A new research paper from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimates that blocking out the middle seat on airplanes could cause the likelihood of passengers being infected with coronavirus to drop by nearly half, just as some airlines are starting to book flights to capacity again.



KEY FACTS



<ul class="wp-block-list"><li>According to the MIT paper (which has not been peer reviewed) the chances of catching coronavirus from a nearby passenger on a full airplane when all coach seats are filled is about <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.02.20143826v2.full.pdf" target="_blank">1 in 4,300</a>.</li></ul>



<ul class="wp-block-list"><li>However, those odds drop to 1 in 7,700 when all the middle seats on board are left empty, the paper states.</li></ul>



<ul class="wp-block-list"><li>Taking into account a <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.02.20143826v2.full.pdf" target="_blank">1% mortality rate</a> according to the statistical model, the likelihood of dying from a coronavirus case contracted on a plane is far more likely than dying in a <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.02.20143826v2.full.pdf" target="_blank">plane crash</a>, which has odds of about 1 in 34 million, the paper stated. </li></ul>



<ul class="wp-block-list"><li>In “Covid-19 Risk Among Airline Passengers: Should the Middle Seat Stay Empty?” the author of the study, Arnold Barnett, wrote that his analysis aims to be “<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.02.20143826v2.full.pdf" target="_blank">a rough approximation</a>” of the risks involved in flying during the coronavirus pandemic.</li></ul>



<ul class="wp-block-list"><li>“The airlines are setting their own policies but the airlines and the public should know about the <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/filling-middle-seats-nearly-doubles-airline-passenger-risk-of-catching-covid-19-says-mit-researcher/" target="_blank">risk implications</a> of their choices,&#8221; Barnett told ZDNet this week.</li></ul>



<ul class="wp-block-list"><li>The paper comes just as more flight carriers, like <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/06/27/american-airlines-ditches-social-distancing-will-book-planes-at-full-capacity/#654a11ea3b9a">American Airlines</a>, begin booking flights to full capacity despite surges of the virus across the country. </li></ul>



KEY BACKGROUND



The coronavirus pandemic has been disastrous for the travel industry, and has especially hurt airlines. Major American carriers including American, Delta and United have asked employees to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/07/08/united-airlines-warns-that-it-could-layoff-36000-employees/#1f5870d93afb">take buyouts</a> and early retirement, Forbes reported, in a bid to cut costs as the pandemic causes them to bleed cash. United Airlines warned this week that it could be forced to furlough <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/07/08/united-airlines-warns-that-it-could-layoff-36000-employees/#6a9425d73afb">36,000 jobs</a>, or nearly half of its American workers, starting in October if travel doesn’t pick up. In April, the airline estimated that in the first quarter it lost <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2020/04/20/united-airlines-first-quarter-loss/#36db1a0196ef">$2.1 billion</a> pre-tax, Forbes reported, and was losing <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2020/04/20/united-airlines-first-quarter-loss/#36db1a0196ef">$100 million</a> a day in the last half of March. Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun said in May he expects a major airline to go <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/2020/05/12/boeing-ceo-warns-a-major-airline-will-most-likely-go-out-of-business-this-year-because-of-coronavirus/#660d73342b4b">out of business</a> in 2020 as a result of pandemic pressure.



NEWS PEG



American Airlines announced two weeks ago it would begin <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/06/27/american-airlines-ditches-social-distancing-will-book-planes-at-full-capacity/#654a11ea3b9a">booking middle seats</a> again starting in July, although the carrier will allow passengers to switch from a full flight without any extra cost, Forbes reported. <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/06/27/american-airlines-ditches-social-distancing-will-book-planes-at-full-capacity/#370f46303b9a">United</a> is also selling tickets for middle seats. American Airlines took flak earlier this month when Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) tweeted a picture of his <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://twitter.com/SenJeffMerkley/status/1278782271986831360?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1279139143117832192%7Ctwgr%5E&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wusa9.com%2Farticle%2Fnews%2Fverify%2Fverify-airplane-safety-coronavirus-major-airlines-policies%2F65-5872a38d-42fe-4940-be04-eb67de1fe0c3" target="_blank">crowded flight</a>. 



<figure class="wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">.<a href="https://twitter.com/AmericanAir?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AmericanAir</a>: how many Americans will die bc you fill middle seats, w/ your customers shoulder to shoulder, hour after hour. This is incredibly irresponsible. People eat &amp; drink on planes &amp; must take off masks to do so. No way you aren’t facilitating spread of COVID infections. <a href="https://t.co/PWG5macqgC">pic.twitter.com/PWG5macqgC</a>&mdash; Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenJeffMerkley/status/1278782271986831360?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 2, 2020</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



WHAT TO WATCH



If airlines continue to extend their policy of keeping middle seats blocked off or if they’ll be forced to book to capacity to turn a profit. <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://twitter.com/SouthwestAir/status/1280932162854948866" target="_blank">Southwest</a> and <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://twitter.com/Delta/status/1278352078784671744" target="_blank">Delta</a> have both committed to keeping their middle <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://twitter.com/Delta/status/1278352078784671744" target="_blank">seats</a> blocked off until at least the end of September, while <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2020/06/26/airlines-tried-social-distancing-board-many-that-experiment-is-ending/" target="_blank">JetBlue</a> will do the same through July, according to the Washington Post.



&#8211; <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/">Carlie Porterfield</a>, Forbes Staff, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/business">Business</a>

gettyimages-1224293933-594×594

Leaving Airplane Middle Seats Empty Could Cut Coronavirus Risk Almost In Half, A Study Says

As a boy, there was never any doubt what Adam Rosman would do when he was older.
“Aviation fascinated me. My friends and I used to build model rockets and fly them at the school fields. I then decided I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer,” he says.
Rosman studied aeronautical engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg. “When I finished, I always wanted to do rocketry, Elon Musk type of stuff.”
He worked at a South African rocket design firm but the company went under. “I think it was just the wrong time, they couldn’t get money,” says Rosman.
<div id="attachment_35983" style="width: 693px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35983" class="wp-image-35983 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Drones-726-1-683x1024.jpg" alt="" width="683" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Drones-726-1-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Drones-726-1-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Drones-726-1-600x899.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Drones-726-1-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Drones-726-1-768x1151.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Drones-726-1.jpg 1241w" sizes="(max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px" />Adam Rosman. Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla.</div>
Back then may have been the wrong time to build rockets, but Rosman seemed to have perfect timing when he started Aerial Monitoring Solutions (AMS) in 2013. The company designs custom drones for the commercial market.
“These aren’t for hobbyists to play around with on the weekend,” he says.
AMS has two drone systems at the moment. One is a large, 2.5-meter, fixed-wing system called the Eagle Owl; the other is a small multicopter system, the Bumble Bee.
As they are customizable, Rosman’s drones have many uses. Farmers use them to inspect the health of their crops and to monitor their fences for security reasons. Game farms use them for fence monitoring, animal counting and anti-poaching. Land surveyors use them to get topographical maps while mining companies use them for ore vein exploration.
“My entire drive is to have something customizable because there’s no one-system-fits-all [solution]. We’ve made a platform that can carry payload, can carry a range of cameras, can do game counting, [and] guys are using it for agriculture.”
There are many drone technology companies emerging in South Africa but Rosman says AMS differs in that it is one of the few that develops hardware, plus it is affordable.
The basic fixed-wing system, with the launch rail, ground control station, antennas, basic day-time camera, and a laptop, will cost about R200,000 ($17,000).
“We found you could purchase systems from overseas that were high precision, but they were hundreds and thousands of US dollars. I felt like they were excluding Africa, or other poorer continents like South America, who can’t afford those systems except if you’re a government or a major company. Why shouldn’t a guy who has a farm and wants to be able to check his fences be able to buy a drone?” he says.
The feature, however, that Rosman takes the most pride in is the robustness of his drones.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/entreprenuers/2017/07/17/mind-blown-drone-160kmh/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Mind Blown By Drone At 160km/h</a>
“From the start, we wanted something that is by Africa, for Africa. It’s got to be able to go into harsh terrain and operate. It’s got to be able to handle the rough handling – like be thrown into the back of a [pick-up truck], driven around on dirt roads, taken out, put together and expected to fly. Unfortunately, I’ve seen some of the demos where the high-end guys come from Europe or America and go to the Kruger National Park, turn on the system but because of the heat it can’t operate,” he says.
“We wanted to give something that could handle anything. If it ends up in a little village covered in dust, and gets dust storms blowing through it every day, it will still be able to operate there or if it’s flying above Kilimanjaro covered in snow.”
Rosman has reason to be proud. He started AMS with nothing but his parents’ garage and a few angel investors.
“I took over my parents’ garage; I kicked them out and said ‘I’m going to work in here’. I brought in equipment and started designing the aircraft in there during the night.”
After a few years, those designs started attracting shareholders.
“They’ve been amazingly supportive. In 2016, they came and saw potential and I’m lucky to have them.”
His parents’ support was just as valuable, even when he was young.
“When I was younger I used to build model aircraft with my dad and then we went on and got remote-controlled gliders and remote-controlled cars. I would build them and play with them for about a week. The next week I would take the entire thing apart because I wanted to see how it worked and then try and put it back together again. To this day, at my folks’ house there are still lots of bits and pieces of aircraft and toys.”
Rosman says drones can kickstart South Africa’s dwindling aviation industry.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2015/10/01/something-to-drone-about/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Something To Drone About</a>
“A lot of jobs can be created in the drone space, from operators to maintenance to regulators. It’s a multi-billion-dollar industry. It’s estimated that from the time the industry started, government regulations have hindered 25,000 jobs from being created.”
As the Deputy Chairperson of the Commercial Unmanned Aircraft Association of South Africa (CUAASA), Rosman understands the industry better than most.
“The main hindrance to the entire drone industry is government regulations. They implemented drone regulations in June 2015 and they brought in some very good regulations, they still are very good. The problem is the implementation procedure has taken too long,” he says.
“Operation certificates are supposed to have a 30- to 90-day turnaround time. Realistically, it’s about a two-year turnaround time.”
A CUAASA study revealed that 99% of the drone industry in South Africa is operating illegally because of the time and cost involved in government regulations.
“Before you start making money, to operate legally, you’ve got to have five full-time safety officers, you have to have purchased your drones, and drone technology at the moment becomes obsolete within nine months, but only in possibly two years’ time can you operate.”
AMS also plans to do payload delivery, but needs to wait for the Civil Aviation Authority to legalize it. Another avenue Rosman is looking at is vehicle tracking.
“Why have helicopters in the air? Our systems fly on autopilot, so if you give it the GPS co-ordinates, it’ll go there… If the drone crashes, you only lose some money.”
With the Eagle Owl and Bumble Bee, money is unlikely to be a problem for Rosman.
&#8211; By Gareth Cotterell

DSC_0432

Drones By Africa, For Africa

Out of high school and straight to flying school, Nicole Swart seems to have figured out her aspirations at Concorde speed. She acquired her pilot’s license at the age of 19, when most girls are only just beginning to dream of high-flying careers.
Starting out as a receptionist in a cleaning company to save enough for her instructors’ course and clock up enough flying hours, Swart is today officially the first person on the continent to be awarded a license to fly drones – and she is only 23.
To the uninitiated, a drone is an aircraft without a pilot onboard. Its flight is controlled either autonomously by inbuilt computers or by remote control. Two weeks after remotely-piloted aircraft systems were integrated into the South African civil aviation airspace, Swart was handed the license.
Any comparisons with Star Wars and military drone strikes are quickly dispelled by her; it’s a world away from being mere instruments of war.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-30790 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Nicole-028-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Nicole-028-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Nicole-028-300x451.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Nicole-028-600x903.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Nicole-028-681x1024.jpg 681w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Nicole-028.jpg 680w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />
“Drones used to be for the military and transporting things, now they’re for crop-spraying. The more advanced the equipment, the more weight it can carry. I don’t foresee drones carrying passengers soon but maybe in about 50 years,” says Swart.
She holds the ‘highest’ pilot’s license – the airline transport pilot’s license. When she’s not flying planes or remotely-piloted aircraft, she is working as a testing standards officer, aviation personnel standards, at SACAA (South African Civil Aviation Authority).
“With flying, it is all about hours. I built up 1,500 hours which is enough for an airline transfer pilot license after I reached the threshold of instruction. I began with the Civil Aviation Authority and was placed in the Unmanned Aircraft department where we had to do research and help develop regulations,” she says.
Working with unmanned aircraft ignited a new passion; Swart went into training and saw an opportunity to learn about drones.
“I didn’t know about it before. They took off in 2007 – the military used it and now unmanned aircraft are in South Africa. It’s crazy,” she says.
A lot of the theoretical components were similar to manned aviation but from a technical point of view, it was an entirely different world.
“The flying side is very different from manned aviation. With an aircraft, you are physically inside it. If you turn right, it turns right. With drones, you have to imagine yourself in the aircraft. It isn’t as easy,” she says.
“This is where aviation is heading to – the future is in unmanned aircraft. You get different types, from 50 grams to seven tons – the range of drones is crazy. I flew a two kilogram remote controlled drone. Basically training is to understand the concept but my interest is in the complex ones where one uses data links and satellites and GPS points,” she says.
South Africa is one of a handful of countries around the world to have introduced comprehensive regulations to guide remote pilot operations.
“Being a third world country, no one expected us or anyone in Africa to be developing regulations. It is a huge deal – we are getting feedback from other countries. They want our advice on how to regulate their countries.”
For Swart, getting her drone license is just the beginning for breaking gender boundaries. She’s setting out to challenge the jokes about female pilots by flying right through the glass ceiling.
“People joke about gender but in the flying world you have to work harder and prove yourself. Once you enter the world you will do anything to be a part of it and work your way up. When I was a student there were 10 girls out of 300. When I left the school, there were 100 females,” she says.
Swart is only just embarking on her journey. She holds the first drone license on the continent and is on her way to becoming a commercial flight pilot, a flight instructor and examiner, but her first few flights have stuck with her.
“I didn’t think I would be ready for my first solo flight – I didn’t even know it was happening. They call the route a circuit. The instructor told me to stop – I thought I had done something wrong but he said ‘now you are flying by yourself’. It was the best feeling of my life. Every time you take off you get a rush and no two landings are the same. I have never experienced anything greater,” she says.
“Once I had a gear emergency, my gear wouldn’t come down which is quite a big deal as you need your wheels. I followed steps and all my training paid off and I had to handle the emergency and land safely.”
Needless to say, she made a safe landing – following protocol to a tee without breaking a sweat. The sky certainly isn’t the limit for this pilot.

Nicole-033

Something To Drone About

Before it scraped the skies it had to pay a $4 road toll. The plane that can fly 500 kilometers an hour also caused a traffic jam for Sunday churchgoers as it trundled 40 kilometers from the factory along the N1 highway to the airfield. Amid all the confusion, it also needed a traffic permit and a police escort.
“The person in the toll gate didn’t know what to charge us. We were larger than a car, but the plane only had three wheels. In the end she let us decide. So we paid the maximum [$4] considering we had stopped the entire highway,” says Paul Potgieter Junior, Program Manager of ARHLAC Holdings, which worked with Paramount Group in designing and building the multi-purpose military aircraft.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-3144" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_0523-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />
“We brought Pretoria to its knees on Sunday church time,” says Ivor Ichikowitz, Executive Chairman of Paramount Group, at the post flight briefing.
Nearly three months later, on a chilly August morning the advanced High-Performance Reconnaissance Light Aircraft (AHRLAC), worth $9 million, soared into the skies on its first public flight.
“This is without doubt a truly historic moment in the South African aerospace and aviation industry. What we have witnessed today has relevance for the whole country and the continent. It marks the rebirth of a dormant industry that has been devoid of innovation for years… this project proves we can build things in Africa and the world is noticing,” says Ichikowitz after the plane lands.
It took four years for 60 engineers and technicians, all African, working 315,000 hours, to do what many thought was crazy.
The ARHLAC can do four jobs in one, cutting costs. It can be fitted for combat, disaster management, intelligence gathering and surveillance within 4 hours.
Along with features like a pusher prop, which allows for unobstructed views in the cockpit, the plane can also carry an 800-kilogram payload; enough for a fighting wild fires from the air. It comes with rugged landing gear for harsh terrain.
“While it’s a terrific feat of South African engineering and a wonderful achievement to have designed, built and flown a new aircraft type, until the details of the proven flight envelope, its handling characteristics, range, payload and endurance are published, it is impossible for anyone to give an independent view of the aircraft,” says Linden Birns, MD of Plane Talking.
Potential customers will also want to know the costs of service plans, its spare parts and its lifespan, an issue all new planes face, says Birns.
“This was the challenge that faced Denel in 1994/95 when it tried to sell Rooivalk to Malaysia and other nations &#8211; the new South Africa had just been born and there was uncertainty about Denel’s future and that it might not be around to support the helicopter in the long term.”
In the near future, Paramount plans to make 30 planes a year. That will amount to a lot of toll fees.
Before it scraped the skies it had to pay a $4 road toll. The plane that can fly 500 kilometers an hour also caused a traffic jam for Sunday churchgoers as it trundled 40 kilometers from the factory along the N1 highway to the airfield. Amid all the confusion, it also needed a traffic permit and a police escort.
“The person in the toll gate didn’t know what to charge us. We were larger than a car, but the plane only had three wheels. In the end she let us decide. So we paid the maximum [$4] considering we had stopped the entire highway,” says Paul Potgieter Junior, Program Manager of ARHLAC Holdings, which worked with Paramount Group in designing and building the multi-purpose military aircraft.
“We brought Pretoria to its knees on Sunday church time,” says Ivor Ichikowitz, Executive Chairman of Paramount Group, at the post
flight briefing.
Nearly three months later, on a chilly August morning the advanced High-Performance Reconnaissance Light Aircraft (AHRLAC), worth $9 million, soared into the skies on its first public flight.
“This is without doubt a truly historic moment in the South African aerospace and aviation industry. What we have witnessed today has relevance for the whole country and the continent. It marks the rebirth of a dormant industry that has been devoid of innovation for years… this project proves we can build things in Africa and the world is noticing,” says Ichikowitz after the plane lands.
It took four years for 60 engineers and technicians, all African, working 315,000 hours, to do what many thought was crazy.
The ARHLAC can do four jobs in one, cutting costs. It can be fitted for combat, disaster management, intelligence gathering and surveillance within 4 hours.
Along with features like a pusher prop, which allows for unobstructed views in the cockpit, the plane can also carry an 800-kilogram payload; enough for a fighting wild fires from the air. It comes with rugged landing gear for harsh terrain.
“While it’s a terrific feat of South African engineering and a wonderful achievement to have designed, built and flown a new aircraft type, until the details of the proven flight envelope, its handling characteristics, range, payload and endurance are published, it is impossible for anyone to give an independent view of the aircraft,” says Linden Birns, MD of Plane Talking.
Potential customers will also want to know the costs of service plans, its spare parts and its lifespan, an issue all new planes face, says Birns.
“This was the challenge that faced Denel in 1994/95 when it tried to sell Rooivalk to Malaysia and other nations &#8211; the new South Africa had just been born and there was uncertainty about Denel’s future and that it might not be around to support the helicopter in the long term.”
In the near future, Paramount plans to make 30 planes a year. That will amount to a lot of toll fees.

Is It A Car? Is It A Plane?

Max Hussmann was just an 18-year-old when he realized he wanted to make his own money. He would do this through Elegance Group, a company in the business aviation industry. While doing this, Hussmann is also swimming laps in the pool in the hope of competing for Germany in the 2016 Olympic Games.
Born in Accra, Ghana, Hussmann completed his schooling in Germany and spent most of his time flying between Africa and Europe.
At the time, his parents worked in Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, Gabon, Congo and Equatorial Guinea and the young Hussmann learnt to speak French, Portuguese, German and English. When Hussmann was about to turn eight, his mother took him to a school in Germany. He stayed there until he completed a degree in international relations and finance.
“My holidays were always spent catching a plane and flying down to Africa to see my dad. And then I always went back and forth,” he says.
Once his degree was completed, he spent a summer working in Greece and forgot about a career in international relations and finance.
“I always wanted to become a pilot. Aviation was always my big dream,” says Hussmann.
After a few chats between father and son, it was agreed that the family would pay half the cost of a pilot course in Germany and Hussmann would pay the rest. His father would pay the other half back to him when he completed the course.
But when an opportunity arose to work for Brazil’s largest carrier, TAM Airlines, Hussmann didn’t think twice. He packed his bags and moved to Brazil without finishing the course.
After two and a half years in Sao Paulo , Hussmann had dinner with the former vice president of TAM Airlines, Fernando Sporleder. The dinner was a brainstorming meeting on aviation. It was over starters that he realized he wanted to make it on his own. There were a lot of decisions made by TAM Airlines’ management that he would have done differently. He realized the airlines were doing things he could do himself.
Business aviation was a tough industry and needed a lot of capital to break into. It was a market that was growing incredibly fast in Latin America and Europe.
But his idea for Elegance was an unrealistic one. It was a dream based on risk.
At the same time, he felt the need to finally finish the pilot course at the Gryphon Flight Academy in South Africa, where it was most affordable.
“Having my heart and spirit set on the African continent was for me the point of a very simple decision that I’m going to South Africa. I moved to Cape Town initially. Obviously as a foreigner in South Africa your dream is to be in Cape Town. I stayed in Cape Town for a year and very quickly realized that Cape Town wasn’t the place for this industry I want to get into,” says Hussmann.
He moved to Johannesburg a year later where he finished the course. Elegance moved to South Africa just before the soccer World Cup in 2010 and Hussmann thought that the business would be able to play a role in the biggest sporting event in the world.
He had grown up speaking four languages and this was his opportunity to use them.
But he quickly learnt that it wasn’t going to be easy and Elegance had no chance in the market at that stage.
He says many governments still take aviation for granted. It is an overly regulated industry that lags on associated infrastructure investment and it is difficult for newcomers to cut their teeth in the industry.
“I realized there are big competitors here who have established successful companies. But, my goal was always from the word go, to one day turn around and be the bigger one and it still is. I want to be the bigger one, not through monopoly in the country and not through hierarchy, but through innovative and creative ways of business,” says Hussmann.
Elegance survived and thrived. Hussmann started Elegance Group which now has different targets and divisions that he hopes will help him attain his goal of becoming the industry’s leading aviation specialist. The divisions include a concierge and charter service called Elegance Air, a sport consulting division and Aviation Consulting which, since 2012, has a footprint in Germany, Hong Kong, South Africa and Brazil.
Hussmann says he is the first business aviation company in Southern Africa to offer the hour package flying principle.
“Companies are able to buy bulk hours of 25 or 50 hours and utilize them to their own flexibility. And it brings huge flexibility to companies, it brings a certain ownership to your hours, and huge tax benefits. Again, a concept that comes from Europe and hasn’t been implemented here,” he says.
One of the reasons it is not in Africa yet is that companies are worried that selling hourly packages is a huge risk in a country where the aviation sector is not yet stable.
But why have such a versatile company that combines sport and aviation?
“They’re both driven industries. I myself have been heavily involved in sports on the swimming side. It is both a future orientated and innovative industry. You can draw a lot of goals and focus from sport into business. Being versatile comes from something I’ve learned from Virgin Group. That’s exactly where Elegance Group is going. Not being rigid in one industry,” he says.
As for expanding the business and becoming an industry leader in the business aviation trade, Hussmann considers moving into countries similar to those that his parents have worked in.
Maybe Hussmann can win a gold medal in both African aviation and the Olympic Games. It never hurts to dream.

The Olympic Dreamer With His  Head In The Clouds

Legend has it that heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali was flying into the newly independent Ghana in the 1960s, when he went into the cockpit and saw two black pilots.
“What did you do with the real pilots?” asked Ali.
“We are the real pilots,” one of them replied.
“Back home in Louisville, Kentucky, they don’t let black people drive a bus,” quipped Ali.
When Ernest Kekana was a young boy in South Africa, fascinated with flying, this picture hadn’t changed much.
“I didn’t necessarily want to be a career pilot but wanted to fly airplanes, and the type of airplanes I wanted to fly was obviously anything I could get my hands on, the bigger the better. In order to fly the bigger airplanes, I knew that I would have to pursue a career in aviation as a pilot,” he says.
Kekana saved up the money he made from working at Edgars, a South African clothing retail chain, to attend a flight school in Lanseria Airport. But he quickly learned that if he wanted to succeed he would have to fly more often. He gave up his part-time managerial position at Edgars for a weekend job at the flight school for a tenth of the money.
“This was my opportunity to get my foot in the door in aviation… It’s one of those close-knit industries, and unless you have your foot in somewhere, it’s going to be difficult to actually break into it.”
When one of the operation controllers from the flight school’s charter division took leave, they needed someone to fill in and Kekana grabbed the controls with both hands.
“It was supposed to be a three-month contract but after the first month they offered me a permanent position,” he says.
At the time, Kekana had his private pilot’s license but could no longer afford to continue his training. He remained working at the flight school on weekends and went to work on charter during the week. He flew charter flights and occasionally sat in as co-pilot to build up his flying hours.
After two years in the charter business he was promoted to senior flight operations controller.
One of the managers at the flight school applied to the Aviation Training and Development Foundation to sponsor Kekana in the final phase of his training. Although Kekana had almost finished paying his way through flight school, the non-profit organization was adamant that he join them. They were looking for a role model to promote aviation among black people.
Kekana then worked for SA Express for two years and then South African Airways for five years, where his dream for his future took shape.
“I [had] arrived in terms of what you can achieve as a career pilot for an international carrier. My first conversion was onto a Boeing 747 as the inflight relief pilot so I was already flying 360-seater airplanes on long-range international flights… From there you just move in the ranks but the airplane and the routes and the types of flying you do will not change for the next 30 to 40 years… I thought, ‘We’re here,’ there must be more that I can do or give back.”
This led to the birth of Kekana’s luxury charter service, K5 Aviation. It is one of the only South African aviation companies with international and domestic licenses for all categories of aircraft and helicopters.
Starting an aviation company wasn’t easy. Kekana chuckles as he tells the story of how he got his service license.
Kekana had approached the international and domestic air services in South Africa to apply for his license. His international license was approved but the domestic air service license was rejected. He says the domestic air service wanted to see more money in the bank and more financial security. K5 then approached the Umsobomvu Youth Fund, now known as the National Youth Development Agency, which offered the funding. After that, the air domestic council approved the license.
“The domestic and international councils are independent bodies. The perceived more stringent council had approved my application and given us the license and the domestic hadn’t, it was a bit of a surprise,” says Kekana.
After they got their finances in order, K5 Aviation took off in 2006, and within the first six months they were making a profit.
“After 12 months we were showing a loss,” says Kekana.
Their worst financial period came during the 2010/11 recession. The company went from having weekly flights to receiving no phone calls. The team had to negotiate with their debtors and creditors.
“We’re still standing. We’ve made money, we’ve lost money but we’ve managed to stick it out through the recession and our doors are still open.”
Despite the difficulties—other airlines suffer too—Kekana is confident about the future of the K5 team. He says they would like to fly larger groups of people more regularly.
The advice Kekana gives to emerging entrepreneurs is the same advice he takes.
“Everything is achievable, if you really want something and you work hard towards it you will get it […] If one day, this all shuts down, if I can come on a weekend and take a little flight school airplane and go for a flight around the city, I’ll be happy because I’ll still be in an airplane.”   FL

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Young, Gifted  And Soaring

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or as they are more commonly known drones, are the latest technology boom that is growing exponentially across the globe and African skies are seeing an increasing number of them too.
What are drones? And how do they work?  Briefly, they are aircraft without a human pilot flying inside. They are flown either by operators sitting in control rooms hundreds, or even thousands of kilometers away, using satellite feeds or radio signals, or increasingly, many drones are flown entirely by computer.
Most people have a vague idea that the Americans have been flying strange unmanned vehicles, called Predators and Reapers over the skies of Afghanistan and Pakistan to spy on and often kill suspected Taliban or other militants. What is startling is the growth of drones in the military. A decade ago, according to a recent article in Time Magazine, there were only 50 drones in the Pentagon fleet, now there are some 7,500 and more than a third of the US Air Force fleet is unmanned.
<div id="attachment_1594" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1594" class="size-medium wp-image-1594" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Tsepo-Monaheng-pic2-300x217.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="217" />Tsepo Monaheng, CEO, Denel Dynamics</div>
The military use of drones, particularly by the States, is troubling but it is a reality that is not going away. And one which has changed the nature of warfare. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports that there have been some 360 drone strikes in Pakistan, killing up to 3,500 people—over 300 of the strikes have been ordered by the Obama administration—while there have been multiple strikes in Yemen and Somalia. The US confirmed, as far back as 2011, that it had been operating Reaper drones alongside Ethiopian forces battling al-Shabaab militias in Somalia. They also have secret drone bases in the Horn of Africa, the Seychelles and Burkina Faso.  The government of Niger recently gave the US the green light to operate surveillance drones to help monitor the movement of extremist groups in the Sahara and Sahel. The US and France are certainly sharing intelligence over ongoing events in Mali, although there are no confirmed reports of drone strikes as of going to print.
The largest manufacturer of drones in Africa is Denel Dynamics based outside Pretoria, South Africa. They have been making drones and other Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) since the 1980s. They make four different drones aimed at both the commercial and military markets.
Their flagship product is the Seeker 400; it is the only long range tactical UAV made on the continent. It is an upgrade on the successful Seeker II, which was exported to two other countries, neither of which can be disclosed, but Denel Dynamics has “Clients in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, South America, especially Brazil. We are not considering entering the market in North America but in Europe there might be some possibilities,” says deputy CEO of Denel Dynamics, Tsepo Monaheng.The Seeker 400 is what Monaheng describes as an entry-level long range UAV.  In the industry, it is known as a ‘MALE’ or Medium Altitude Long Endurance drone. It can remain airborne for 16 hours and carries two payloads so that it can operate different cameras on the same flight, say, a high-resolution optical camera and an infrared one. It has a range of 250 kilometers and relies on line-of-sight communications. It has the potential to be upgraded for satellite links but at this stage, “We cannot hand control of the communications to a third party”.
The Seeker 400 is also designed to carry an armed payload if necessary. “None of our drones carry weapons at the moment but the system can be customized for different client requirements,” he says.
So, South Africa is a potential player in the game of international drone warfare.
“We can sell anywhere that is morally okay. Anywhere our country is okay with,” says Monaheng.
At the moment only the States, United Kingdom and Israel are known to have used armed drones. But as the pressure builds on South Africa to become more involved in continental peace-keeping missions, the questions of who to sell drones to will become a foreign policy dilemma that could have political ramifications. South Africa will, in the near future, have to contend with the growing use of drones by other militaries, especially by Western forces, on the continent and decide what the country’s response to this will be.
Johan Potgieter of the Institute for Security Studies explains that  in the recent conflict in the DRC, after the M23 rebels had taken control of parts of the east, there was renewed interest in the United Nation’s (UN) use of at least three drones to get real-time information for their peacekeeping forces.
“The US had trained the Ugandan forces in the utilization of drones because the UN had agreed to it but then the Rwandans complained.”
What most vexed the Rwandans was their national sovereignty being violated by drones—an issue for which, at this stage, international law has few, if any, precedents or guidelines.
“Africa shall not become a laboratory for intelligence devices from overseas,” says Olivier Nduhungirehe, Rwanda’s deputy UN ambassador.
Where South Africa, as the largest drone manufacturer and exporter on the continent, might place itself on this question is anybody’s guess at this stage.
“Africa is very sensitive about other people interfering in their airspace—as they’ve often got something to hide,” says Potgieter.
The questions raised on the matter in international politics are only going to proliferate, and the military drones themselves are going to get more and more sophisticated. In recent years, however, there has been a rapidly growing parallel development of simpler and far less expensive drones for civilian use.
“There has been an evolution in thinking about UAV technology. They can be used to courier information, blood samples, data of all kinds. They used them at Fukushima to monitor radiation levels. You can use them wherever you don’t want humans to be involved,” says Monaheng.
With this in mind, Denel Dynamics has developed a much smaller drone called the Hungwe, which is small enough to be transported in a single commercial 4&#215;4 vehicle.
“The design concept is for it to be used in civilian airspace. The challenge is to work with the CAA (Civil Aviation Authority).”
Civilian drone technology, both local and international, is developing so fast that it is now prompting a rapid review of South Africa’s aviation laws to integrate drones for civilian use into our air space, as currently there are no regulations for the use of UAVs outside of restricted military airspace.
According to Sam Twala, certification engineer for CAA: ‘This is not a unique problem to South Africa, the whole world is still searching for a working solution.  The UAV interim policy of 2009 is under review and we hope to have something out by the end of this year. But we need to find a solution that not only suits the South African market but harmonizes with the international market”.
There is huge economic potential for both military and civilian drones.
“UAVs are a successful business for us. Our turnover is about R200 million ($22.5 million) and we employ about 90 people. But the industry is growing and we want a big chunk of that and we expect to grow 10% year-on-year.”
At the moment the potential for making money in the civilian drone business is still at a sort of Klondike stage; everyone knows that there is gold out there but no one knows exactly where it is or how to get hold of it.
A 2012 market study by defense consultants TEAL group predicts that global UAV spending will almost double in the next decade from $6.6 billion to $11.4 billion bringing it up to $89 billion over the decade. But really, who knows? It could be even bigger if certain conditions are met: appropriate legislation, enough air space being made available and the technology being safe enough to operate successfully.
The second biggest players in the African market, Advanced Technologies and Engineering (ATE), are currently undergoing cash flow problems but they have over 15 years of experience in the industry and are confident that a turnaround is near.
“The applications for non-passenger UAVs are unlimited. The only restriction is legislation. The CAA is key but so is ICASA [Independent Communications Authority of South Africa]—they have to make bandwidth available to the industry. We need regulation urgently for different classes and types of UAVs.  We can create an airspace where only UAVs operate. There are two types of aircraft: unpressurized planes fly beneath 12,000 feet, most pressurized craft fly over 28,000 feet, so there is a whole band of airspace that UAVs could operate in,” says Jan Vermeulen, programs manager at ATE.
Their main UAV products are the Vulture Tactical UAS used to assist long-range artillery with finding targets and correcting both aim and range. The mobile Vulture is launched by catapult off the back of a truck, while the Sentinel-LE UAS uses a similar flight body but takes off and lands on a runway.
“We don’t make armed UAVs. Definitely not,” Vermeulen points out.
Like Denel Dynamics, they won’t reveal the identity of their clients but Africa, the Middle East and Asia are on the list.
Perhaps their most innovative project is one that is stalled for the moment as the company’s financial position is being considered. Using a tiny UAS called a KIWIT weighing less than 4 kilograms, they developed a system in conjunction with the National Health Laboratory Service. The KIWIT, guided by a PC, would fly from a small rural clinic, carrying a blood sample to a laboratory or hospital with laboratory services. The KIWIT is then programed to drop the sample by parachute and return to the clinic for another load.
“We got a 97 out of 100 success rate but the program is now stalled because of [air space] regulations,” says Vermeulen.
When asked about the future of the company Vermeulen is positive.
“The last two years our turnover was on average R100 million ($11.26 million) a year but we had one big overseas contract who didn’t pay and our cash flow was badly affected. Everything depends on the new owners but we have the potential to do amazing things.”
It’s uncertain exactly how big the UAV manufacturing sector is in South Africa but there are successful smaller companies like Tellumat, which specialize in avionics for UAVs and exhibited at last year’s African Aerospace and Defense show in South Africa.
S-Plane Automation is a Cape Town-based UAV manufacturer, which builds the Swift and Nightingale drones.
“They are both still in development phase. The Swift is a tactical class surveillance UAV, not designed for armaments, that can fly at 18,000 feet. The Nightingale is a much smaller unit, with a wingspan of only 1.5 meters,” says technical director Iain Peddle.
The company’s website explains that they were designed, like ATE’s KIWIT, to transport blood samples.
S-Plane is still working on its UAVs.
“At the moment they are not mature products. We prefer, for the time being, not to compete with the Denels. We are staying in the sub-system market, flight computers, simulators, power managements systems.”
The Swift and Nightingale are elegant machines that are potentially extremely versatile. Peddle won’t go on the record about what their turnover is.
“It’s a sensitive industry but let’s say we’re a growing player. We’ve gone from 6 or 7 engineers to about 20 now.”
Small companies, such as S-Plane, are part of an exploding international market.  A 2012 report by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) on drone proliferation states that the number of countries possessing drones has risen to 76, with over 50 countries developing more than 900 UAV systems.
The South African UAV market faces stiff competition. Potgieter points out that, “Seeker is not necessarily cheap. In an open market it will be relatively easy to find a tested and proven UAV that is much more competitive”.
“China and Israel are our biggest competitors. They put together a whole package where they give a country UAVs and build an airport in exchange for, say, coal. We still operate in a traditional business way, where we have to receive money for our product,” says Monaheng.
Perhaps the most immediately pressing and exciting development for civilian and tactical unarmed UAVs in Africa, is their potential for combatting rhino poaching. Damien Mander, an Australian ex-Special Forces soldier and Iraq veteran, who founded the International Anti-Poaching Foundation has pioneered the use of small drones in tracking elephant poachers in Niassa province, Mozambique. He is developing a scheme to track poachers and watch over rhinos in the Hoedspruit area of Limpopo Province in South Africa.
“There are heaps of drones on the market that have a 20-40 kilometer capability. The drones that conservationists need cost $250,000. The components that go into them cost $100,000 tops. The rest of the price is intellectual property. We don’t have that kind of money so we are developing a UAV that is sold for the cost of its parts,” he says.
Mander has assembled an experienced team that is building the UAVs in Australia.
“You can find the parts on diydrones.com, from all over the place. We want to stay comfortably behind the technology curve. We want them to be affordable, easy to operate in rough remote areas and easy to repair.”
He aims to get five airframes to South Africa by September and pending CAA approval, hopes they will be used against poachers soon.
The unparalleled surveillance capabilities of drones mean that very soon they will become standard equipment for law enforcement. Clearly, they can be used to track criminals, watch borders, guard key installations, help protect VIPs among a number of other uses.
They take us into a 21st century world of Big Brother legal issues. What does their use mean for privacy and entrapment issues? CAA concerns aside, lawyers, legislators and courts are going to have to rewrite a number of laws within the ambit of this new and growing technology. In the very near future, at, say for example, the massacre of miners in Marikana, there will be police drones recording crowd movements; anticipating where they might move next; pinpointing individuals with GPS and face recognition software. Some of them will probably be armed with tear gas or, perhaps, even missiles. At the same time, the mine owners will have their own drones flying overhead, as will the unions and this is not to mention that all the major news companies will most likely have drones too. There will be so many competing streams of information that can be cross-referenced that the whole nature of the investigation will be changed.
The psychological, social and economic effects of this are difficult to predict.  Increasingly, drones will become an indispensable tool of the media. We will expect to watch events across the world in real-time video fed from drones overhead edited in with pictures from cameras and cellphones from journalists and even members of the public on the ground as they are happening. Live broadcasts have been around for decades but drone technology takes it to a new level. Journalists will be able to fly drones over police cordons, prison walls, national borders to be able to bring the events to their audience. Laws might make certain areas or events out of bounds to drones but there will be equally compelling arguments in favor of freedom of expression and the public’s right to know. In purely practical terms, to prevent drones being used, the police might have to shoot them out of the sky or interrupt their flight control signals, which will potentially bring them crashing down. We’ve hardly even begun to imagine what the widespread availability and use of drones will mean for the future.
The unstoppable morphing of drones from the military to civilian worlds and the inevitable growth in their availability and use is not all good news. As Vermeulen points out, “Any guy can buy the components and, with a little bit of technical knowledge, slap them together and then you have a drone.”
The web is filled with sites such as the DroneZone.co.za; www.SMac.co.za (SMart Automotive Components) or even Amazon and Kalahari where you can buy small drones like the Parrot that is operated off an iPhone. The smallest drones available are called MAVs (Micro Air Vehicles) and their designs are inspired by bird and insect wings. In the last month, the British military announced that it was providing its forces in Afghanistan with a 16g Norwegian-designed Black Hornet Nano drone, the size of a weaver bird.
Criminals and killers can all buy these drones and the components to upgrade them for more ominous uses. A recent piece in the Spectator described how in the near future the software will exist for drones to fly autonomously and to make their own ‘kill’ decision based entirely on computer algorithms with no element of human choice involved.
Drones are going to change everything. Soon. Society will have to struggle constantly with their dark, and potentially deadly, aspects but they also represent the next frontier for entrepreneurs. Their potential is enormous. They can be used to courier parcels, monitor flocks of sheep, check the fences on game farms, film aerial shots for movies, find natural disaster victims, monitor schools of fish in the oceans and the illegal trawlers that go after them, survey pirates, rescue yachtsmen in distress, provide live traffic updates, check the quality of soils on wine estates. Their uses are endless.
As Twala says: “UAVs are the future. In the next five years, UAVs will change our lives as much as cellphones did. The list is limited only by one’s imagination”.

Tag: Flying

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