in aviation is going to be for the next decade or two. And it's sort of It also is slightly in contrast to a line is being
drawn between urban air mobility and regional air mobility. So when you talk about the quad copters and ev toll and things like that going really short distances, that's really that's being classified or will you know as urban air mobility call it zero to fifty miles, and then you look at regional air mobility fifty to five hundred miles.
The benefits of regional air mobility and why people believe that will develop first would say is that we have, particularly in this country, all of the infrastructure.
To another point you.
Made, there are actually five thousand airports that exist in this country that can be used by charter operators in real contrast, major commercial airlines, we're morphed over the last couple of decades really more into a hub and spoke model with larger planes and less deserving, less places, and less point to point. You know, eighty percent of airline traffic goes through thirty airports, and they may flex up to two or three hundred for the other twenty percent.
We were already flying from airport. It's like that, Like I'm sitting here talking to you today from our headquarters at Hawthorne in California. Hawthorne Airport is a smaller, smaller airport. You know, California alone is three hundred airports. There's probably
twelve airports within an hour drive of here. And because we were already flying smaller aircraft and flying from airports like that, when different companies were coming up with solutions and electrification, new technology, new vehicles, we would really get to see a lot of that first. We were fortunate to see a lot of that as it was happening. So to directly answer a question, when we start thinking about this, we've been following the trend of kind of
where the space is going. Given that we are in fact today we are the largest commuter airline in the US, and the commuter air category is really the category that would be defined as the business model that would enable regional airmobility. It's flying small planes frequently like an airline. So we're the biggest brand in that space, and hence
we saw a lot of things first. Whereas large airlines would really look at small electric airplanes as a sign project on their way to big ones, it wasn't a real commercial use case there. So we were kind of in a really unique position to be able to We think we're in a unique position to be able to lead the charge here well.
And with that established infrastructure there, it sets it apart from other potential solutions that would require massive investment in
building out infrastructure. I'm thinking of things like all the various sort of blue sky rail initiatives that have been pushed around, and I love the concept of rail initiatives, but if you're being realistic and you're thinking about the amount of time and money that's going to be required for that to happen, and you are really realistic and you start talking about the political buy in that has to happen for that to work, and then we recognize
that every few years we change our political leaders, and so consistency is difficult. Having that infrastructure there is so valuable. I think it's impossible to overstate how valuable it is that these airports already exist. So that problem has been solved. Now it's the question of can you have the capacity to meet demand, can you find the price point that works for the customer, and can you have that be a business plan that ultimately results in profitability.
I think that's exactly right. I mean, look, we say that to really build out the regional ammability landscape, and you need a couple of like there's a couple of key things you need for success. You actually need a brand and a platform that consumers trust and that operators are able to fly for. So what we're trying to do here we don't just want to continue to build a huge single airline in the space. We actually have a platform and a brand today where we have a
number of third party operators that fly for us. We want to deploy electric airplanes across all of them, not just for ourselves, and the first wave of electrification which will significantly reduce costs as well. We're actually electrifying an airplane called the Cessna caravan. We're working with Cessna the manufacturer and to do so, but we're going to own the ip around it. But it's a we're built. We're creating both a fully electric and a hybrid electric powertrain
for the Cessna Caravan. And what's really important about the hybrid particularly is to the point you were making about all the existing infrastructure, the hybrid Sessna Caravan will work. Think like the early days of the Prius. The combustion motor charge is the battery, so you actually don't need charging stations to be set up at all of these airports. You don't need any infrastructure upgrades across all of these
airports to be able to use it. So we live in a country today where all of these airports exist. A number of airplanes exist which can be converted over to more efficient and modern powertrains hybrid electric, fully electric,
et cetera. Based on the mission, hybrid electric can actually save twenty five percent of the operating cost, which makes it which is a huge number in aviation world, and fully electric can save up to fifty percent of the cost, but will initially be focused on much on shorter routes one hundred miles and less.
We're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back to talk more about surf air mobility. I really wanted to talk to you, Sodent about the electrification process, because that's to me one of the really exciting things about this. I mean, one, opening up accessibility to more people so that they're able to take advantage of this kind of travel. I'm really excited about that as well, especially in lieu of methods of getting from place to place when you're talking in that like fifty to five
hundred mile range. But can you kind of talk me through this electrification process? Are you both looking into retrofitting existing aircraft with new electric powertrain systems or hybrid powertrain systems. Are you also looking at maybe partnering with companies that would be building purpose built electric planes. What's your approach?
Yeah, it's a good question, and actually it's funny here here at our business, I try to have everyone use the word upgrading.
Rather than retrofitting.
Okay, no, taken.
So we think the first thing that you can do to make the biggest impact is actually take an existing airframe where there is wide distribution of it already, and upgrade that to being a hybrid or fully electric powertrain. If you think about just the life cycle of an airplane, people keep airplanes or airplanes stay in service twenty five
thirty years. However, there's a moment, depending on the utilization of the operator, call it every three to five years, where they have to do a full overhaul of the combustion engine, and that's a moment where they could replace it with an electric engine, which is a way to get faster adoption across a much larger category. So we're starting with the first thing we're doing is in electric and a hybrid powertrain for the Cessna Caravan. Cessna Caravan
is a great airplane. It's been around for a long time.
There's over three thousand of them out there. We are actually the largest passenger operator, we believe, of the Caravan in the US, and these powertrains will be both marketed to existing owners that existing fleet out there, where when it comes time for an engine overhaul, the goal is to have them be able to upgrade to a hybrid or an electric powertrain for a similar prices it would cost them to overhaul a combustion engine and instantly start
seeing the cost and the emissions benefits Additionally, Cessna will be selling new versions of the airplane basically with an electric version and a hybrid version for new buyers. And there's a pretty broad range of potential customers for the caravan. It's passenger operators like us, it's cargo, it's military, etc. There's a number of use cases. So that's the first
the electrification project we're doing. Will we do intend in the future to work with other airplane types with kind of our proprietary technology, of course, and we also intend to work with there's a lot of amazing and ambitious projects for people who are building clean sheet design airframes, lighter airframes so on, that are purpose built for electric engines, and a lot of them are building their own electric engines in those cases, and we intend to work with
companies like that too to plug into our platform. As I mentioned, you know, we have a brand in a platform which we have our own fleet, and we've got a number of other operators that fly within the platform, and we would like to provide people with the best aircraft for the best use case. So if there's a great new clean sheet design aircraft that comes to market, we'd like to be the one to help distribute that and commercialize it too. Wow, so we will in the long run have a range of products.
Yeah.
It makes me think of some of the sort of the big displays we saw where you had things like the solar powered plane that made the journey around the world, and you realize, all right, well, this is not to show some sort of practical use for an aircraft. This is not an aircraft that's going to take you, you know, from one city to another. But what it does start to show is potential for various technologies to be incorporated
in real world applications. And it's exciting to talk to someone at a company where you're actually kind of doing that, where you're using this upgrade approach. And I love creating that incentive as well, the upgrade incentive where you know, for a similar price you can swap out the powertrain for your aircraft and you know that you're going to be incurring lower costs down the line. One of the things that I think is really interesting is in the
auto manufacturing space. We've heard time and again from manufacturers that changing from internal combustion engine vehicles to electric vehicles ends up simplifying things a great deal, both on the manufacturing and fabrication side and in the maintenance side, because the systems themselves are inherently less complex than your traditional fuel powered engines are. So is the same thing true with aircraft.
Yeah, absolutely so. Think about you know, electric motors are much simpler. What we're doing is designing and assembling electric powertrains, which are a combination of motors, battery packs, a layer of control software you wrap around them. In the case of the hybrid, you're also adding a smaller, more efficient
combustion motor that helps charge the battery. And given that there's also a real software layer that wraps around this and then integrates into the aircraft, the aid the hardware is all cheaper to maintain than the existing combustion engine, and b the ability to continuously evolve and upgrade the powertrain, similar to what you've seen with electric cars or other kind of systems, where where an operator that takes an electrified powertrain from US will have they'll have that one
time fee to install it. There'll be an ongoing relationship with them, which is not just about basic maintenance. It's also about constant aircraft health monitoring, predictive maintenance upgrading, kind of as batteries get to next generations and evolve like the product will continue to evolve, So you may see an electric aircraft with a fully electric aircraft with an initial initial range of one hundred miles that at and get upgraded to go two hundred miles at some point in the future.
Yeah, it blows my mind too, because I'm from I'm old enough where the idea of something like the equivalent of a firmware upgrade to a vehicle is a completely foreign concept to me, because I think back to my childhood and the computerized systems and vehicles were very primitive and very limited. You're talking about bunch of micro controllers
that don't even really talk to each other. And now we're in a world where we have a lot more interconnected systems, where because we have that capability, it opens up opportunities that we can't even necessarily conceptualize right now.
Right it may be that three years down the line we realize, oh, we can leverage this because we've built it into the vehicle to deliver some new features that end up being huge improvement of quality of life or much more effective for the maintenance and care of aircraft
or the operation of those aircraft. To me, that's another really exciting thing about this approach, And of course that doesn't necessarily just limit itself to electrified vehicles, but it's kind of in line with that too, where we're talking about this you know, integrated package where it's not just the drive train, it's the entire system, the control system, and everything that's wrapped around of the software that enables
everything as well. And I had read up on an interesting thing about electric planes, because if you've ever ridden an electric vehicle, you know that they operate at a much quieter noise level than an internal combustion engine vehicle. The interesting thing with electric planes is that they do
operate more quietly than your typical fuel driven aircraft. But propellers, you know, turboprops make noise, and if you're in an aircraft that's being powered by a fueled engine, chances are the engine noises are actually drowning out anything from the propellers. You're not hearing them unless you're maybe sitting up there with a pilot. But in electric planes there's less to mask that. So I'm curious, what are you looking into
as far as ways to mitigate propeller noise? In order to make sure you're not impacting the passenger experience too much.
So in the world of building aircraft, there's the airframe manufacturer and there's the powertrain, which, unlike ours, those were actually separated a long time ago, which is why our business model is survivable to be in the powertrain space. I would say the airframe manufacturers are actually doing a lot of interesting things like adding blades to propellers, curve propellers, things like that to mitigate noise. I'm not sure if the propeller noise gets louder, if the engine noise gets softer,
I get the relative comparison. I'm not sure there's been enough electric planes flown around to kind of prove that out, so reserve judgment on that. But certainly there are enhancements being made on with propellers to make them quieter, and
certainly the goal of electrified aircraft. We're not suggesting that electrified aircraft will be silent, but certainly the goals are to reduce noise levels because to your point, you know, there's all of these airports that can be accessed, and reducing noise levels to be able to get in and out of ones in more crowded residential areas would be an extremely helpful.
Thing, right, right, Because we're also hearing onlike the crazy ultra lux side of aircraft, all these companies that are struggling or trying to become hypersonic aircraft companies, and they're trying to suggest, oh, well, we're designing aircraft that's going to minimize or even eliminate sonic booms. I'm not a physicist, but I have a real hard time believing that based upon how air works. But I hear about that, and I'm like, oh, yeah, finding ways to minimize noise so
that you are not a nuisance to the community. I mean, especially if we're looking at utilizing these various airports, these regional airports at a higher rate, then it stands to reason that you, if you want to do good business, you have to take that into consideration as well.
And everything about our model we talk about wanting to sustainably connect the world's communities. Like the idea is how we create value in a community. We would like to create more jobs in that community. We'd like to have people who live there be able to move around quicker, faster, cheaper, ideally quieter. Yeah, as well, and not sit in traffic for four hours.
Yeah, yeah, I mean it opens up opportunities that otherwise just are very difficult to realize because just because the physical realities of getting around in the world and that, you know, we have to come to the conclusion that there are certain things that are just more effective to
do in person. Podcasts arguably are one of them. But yeah, and having those opportunities to do that without having to dedicate half a day of travel to get there or to navigate through a busy airport, especially if you're talking about the ability to get to a regional airport that might be closer to your final destination as opposed to fly into a major city and then having to drive another three hours to get to wherever you're headed. I
can really see the value proposition there. We're going to take another quick break, but we'll be right back to talk a little bit more about surf air mobility. So what are we looking at as far as timelines go? How are you you know, what's what's your your plan? Like? Where are you looking at at where people might realistically expect to start seeing surf air service start popping up in places beyond you know, obviously been operating in California for years, but beyond there.
Yeah, so you know, as part of so we recently acquired a company called Southern Areas as well. And you know, we have operations in Hawaii, we have operations in California. We actually operate in various routes around the country where we fly through under a program called the Essential Air Service Program, flying to communities that don't have much air service.
And we have recently built out an on demand short regional kind of charter platform, more more efficient fly tover prop versus a jet or flying you know, and that's a national platform too, so you do have surfair in some form across a lot of the country. We are going to continue to scale that with combustion airplanes, always focusing on the most fuel efficient airplanes and so on as part of our mission of green aviation until we start to deploy electrified airplanes, which we intend to do
starting the beginning of twenty twenty six. So we're going through a certification process now of you know, we've already had a demonstration of the technology and we're now going through a certification process.
Excellent, Yeah, and has anything surprised you along this journey, things that you've learned that perhaps were counterintuitive, or something that really delights you as you were working towards this goal.
I mean, I mean, how long have you got like
a surprise every day? Look, I think one of the things that's been that it's been great as we think about the path and the product line we're bringing out, you know, we're very focused on I think I mentioned to you that the hybrid electric is actually what we think is being designed for kind of mass adoption here within the caravan community, because the idea of the hybrid electric is it's not going to it's going to not need infrastructure on the ground, it's not going to have
really any range limitations as opposed to the fully electric and so on. We are, however, going to launch the fully electric first, and that's that's a different order than.
We'd originally thought about.
You know, when we were telling people building a hybrid plane, they often say okay, great, and then like, when will it be fully electric? Like that's the natural kind of question that we get next. But the reality is we're building an electric powertrain which has a hybrid variant, which will be the more popular variant in the long run. But it's but we are going to start with a fully electric which I think we're really excited about. We want to be I think our goal would be to
be the first to commercially eployee fully electric flight. And we have a perfect use case for it in our network in Hawaii where we have we fly a number of short hops that fully electric flight could be.
That could be a launch showcase for example.
Yeah, I've had the luxury of visiting Hawaii a few times and have taken some of those island hopper flights. I could easily see that as being the perfect use
case to showcase the technology and it's a applicability. And your comments on hybrid approach makes so much sense because it didn't even occur to me that, of course, if you were to go fully electric, then yes, we have all these thousands of airports that are under used, perhaps across the entire United States, but they don't necessarily have
the facility to be able to recharge a plane. It's just like we are looking at the electric vehicle challenges across the United States where yeah, you've got to build that electric charging infrastructure or else people could potentially end up running out of juice in the middle of nowhere.
That's one of those things that's a huge worry point for a lot of consumers, right they don't want to adopt electric because they worry about this, And until you have the infrastructure, you can't really drive adoption of electric. But then then you also have the flip side of that problem. If you don't drive adoption of electric, then there's very little incentive to build out the infrastructure, and
it becomes a chicken and egg problem. So I definitely agree with you that I think the hybrid approach is the one that ultimately makes the most sense and will be the most popular because there will be some airports where they just won't have the capacity to be able to meet that electric charging demand, at least not in the short term, perhaps in the mid or long term.
Absolutely no, we think hybrid will be a valuable product and a valuable product globally for a long time to come. Yeah, look at the use cases of caravans. There, there's cargo passenger, there's a lot of international use cases. There's a number of Sessa caravans in Africa and Asia. There's a lot of places where the caravan. We think the hybrid will be really valuable where which won't need any infrastructure.
Up right, and it's still following in that same path as we're seeing with countries around the world pushing toward electrification for land vehicles, and you're ahead of the game on that when you're pushing for it for aircraft as well.
And to me, like that's a huge value proposition when you're coming into talk to various countries or states or regions and you're talking about the value of going with a hybrid approach, when you're talking about things like climate, you're talking about the local economy, all of those things start to line up and it's I think we're looking at a convergence of perfect timing and perfect environment to
have this kind of an approach to the business. So I totally am jazzed by the mission statement for surf Air in the direction you're pursuing.
Thank you.
Yeah, I selfishly, I'm really looking forward to twenty twenty six when I can start looking at booking a flight on one of these so I can experience it. I mean in the luxury where I could do that just to try it out, but also like the idea of being able to do something to make these short hop flights where otherwise I might not even consider traveling to the place, even though there might be clear benefits to
traveling there. If I might need to record something with someone who's maybe three hundred miles away, and that's too far for me to worry about driving or for them to worry about driving. But if I had an option like this, then that suddenly becomes a viable possibility. And you know, even in just my own personal case, it makes sense.
And I think that's one of the core things that they consider what we're doing. Like again, unlike the shift to ev on the ground, the shift to electric in the air, it really like it matters to customers in a very different way as well. Of course, everyone wants.
To be more more green.
Really, that's the big point here is are actually creating a whole new market and a whole new audience, a whole new level of accessibility where because of the amount you one can reduce cost, people who could never afford to fly in small.
Planes will one day be able to.
Yeah, and that's the real consumer proposition here of regional air mobility and so on.
It's like it's saying, you're.
Guysurely going to take people a lot of people up from the ground into the air because it can now be affordable for them to do so, Like they will be able to get places cheaper and faster, more efficiently.
That's fantastic and it's so exciting to talk about, like the combination of regional air mobility, which is already a burgeoning kind of business area, and then the electrification on the other side, you're putting them both together. It's really innovative.
And I was so excited when I was told that I'd have the opportunity to speak with you about this because again, like when I had first heard of surf air, it was when you know, tech journalists were kind of referencing it as like almost like ride hailing but for small aircraft over in Silicon Valley, which wasn't even really accurate back then, but that's kind of the narrative that developed.
But we're looking at something totally innovative and disruptive in the best of ways, when you're looking at giving more people that chance to take advantage of that mobility while also doing so in a way that's environmentally responsible and also making more use of this infrastructure that exists. And it only has value if you use it. I think of it kind of like Metcalf's law with networks, right, the network is only useful. It's only valuable if you
have connections to it. Well, to me, like we're looking at these this network of airports across the United States and beyond, they would suddenly grow in usefulness as well when they start getting more utility, more people flying in and out of them. Then you start thinking about the impact on local economies. It becomes this cascading ripple effect that just gets really exciting.
Yeah, it's an amazing time to be in aviation. Actually, I think the next couple of days, kids are going to see a real next shift, like people call it the Third Revolution and aviation, where you had like the turboprop, then you had the jet engine, and now you're going to have like the small electric airplane.
Yeah, it's fascinating to look at sort of the circular nature of that and how the things we learn from one era can then be applied to the next one along with innovations in other areas. I can't wait to see where surf air goes from here. I'm really excited to see how your journey continues, and very excited to book that flight in twenty twenty six. I'm just going to put that on my calendar and check back in to see if that's a possibility, because I got places to.
Go so well. Like I said, there's a number of flights you can even book.
Put small planes and combustion engines in the way there.
I definitely want to do that. I have never done that. I've never flown on a small aircraft, and I've always thought that that would be really interesting. So I'll have to look into that anyway, because i really feel like I need to experience it myself to get a full
idea of what that's like. I've watched videos from past years when we were looking more at surf Air as sort of the catering to executive travel, and looking at those videos, I thought, Wow, what an incredible team y'all have over there in your company, and the experience was
such a cultivated one. Clearly, that's a very different thing than what we're talking about with regional air mobility, but it had me excited just from seeing that because it's so far flung from the experience I think most people
have when it comes to air travel. Right now, where they're talking about getting on a big plane and your seats are crammed as close as possible to fit as many passengers as possible, and you feel like you have no personal space, and it's just a very different experience. And yeah, I definitely would like to have the alternative to that.
Well, we look forward to having you on board.
Well, thank you so much for joining the show. I really appreciate your time.
Thank you, Jonathan. That was fantastic. Thank you.
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