[00:00:08] Speaker A: Hi everyone and welcome to the latest edition of the Sky Careers Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Hodgson and we've got an interesting guest for you this week.
His name is Coram Ellis. He's joining us from Western Australia and Coram is the fleet manager for Fly On E. Welcome, Coram.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Hello, Mark. Welcome. Thank you to be here.
Thank you to be here. What is wrong with you? Absolute pleasure.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: I always ask the same question.
Where did you go to school?
[00:00:44] Speaker B: Ah, where to school? Okay. Yeah.
So I grew up in New South Wales and in a town called Kempsey which is mid north coast, semi coastal, close to the coast and went to high school there in that region and didn't do any aviation studies at the time, but that was quite a while back. That was at the turn of the century.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: That's cool.
And what were your favorite subjects? Obviously non aviation based.
[00:01:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Although a little. I really enjoyed mechanical engineering and physics.
So there were some electives that I chose back in school. I think it's a bit of a different structure these days, but we called them electives at the time and you chose to do certain specialty subjects and they were my two favorites. So a lot of practical application of mathematics, although I wasn't very good at mathematics, but I liked the application of it and how it unraveled the mysteries in physics and engineering.
And that was always been a little bit of a basis of how I've worked since then.
But nothing aviation specific at the time in my high school years.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Just talk us through, what's your current role as fleet manager of Fly On E?
[00:02:08] Speaker B: Yeah. So Fly On E is a company that I founded a few years ago and we our broader overview and outlook is to introduce next generation propulsion technologies and next generation airframes to the Australian airspace.
We do have a huge focus on electric, but electric won't be a solve all solution for aviation in the near future. So there's some potential hybrid designs and plus some all electric propulsion systems coming to market now. We've been flying electric for a few years with a small fleet of three electric aircraft which we started introducing to pilot training a few years ago and learning a lot of lessons about how to operate electric aircraft. We've since expanded and we have a larger fleet now of nine aircraft including some charter operations.
So part 135 charter operations, part 138 aerial work and part 141 flight school operations as well as sport category flight school operations. So I run the little fleet of aircraft.
Some are quite legacy in design and some of the new next Gen propulsion systems. And it's a nice position to be in at the moment. Learning a lot of the lessons about how legacy aircraft work in the current framework and iteration of aviation practices. Discovering all their weaknesses and limitations and all of their strengths and then figuring out how these next generation aircraft can come and address some of those weaknesses and limitations which are mostly economical.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: Wow, that's. There's a bit in there for us to unpack. Let's.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: Not at once.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: That's cool. We're have a great conversation.
What was your first job in aviation? Let's try and sort of start. Start with. Start where this story.
[00:03:58] Speaker B: Yeah, fair enough.
So I am quite new to aviation myself, just five years in really. And when I founded the company that now completes the operations and is doing all the work of introducing these next gen technologies, my plan was a lot different.
There's an old saying, no idea is fully formed and that was definitely the case here. And you change and pivot along the way. So my original outlook was to be introducing small personal private next generation aircraft, specifically evtol.
My naive outlook at the time and excited about these emerging sci fi looking technologies. We were looking at the idea that more and more people would have something that you could call a flying car. So that's what brought my attention to the sector was in automotive and electrical design and modification at the time. And I thought hey, there's a new emerging industry here and an emerging market sector which will be personal private EVTOL flight a few six 12, 18 months in. That changed a lot as I learned a lot more about the limitations of evtol. The distance between that moment in time and when there would be actual available products that could be taken to market. But I also learned a lot about how much more practical it would be to look at next generation fixed wing aircraft instead of next generation EVTOL aircraft.
For those listening that don't know, EVTOL stands for electric vertical takeoff and landing. So imagine a multi rotor electric helicopter though.
There's a lot of these EVTOL projects going out there. But they're hampered by practicality, payload energy density with batteries. There's a lot of limitations there. But. But electrifying a fixed wing aircraft is a far more practical approach to introducing new technologies into general aviation and gets much greater and arguably safer results just by flying a traditional airframe shape. But when I said traditional shape with some next generation build influences. So we're switching to all composite materials for the build, which means we can make much more modern and more efficient shapes.
Looking at Non traditional airframe shapes and getting to a higher lift over drag ratio. So that aircraft can be a lot more efficient in flight and also produce a lot less noise which is important in built up metropolitan areas.
So.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: Interesting.
Sorry to interrupt. So I was thinking one of these legacy pieces about, I think it's an anniversary or something of the Concorde.
[00:06:50] Speaker B: Right.
[00:06:51] Speaker A: And, and the various competitors, the Russian Tupolev and also an American sure.
Based supersonic aircraft that never got built. But the noise, the sonic booms was a massive. Yeah, it was a massive issue. So that's, it's a really interesting how.
[00:07:05] Speaker B: Nobody wants that over a city.
[00:07:07] Speaker A: No, exactly.
So, so just, just so if I come to you today and you're sitting in your, in your, in your customer lounge there.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: What?
[00:07:17] Speaker A: Yeah, what, what aircraft would I be, would I be jumping into?
[00:07:22] Speaker B: Yeah. So in the flight training operations we've got sport category electric and non electric hipistral aircraft and they're a really fun aircraft to fly. A really nimble and sprightly lightweight sport category aircraft. All carbon composite, very, very low drag, very responsive on the controls, lots of control surface areas. But because the aircraft so light, very light on the controls as well, so they're heaps of fun to fly. You feel a lot of the flight through the airframe and it's a, more of a, it's a real aviator's experience. You know, there's not many interruptions between the flight control surfaces and your fingertips so you're really feeling the aircraft and they're so lightweight too that dynamically in the air that you're flying through, you know, you're noticing the wind and the lift of rising air and sinking air. A lot more in that sort of aircraft then are they.
[00:08:17] Speaker A: Sorry, just. Sorry. Just to just. Yes, this. Permission to ask a stupid question. So are these powered by, These electric powered or these powered by.
[00:08:26] Speaker B: We've got both options. So they're an identical airframe, but one with the electric propulsion system, one with the piston propulsion system.
Electric, particularly the very first generation of electric, which is the ones we have flying and operating now. They have their limitations, of course. The first of anything is quite limited. We often get a lot of, you know, negative public feedback about the limited endurance of the electric aircraft, which is we're only flying for 30 to 40 minutes in controlled airspace, 40 to 50 minutes in non controlled airspace. But people are quick to forget. Well, it's not bad.
That's a good.
[00:09:01] Speaker A: I didn't know the answer. They say you should know the answer to the question for you I had no idea that question. I mean, that it's a decent dose, that's not nothing. And you know, that gives you a.
A range of. What kind of speed are they doing?
[00:09:16] Speaker B: Oh, up to 100 knots. 110 knots, no problem. The airframe will comfortably fly 110 knots, but you're using up your energy quite quickly at that rate. So it's a trade off, you swap speed for endurance. And so we typically in the electric aircraft, we fly around at about 70 knots, so everything still feels very crisp on the controls. It's not mushy or floaty at that speed, but we're getting a lot more time in the sky.
You can rip around at 100 knots and the plane feels and flies great, although you do get bucked a little bit sometimes if you hit some dynamic air.
But you're carving through your energy quite quickly, which is reducing the amount of time you have in the sky. Typically in that aircraft we're flying either a scenic experience if people are using it recreationally, or we're doing training so there's no airspeed rush. You're trying to get time in the saddle so you can learn the task at hand, or you're flying low and slow so you can enjoy the view of the beaches or the reefs or the whales or whatever you're out having a look at.
That's stage one aircraft.
[00:10:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I was going to. How long do they take to recharge?
[00:10:20] Speaker B: It's about a one to one charge to flight ratio. So 40 minutes in the air is 40 to 50 minutes charging on the ground.
Yeah. So quite usable. And we can fly 4 or 5 minute emissions a day without it being being stressful or difficult. So that's just some good time and good logistics. You've got to handle your day well and make sure the first person's on time. But you get out, you fly a mission, put the aircraft on charge, debrief, rebrief the next person and so on and so forth and get through a nice full day without a problem. So that's the entry level aircraft that we're flying to introduce people to flight training and get through the first 20 to 40 hours of app initio training in a mix of those aircraft. We do what we can in the electricity and we do what we can't in the piston aircraft. With that very lightweight, high efficiency airframe, we're still only burning about 13 litres at 110 knots in the piston version of that airframe, 13 litres per hour.
[00:11:15] Speaker A: Sorry, how would that compare to a Heavy, conventional.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: Yeah. So another typical flight training aircraft would be a Cessna 172 which we have two of as well. And they're burning up to or maybe over 30 liters per hour of fuel. And it's a different fuel to the smaller aircraft run on mogas, regular pump fuel that you put in your old fashioned motor vehicle. I was about to say that you put in your motor vehicle but a lot of people switched to electric motor vehicles.
That's definitely the case for us. Our families have been all electric for a little while. So a cheaper fuel and with no lead, which is important as well. And removing lead based fuels from our community is a big part of our agenda. So we're trying to introduce these next generation propulsion technology so we can get away from leaded adv gas which is as everybody knows, lead is a highly toxic substance that we shouldn't be breathing but somehow it's managed to stay, managed to hang in there in general aviation.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: I was at a briefing at Sydney Airport about a month ago and as listeners know I'm not an aviation expert so I like to think I bring the kind of fresh eyes of someone who isn't immersed in the industry.
And I was quite struck about how big the conversation about sort of green fuel, aviation fuel, it's not a fringe, it's a mainstream, it's a mainstream concern and investment for mainstream operators like the big airports and the large. Absolutely large airlines as well, isn't it?
[00:12:43] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Well aside from there's an interesting fact I'll bring out which might be interesting to some of your listeners.
Apart from from the environmental focus of finding alternate fuels that have more manageable emissions.
Put all of that aside because there's a huge debate about emissions and just how impactful they are.
But there's a huge risk that Australia has maneuvered itself into this risky position where our energy sovereignty is actually extremely low.
So we're at the moment dependent on the import of refined and semi refined fuels that we use on the ground, in the air, on marine, all sorts of applications. But we don't produce that locally. And I've heard it said, in fact, check me on this, but that our energy sovereignty is only as probably about 14 days. If our import supply of refined and semi refined fuels stops, the country can run for about 14 days before it starts running out of fuel.
That's so for big operators that want a little bit more to de risk their business and protect their potential operations in a world where there's a lot of regional instability and supply chains of Fuel could be interrupted. They want to know that they've got supplementary or alternate supply chains of fuel that they can run in their aircraft. So an operator like Qantas or Virgin Big, big operators that would be very disrupted by a fuel shortage. They want to source alternate fuels that can be economical but also more environmentally friendly. And a lot of that sustainable aviation fuel can be produced and sourced locally from feedstocks from our agricultural industry. So it's getting a lot of attention for various smart reasons, not just for some potential emissions reduction, but reducing waste in another industry from that feedstock. Material that would have just gone would need to be processed or landfilled anyway and that can be turned into a second life fuel.
That will then increase the energy sovereignty of either private operations or I'm sure government operations are interested in that, particularly military. Even our military is dependent on imported fuel, which is a, you know, dangerous position to be in.
[00:15:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I know.
I've heard those arguments made in multiple contexts and say, and it was definitely one of the, one of the, one of the conversations at the time, same Sydney airport briefing I was at was the fact Australia is an end of the line location.
[00:15:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:17] Speaker A: So yeah, everything you're talking about makes a lot of sense.
[00:15:21] Speaker B: Yeah. If those ships stop coming from Singapore, then only us electric car drivers get to keep driving around.
It'd be good for business, everyone to come and fly our electric planes. But.
[00:15:33] Speaker A: I love what you're doing with your electric plane. So talk us through, talk us through a typical day in your role. What are you doing on a day to day basis there?
[00:15:43] Speaker B: Yeah, sure, we've got the busiest part of our operations, particularly in the. It's now the on season in Western Australia. The sun's out, the weather's stable, it's warming up. We do a lot of air transfers from Perth over to Rottnest Island. That's the biggest part of our business by volume and that's using the traditional legacy aircraft. So Cessna 172s and Piper two Cherokee sixes and we've got I think six, six or eight flights today. Our morning passengers have all left and I'm on a little break in between and then afternoon passengers will come back on the return. But as well as that, day by day we're doing flight school operations. And so we've got the training flights happening in the smaller lightweight aircraft and some training operations happening in the bigger aircraft as well. We do GA ready packages to get graduates that have just finished maybe a more industrial style flight school.
And they've come out with their CPL and 220 hours of flying. But they're not really ready to enter general aviation yet. They need a bit more conditioning and they need to fly a few other aircraft types. So we should do some GA ready packages to get them flying on.
So they might have done all their learning in a diamond DA40 which is fabulous, but it gives them a pretty limited skill set because practically there's not many planes out there that people are going to fly in their early aviation career that operate like a DA40. So they need to fly a clunky old Cessna that doesn't want to start on a cold morning and learn all of those things and get used to more detailed pre flight inspections where you having to check more of the airframe and things like that. So we do some GA readiness just to condition some of those students as part of our packages and of course a lot of ab initio training. And we do get people just traveling far and wide to try the electric aircraft. We've had people from the uk, the us, Singapore's common. Quite a few people from Singapore have come to Perth just to have an electric aircraft experience, which is fun to sort of share that. And so that's a typical day. We're just running those operations day by day and growing on all fronts. We're trying to get more of our part one for one and flight training procedures happening for more people. We've been able to, by using those low cost aircraft, electric and non electric, we've been able to lower the cost considerably. This isn't a unique strategy. There's a few flight schools on the east coast in particular that I see really leveraging the sport category aircraft for the ab initio training before moving people onto the larger aircraft. And by doing that method there's no compromise really in the, in the learning curve of the student. They just save thousands and thousands of dollars. So it'd be mad not to use that mechanism.
Use the sport category as much as you can and just fly the bigger clunkers when you're ready to transition.
[00:18:30] Speaker A: The bigger clunkers. I love it.
[00:18:31] Speaker B: The clunkers.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: What's the. What's the. You mentioned you've got people coming from overseas especially to try to try to fly.
What's the right language? Electric plane. E plane. I don't know. Or E power?
[00:18:45] Speaker B: Yeah, Just. Just electric plane. Yeah.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: What, what are their first. What.
What do they say? Most of them? What's the impression?
[00:18:54] Speaker B: The flight experience is pretty similar. Right. So the aircraft is a traditional for those that Aren't familiar. It looks like a normal plane, just a sleek sort of modern version. But it's a tractor configuration. Propeller on the front, high wing, T tail at the back. It's all pretty normal plane stuff. And the same inside the cabin as well. You've got a control stick, all normal stuff, rudders and a go lever. The. It's just the go lever doesn't make any noise when you press it. That's the fun part. So there's still a bit of noise off the propeller. Of course. It's moving a lot of air.
The plane's flying through the air at over 200 km an hour. There is a bit of noise through airflow, but there's no roar of the engine. The typical thing, probably what jumps out to most people is the lack of vibration and the lack of smell.
I've noticed quite a few people can be nauseated a little bit by the smell of fuel and that can contribute to people feeling acid. In the electric aircraft, there's just none of those oil and fuel smells, no vapors. So it's quite pleasant at the holding point. The propeller is still.
So when you're waiting at any time stuck on the airfield waiting for traffic or waiting for takeoff clearance, you're not consuming any energy. So it's not affecting your onboard energy or flight time. And it's just quite peaceful. You're just sitting there quietly and stationary with the prop not turning. No vibrating aircraft. No. No engine getting hot.
So that's probably the standout things that people notice. Wow. It's such an interesting holding point experience. And when you take off, it's just a smooth climb up. It's only as bumpy as the air around you. There's no vibration in the plane and roar of the engine. And if you get a really nice still morning, it feels like you're ice skating up there. There's just. It's such a glider like experience with that. A really efficient, sleek airframe and no vibration from the motor. You've. You've got all the advantages of powered flight, but it feels like you're flying a glider, which is a really nice experience for those of you I can imagine.
[00:20:50] Speaker A: You're just coram. You're describing it beautifully.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: What's the. What part of your job do you enjoy the most?
[00:20:59] Speaker B: I like introducing the new things. So it's very difficult but also very rewarding when we break through and get something established and CASA approved or it's actually pretty hard to get something CASA approved, but you can get CASA nil. Objection. That's about as good as you can get.
And that's. That is a. I actually get a lot of enjoyment out of that. It doesn't seem like the sexy part of aviation. Obviously, flying is an amazing experience and getting out there and experiencing the sky and flying the aircraft is stunning. But one of the biggest rewarding parts for me is when we break through and have one of these new pieces of technology approved and certified. So the electric aircraft we're flying now here at Genicot was the first. This was the first place in the world that an electric aircraft was certified for pilot training.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:21:52] Speaker B: So CASA were the most.
They were the.
Not the most flexible. They weren't flexible on any of the rules and our obligations, of course, but we worked with them and we were able to establish conditions where they had nil objection to us operating the electric aircraft in a certified capacity for pilot training operations. So steps like that in the business, when we break through and get something like that established, and then we spent another couple of years working on the difference training package and we were able to build up a nice safe difference training package to put over to CASA and the other governing body, raoz, that govern the sport category aircraft, and again have that as accepted as a standard and nil objection for that to be used as electric aircraft flight training, which is now, you know, as the standard for electric aircraft flight training. So when we hit those little milestones, it's super rewarding that you've got a crew of people that put in hundreds of hours of work getting something established and for it to meet all of the requirements and then be the new way.
That's a bit of a buzz.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: Good for you.
You sound like a real pioneer coram and a bit of an entrepreneur as well.
Has it been quite the journey?
[00:23:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. There's been plenty of ups and downs.
That's always the way it goes. Right. There's.
To take on a task like this, it takes a fair bit of naivete.
If you.
If you knew how hard it was going to be when you started, you probably wouldn't get started. So sometimes I just go in and my head down and the blind is on a little bit deliberately.
Because if you pre identify all the challenges and all of the costs before getting into something, it starts looking like a difficult return on investment. But once you're in neck deep and you've come far enough, you're kind of committed to the task and you just keep powering through, that's where the resilience steps in and keeps you spinning Keeps you pedaling, keeps you in the air, so to speak, until you can break through the next milestone and get a growth in operations, which we are experiencing now. So things are growing nicely and the revenue streams are increasing, which is giving us the positive feedback that, yes, okay, these things are working, these next generation technologies and practices are working out and they're definitely going to have a long term place in aviation. Now it's just a matter of scaling them up so that they can make a meaningful difference.
[00:24:27] Speaker A: Yeah, what's the. Without getting too technical, how far away are we from, I don't know, doubling the endurance.
[00:24:38] Speaker B: Really, really close.
The endurance is actually an increase of endurance is an easy. Easily. When I say easy, it's a very achievable feat right now. The first generation aircraft that Pipistrel made has a limited endurance for some very specific reasons. They very specifically built an aircraft to fit in the LSA category, so it had to be very lightweight, which means only so much battery can be on board. And the other important factor that they built the plane to was a price point. They very deliberately made a plane that was a palatable cost so that this first generation aircraft could get out there.
If they had made a big fancy aircraft that weighed 900 kilos and flew for two hours, which totally would have been possible, it would have then not been certified because it's far more difficult to certify in general aviation than it is in the LSA category. And it would have cost $3 million and that would have been a very hard product to then get out into the market for some early uptake. But they made an aircraft that was $300,000 Australian in the LSA category, which is very easy to get flat flying in lots of different regions without a lot of regulatory red tape. And that let the product get out into the market a lot more freely. So again, there's a lot of criticism from the naysayers and the petrol heads about, oh, these things don't fly very far. I was like, no, that was a deliberate choice to get something out there so that people could start experiencing and learning this aircraft and then figuring out what to do the next time around. Now there's some very exciting airframes globally being built that are much bigger. They will fit in the general aviation category. They'll be up to 1500 kilos MTO and they have 6 or 700 kilos of battery or a hybrid electric propulsion system on board. And they will fly for three hours, three hours total. We'll be keeping 45 minutes in reserve so you're looking at a practical use time of two hours in the air with two passengers, maybe 90 minutes in the air with four passengers. Now we're really talking that's actually now covering maybe, you know, 50 to 70% of 4 and 6, 8 aircraft operations that people are typically doing. Now. It won't solve all of general aviation's problems and you won't be able to go on a five hour cross country. But when you really drill down to it and talk to most people about what types of flights they're doing, they're not really flying more than an hour, an hour and a half, a lot of the time anyway.
So now you've got a product that addresses a huge volume of aviation and 90% of ab initio pilot training, just a big part of the sector. And one of those aircraft, the one that we hopefully think is the most viable out there in the market, is one that we're developing in gendercore. We have a full flying prototype already and just a quick plug. It will be on display at our open day on the Saturday, November 1st.
So if this podcast gets out there.
[00:27:28] Speaker A: Before then, we'll try and publish. Oh, that's. Where are we now? Three days. We probably won't. Yeah, okay, we'll put you out on our socials.
[00:27:36] Speaker B: But it's get a sniffing.
[00:27:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
And as you say again, I'm very much a layperson in this, but everything you said makes a lot of sense. And presumably, or am I right, that the maintenance around the maintenance way way less, I would think.
[00:27:53] Speaker B: Way, way less. So even forget about the cost of energy in flight per hour for a moment because that's actually only a small contributor, the maintenance schedule. So as a fleet manager and operating these legacy aircraft, the biggest cost, the biggest disruption to your business and the most difficult part of the whole business to manage is the ongoing scheduled maintenance. And then of course, unscheduled maintenance pops up as well. The scheduled maintenance is very, very difficult to manage economically. The cost is very high and those costs are rapidly increasing in the past few years and probably will continue to do so in the future. And that's for a few different reasons.
Global supply chains are more challenging than they've ever been. There's a lot of delays there and that's driving up cost.
Just the cost of freight and shipping has shifted. But there's a huge skills shortage. And on the subject and at the soul of this channel, that's something I'd encourage listeners to really look into. A lot of aviation gets a lot of attention in the pilot training sector. And everybody wants to be a pilot. But there are massive opportunities out there in engineering and other supporting parts of the supply chain of general aviation, where there's good paying, exciting jobs in manufacture, engineering, ongoing maintenance where people can earn a really nice career and still be involved in aviation and still be doing a lot of flying. So if flying is your dream and your love, by all means fly at the same time. But look into a career in engineering because this skill shortage is limiting supply chains for general aviation, making it harder and harder for legacy operators to continue operating economically, which will reduce the amount of flying that everybody's doing and just price a lot of people out and really reduce the access to aviation. Just through it'll be cost prohibitive. I mean it already is becoming more and more cost prohibitive. We've seen the cost of flight training go up 30% in the last 10 years, maybe more in some areas.
And there's operators are still struggling even with that shift of costs. We're seeing flight schools close, legacy operators disappearing. Two or three big flight schools have closed down in Jainicot in the past five years.
Big flight schools that have been operating for decades and they just had to wrap up because the cost of operations is no longer viable.
And that's a shame to see.
And that's just lowering the access to aviation. So we're hoping there's new more. In answer to your question, sorry. This next gen propulsion systems are much lower maintenance, far less moving parts. We shift to carbon composite airframes instead of old aluminium folded and riveted airframes. And all of a sudden we get rid of corrosion inspection schedules are shorter and lower and everything speeds up and becomes less disruptive for the operator, which means less expensive for the end user. Whether that's a passenger, a fair paying passenger, or a student pilot, or a private recreational aviator, all of those costs will start to come down. There's just a huge difficult barrier to overcome which is acquiring all these new aircraft, getting through all the certification and that is a big hump in the road. Right. We need to operators and distributors and importers need to all commit to these, getting these new technologies in and these new airframes at scale, which will bring down the cost. And that's going to be a difficult probably multi decade scenario. So we'll see a huge crossover of legacy operators still trying to keep this old aircraft flying because they're amazing machines, but they're just cost prohibitive while new technologies are coming in and people are learning how to use those and finding the capital to acquire these new aircraft and integrate them to flight schools and charter operations.
And that's what we're trying to lead with our flight school and charter operations as well as being as an importer of these new technologies is to do a little bit of all of that and kind of pave the way so that other operators can learn from what we've figured out into what works and what doesn't. And then we'll focus on importing the most viable aircraft that do address the needs of charter operators and flight schools as cheaply as possible and safely. As safely as possible.
[00:31:56] Speaker A: I love the pioneering nation, sorry, nature of what you're doing. And as they say, no pun intended. Well, maybe it is intended. I'm going to help. I'm going to land the plane. We've got been quite techy, much more techy than usual. But I might apologize. I think it's been fascinating. I think you've really opened the lid for a lot of us on really starting to understand sort of where the technology is today and where it can go and also the real benefits, which certainly make a lot of sense to me. I'm going to ask you a question. I think I know the answer because you're an innovator and an entrepreneur and a guts and guy who starts business. So what do you do when you're not at work?
[00:32:37] Speaker B: I don't understand the question.
Yeah, that's the type of journey that we're on at the moment. Myself and my close team and my partner. There is no not at work unfortunately where more than anything we kind of. We don't run a calendar so much or a work week. We most of our operations day vfr. So if the sun's out, we're flying.
When it's a stormy week, we have some time off but usually we've got to catch up on a lot of admin and email. So it just ends up being some inside work. But for a lot of entrepreneurs and innovators or founders, part of their fuel work isn't a job. Work is we're out here pursuing something for a passion. So that's part of your reward mechanism is getting the task done so it doesn't so much feel like work. Like I was saying before, we get a really big buzz when we achieve a milestone and break through.
So we're not looking at, you know what day of the week it is when your leaves coming up. You're not watching the clock to see what time you can go. You're watching your task to See how close we are to completion. If I do a little bit more today, you know, will we get ahead of that problem? Will we solve that so we can move on? And when that becomes your reward mechanism and your chronological focus, you're not having, you know, you're not waiting for the weekend or anything. And that's probably important outlook in aviation because aviation is very weather dependent. So you know, you can't expect to be doing a Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, because that's not how, that's not what the customer wants. The customer wants to fly when the customer wants to fly.
[00:34:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, I've started several businesses and I know exactly what you're talking about.
We're kind of slightly different beasts. And your answer doesn't surprise me at all. And it's a great answer.
So lastly, we could talk for hours and I'm sure we'll talk again.
But you did mention this earlier, but what advice would you give to other young women and men thinking about a career in aviation?
[00:34:50] Speaker B: Yeah, expanding on a little bit. What I mentioned before is to broaden your outlook.
Probably the best way to describe it. So if you have a love for aviation and you've got a specific idea in mind, which is typically, I want to fly planes. It's a great idea to have. Flying planes is amazing. I cannot recommend enough. The experience of being able to fly an aircraft as pilot in command, recreationally or commercially is just stunning. And then there's a lot of interesting career opportunities out there flying all sorts of different airframes in all sorts of different scenarios.
So be flexible and versatile, but understand where the opportunities are at the moment. We do get a lot of applications from low hour commercial pilot graduates. They're fresh out of school and it's hard.
That's a difficult time for a young pilot to be finding work. You're not an attractive hire prospect at that point in time. You need a lot of training still, you need a lot of coaching.
They're typically quite young, which means not a lot of life experience and not a lot of secondary skills that a business can use. So my advice would be to broaden your scope.
Do some sales training, learn how to talk to people, pursue your instructor rating. That's a very valuable one to do. So if you're in commercial pilot training and you have completed and you've got the opportunity to add an instructor rating to that, get onto it, upskill yourself as much as possible so that you're not so narrowly focused and that makes you a lot more hireable. So if you can help a business and be aware of maintenance requirements and be able to assist either from an administration perspective or on the tools and build those skills as well. And there is huge opportunity in manufacturing and maintenance in aviation.
Building hours is a big, expensive, difficult challenge for fresh graduates. Imagine if you're a well paid engineer, you're straight out of your CPL training and you're able to enter a job where you're doing an engineering apprenticeship and you're still making 60, 80, $90,000 a year. If you work hard and make yourself valuable to a business, you'll get a good wage in engineering that you can then spend on more flying. And you're still with planes every day. You're still connected and working in aviation, opening up opportunities and learning more about the machines that you're flying. All of this is really important stuff. So I'd encourage more and more people to look at jobs outside of just specifically flying and do flying along with and in parallel with those other career pursuits.
[00:37:25] Speaker A: That's great advice. And it reflects, I mean, it reflects what we hear from a lot of the people who we've interviewed on the Sky Careers podcast and what we're doing with Sky Careers. And also one of the reasons we launched Sky Careers Connect and Sky Careers Leadership are those programs that help people broaden education, getting job ready, how to do interviews, how to interact with other people, life skills, leadership skills.
Because just having your shiny new CPL is like, it's the start, very much the start of the journey, not the end of it, isn't it?
[00:38:03] Speaker B: 100%. Unfortunately, it's just not enough. Because the sad fact is there a dime a dozen, a fresh CPL graduate, you need a point of difference. So skill yourself up and come hit the workforce. Look, sorry, hit the job market saying, yeah, I'm a cpl, but I'm proficient in this, this, this, I'm ready to help with maintenance I'm great on, and I'm a very viable employment prospect.
[00:38:28] Speaker A: Love it. All right, Coram, thank you so much for your time.
It's been great.
[00:38:33] Speaker B: My pleasure.
[00:38:35] Speaker A: I'm sure we'll have you back to find out what the latest.
[00:38:40] Speaker B: Yeah, of course. I'd love to come back anytime.
[00:38:43] Speaker A: Absolutely. So thanks so much for your time, Coram.
[00:38:46] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:38:46] Speaker A: Cheers.
[00:38:48] Speaker B: Bye, everybody.
[00:38:56] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the Sky Careers podcast.
If today's conversation has sparked your interest in aviation, then head over to our
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