What We Learned Through UTM Commercial Services
At Acubed, we contribute to charting the future of airspace for Airbus. Through continuous research, simulation and collaboration, our focus area enables us to de-risk concepts of operations, prototype solutions and build digital tools to ensure a safe, fair and efficient airspace. As part of these efforts, Acubed has been providing flight briefing services and flight authorization services through the Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability (LAANC) for over 5 years. We have learned a ton about the market and are incredibly proud of the role we have played in establishing an innovative business model that can transform how digital services are used in aerospace.
As we look back, it’s important to celebrate some of the incredible milestones we’ve hit, including:
- Serving over 10,000 users through our customers (e.g. DroneDeploy, AirData, etc.)
- Managing over 160,000 flight plans (U.S., Australia, Canada, Japan)
- Providing more than 24,000,000 airspace briefings
- Granting of more than 166,000 LAANC authorizations for controlled airspace
Now, we are incredibly excited to apply the learnings and experience we developed through LAANC to new opportunities within Airbus where we are fully committed to leading the evolution of the future integrated digital airspace. As key contributors to the UTM program at Airbus, we will turn our attention to simulating the future digital airspace ecosystem in order to facilitate increasingly complex operations. In order to maintain focus on our refined priorities, we have made the difficult decision to sunset our commercial services at the end of July.
We are incredibly grateful to our customers and the FAA for allowing us this opportunity to work together, researching and testing what is possible for UTM services. The future of UTM is bright and we remain committed to being an active member of the UTM community, where we see UTM as a fundamental enabler for more advanced digital operations.
This is a bittersweet moment. No matter the success, it is always difficult to turn the page on any part of a program. And yet, we look forward to the opportunities that lie ahead as we continue to design the future of our airspace. More to come!