In Some Ways, We’re Just Getting Started
Recent Company Milestones Underscore “Truly Amazing” Progress
By AURA CEO Bill Tolpegin
With the obvious exception of acronyms, the most difficult cliches to avoid when discussing AURA must be aviation analogies. Right?
Examples: Clearly, our recent Series A funding greatly “extends our runway,” and yes, our industry is about to “take off,” and without a doubt, we are “building this airplane as we fly it,” — although that last one may be a bit unsettling for the pilots among us. That said, it’s worth quoting the poet Jimmy Buffett: “… cliches, good ways, say what you mean, mean what you say.”
That’s because what strikes me is that we’re not just building that airplane, we’re building the very infrastructure to support airports and help train pilots — really, helping create an industry — around that airplane. You see it with our partners and their groundbreaking efforts, as well as the intensity that government regulators are addressing how to structure what amounts to the future of aviation. All this can seem more like the early days of the Internet, where the communications industry went from “before” to “after” the World Wide Web. People were communicating before, but not like this.
AURA is a company of details in an industry that can seem more sci-fi than reality based. When the public asks, “Where are the flying cars?”, we can honestly say that we’re working on it. I don’t think we need to even suggest yet that maybe those flying cars will operate themselves or that the rules of the flying-car road are yet to be drafted, let alone implemented.
Until then, and given we’re a company all about tomorrow, let me quote from our own press materials to review truly amazing, recent progress:
“In addition to the Series A funding, the company earlier this month was selected by NASA as a National Campaign partner to integrate air taxies, cargo-delivery aircraft and revolutionary air-vehicle concepts into the national airspace. The NASA selection comes on the heels of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) naming AURA to a new fast-tracking rulemaking committee tasked with empowering beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) aircraft operations. In turn, those milestones follow a January Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruling that allows AURA to expand its network and foster UAS operations at all altitudes across the nation, not just the relatively low-level operations allowed today.”
I think back to a year ago when that list would have seemed like victory. It is, but we’re really just getting started. Our industry is just getting started. I think our company’s vision and mission statements reflect that AURA has become (and really always was) — an aviation company.
I’ll exit with a rare prediction: When we look back on this period from a few years in the future, we’ll note our continued accomplishments, but we’ll truly marvel at how much AURA went from “before” to “after” as a community and a company.
I think that, after months of frustration from a pandemic and other challenges too numerous to list, we are finally on our approach. Now it’s time to land this thing. (Couldn’t resist.)