Rob Wiesenthal saw the future before you did
And he doesn't like the term "eVTOL"
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Rob Wiesenthal would have been a worthy supporting character in Succession: he knows all the right people in New York City and he frequents CNBC as an on-air guest. He also runs Blade Air Mobility, a company known for its fleet of all-black helicopters and private jets. Each aircraft is branded with Blade’s minimalist logo, which has casually appeared in the background of every young Wall Street banker’s Instagram story at least once.
Rob actually received an offer for Blade to be featured in HBO’s popular comedy-drama series, but he turned it down. “We pick our battles wisely,” he explains, “but I love the show, with or without our helicopters.”
Rob is an experienced operator and a master marketer, often juggling priorities that don’t just compete, but sit diametrically opposed to one other.
For example, Blade is now a public company (its SPAC merger was finalized in May 2021), and Rob is tasked with growing shareholder value. That’s not easy to do when scaling the company also means scaling the noise produced by its helicopters, something that many New Yorkers abhor. Undeterred, Rob emphasizes that after safety, his number one priority is being a good neighbor.
Rob must also manage the dissonance between what Blade wants to be and what it’s known for. The company positions itself as an accessible alternative to ground transportation, but it’s better known as a luxury service for the rich.
Compared to an Uber from Manhattan to JFK Airport during rush hour, which will cost north of $100, the price of a Blade doesn’t look too bad: seats start at $195. But the numbers only go up from there, and some of Blade’s services are quite expensive. Still, Rob continues to sell Blade to investors and the public as the future of mobility for a broad demographic of people. That’s one reason why he couldn’t have scenes of the Roy family being shuttled around in a Blade helicopter.
Whether it’s the NIMBY folks or the eat-the-rich crowd, Blade has its critics. But Rob appears to float above it all, perhaps buoyed by the success of his newest line of business, one that I don’t think anyone will be complaining about.
In 2020 Blade started transporting organs for hospitals like NYU Langone. After an acquisition and subsequent in-house growth, Blade MediMobility is now the company’s largest business: in 2022, revenue from organ transport surpassed revenue for short-distance helicopter flights, the product line Blade is most well-known for. It turns out that saving lives is good business. In our Q&A below, Rob shares how he’s made organ transport more affordable for the medical community.
In addition to the organ transport product line, Rob is optimistic about something else: a future of affordable, carbon-free air mobility. It’s something he’s been thinking about for a long time. Here’s an excerpt from our Q&A:
Our strategy is not unlike what Netflix had in the early days: a great brand, great content, and a great service, but they were moving DVDs in bags. Despite all of that, they called the company Netflix for a reason—they didn't call it DVDs in a bag. Similarly, we never called our company “Blade Helicopters.” So what streaming was to Netflix, EVA is to Blade. EVA unlocks exponential growth in this industry. Yes, it’s great that EVA is cleaner than traditional rotorcraft, but more importantly, it’s quiet. Noise is the unlock; it’s what allows us to open more landing zones.
This is why Blade has partnered with Beta, a Vermont-based eVTOL developer, to usher in next-generation aviation technology. In February, the two companies collaborated on a test flight that garnered a lot of attention. It wasn’t quite the future of urban air mobility that we’ve been dreaming of (the aircraft took off and landed on a runway, not at a heliport) but it was a step in the right direction. In addition to its CTOL (conventional take-off and landing aircraft), Beta is also working on an eVTOL.
But Rob doesn’t like the term eVTOL. “Every television interview I've ever done has gone much smoother when people didn't have to pronounce ‘E.V.T.O.L.’ or ‘ee-vee-tol.’ Some people even think it's French. EVA is much simpler.” EVA, pronounced as three separate letters, is an acronym of Rob’s own design. It stands for Electric Vertical Aircraft. It’s one of many examples of how Rob is crafting the world around him, and taking us on a journey toward his preferred version of the future.
I don’t mind hitching a ride.
Q&A with Rob Wiesenthal
Can you tell me a little about how you founded Blade?
I was the CFO at Sony of America and head of corporate development for Sony globally. The company did a lot of procurement strategies for lithium-ion batteries. You may recall that Sony was working on a car at the time, and as you can imagine, almost every consumer electronics product uses lithium-ion batteries. It was a big part of the business, and we saw that batteries were going to become longer-lasting, smaller, more powerful, and less expensive, and lithium-ion’s impact on the ground with EVs was quickly going to have an impact in the skies.
At the same time, when it came to what I was really interested in—intra-city travel by air—there were no easy or affordable ways to fly in a helicopter intra-city. You could charter, but there were no brands, no terminals, and no lounges. You couldn't buy a seat. It was clear to me that if you could take advantage of the fact that a lot of people go to the same place at the same time—like to an airport or certain leisure areas on weekends—and aggregate those passengers through a mobile experience, you have a business.
That was the genesis of the Blade, which we put on three platforms: one is infrastructure, which are the terminals that we have now all over the world—Southern Europe, the United States, Canada, and India. Second, we have a technology stack that goes from consumer to cockpit. Third, we have a really great brand that has attracted hundreds of thousands of fliers across all of our businesses.
We wanted to do all of that on an asset-light basis, where we neither own, operate, nor maintain those aircraft. The goal of Blade was to create the entire ecosystem required for EVAs outside of the manufacturing of the aircraft, the operating of the aircraft, and the maintenance of that aircraft. We wanted to be able to swap assets, which we knew much easier if we used a network of largely dedicated operators that pass our safety standards (we have a seven-member global safety team), use our technology, use our livery, and understand the Blade experience. We’ve done that with both amphibious seaplanes and helicopters.
The strategy is not unlike what Netflix had in the early days: a great brand, great content, and a great service, but they were moving DVDs in bags. Despite all of that, they called the company Netflix for a reason—they didn't call it DVDs in a bag. Similarly, we never called our company “Blade Helicopters.” So what streaming was to Netflix, EVA is to Blade. EVA unlocks exponential growth in this industry. Yes, it’s great that EVA is cleaner than traditional rotorcraft, but more importantly, it’s quiet. Noise is the unlock; it’s what allows us to open more landing zones.
What does that mean for us now? In the interim, we need to lock up as much exclusive infrastructure as we can. We have been doing that, especially in New York, where we essentially have the only private terminals in Manhattan. We have the only private terminal at Newark Airport, too.
How did you get started with organ transport? Can you walk me through what a mission looks like?
Once we started moving people, we quickly saw an opportunity in organ movements, which benefits massively from our ability to fly from building to building. Take for example our work with Langone, the New York University-affiliated medical network. Before Blade MediMobility arrived on the scene, if Langone had an organ donor in Philadelphia, they would take doctors in an ambulance all the way from the East Side of Manhattan—through Manhattan traffic—to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. They would get on a Gulfstream jet, fly to Philadelphia, get on another ambulance, go to the hospital, extract the organ, get on another ambulance back on the Gulfstream, land at Teterboro, and board a final ambulance back to the hospital with the organ.
Now we can take off straight from Langone, land at Philadelphia, and return. That transforms an approximately $60,000 mission into something that probably could cost between $5,000 and $6,000. We made an acquisition called Trinity which was one of the larger companies in the space. And together, Blade is now the largest air transporter of human organs in the United States. It is a profitable business and our fastest-growing business. In Q3 of last year, we grew 174% in revenues for the MediMobility business versus Q3 of the previous year.
Can you employ the same staff across both the passenger air mobility business and the organ transport business?
Yes, a lot of the same logistics people that we use to make sure a mission goes well for passenger helicopters, we can use for Blade MediMobility. It’s great for our helicopter operators: now they can amortize their fixed costs of insurance, hangars, and maintenance across 24 hours because those organ movements happen late at night. They normally would be flying only during the day, but now they’re also flying at night, so their overall cost of operating helicopters is down when they work with us. We're the only company that can do both. That means our costs go down overall, which allows us to provide better pricing for our fliers and also for our hospitals.
I'm curious how you're dealing with noise complaints right now. How much does that hinder your business? It sounds like you’re looking forward to EVAs because of their low noise profile.
After safety, our number one priority is being a good neighbor. We fly all-water routes whenever possible. We also fly at noise-abatement altitudes; when we enter Class Bravo Airspace, like for JFK and other airports, we always request to fly at the highest possible flight they deem safe. We're predominantly flying Bell 407 helicopters, which are quieter than other cabin-class rotorcraft.
We’re not one of the tour operators, which generate the bulk of the noise. We leave cities: we are not hovering around big buildings or doing circles, and we're not flying every 15 minutes. The bulk of the noise, at least in New York, happens because rogue New Jersey-based operators take off from New Jersey and fly inside Manhattan. We do not fly inside Manhattan at all. We go around it just like the legal tour operators do.
Do seaplanes produce fewer noise complaints? Do you see Regent’s seaglider and other similar aircraft being a big part of your business?
I think seaplanes have a different noise profile—one that's easier for people to accept. Noise complaints on the seaplanes haven’t been much of an issue, but people complain about everything in New York City and in some of the other places we operate. What Regent is doing is very interesting. I see a path to certification that's potentially much faster because they're qualifying a little bit more as a boat than an aircraft. We've spent a lot of time with them and we're very interested in their product.
Is New York doing enough in terms of increasing access to air mobility while reducing noise?
I think that there is a lot the city can do in terms of these rogue tour operators from New Jersey; that could eliminate a lot of that noise. In terms of increasing access, I have spent a fair amount of time with Mayor Adams and Governor Hochul, and I think they realize that if you really want to be City 2.0, you have to have an air mobility strategy.
What do the economics need to look like for Blade in order for you to profitably operate these aircraft?
Well, we're not operators, but I think in the early years it will be similar to helicopters just because insurance will be pricey, the tolerance for operating specs are on the aircraft when it's being used, there'll be a very low tolerance for any kind of differentials. So they could end up being grounded in the beginning a fair amount just for the interest of safety and learning how these act in the wild.
Ultimately what Blade needs from the aircraft is six passengers and 1,200 pounds. A lot of these EVA concepts only support four or five passengers. Some only support 800 pounds, and some don't even have air conditioning.
I think one of the benefits of Blade is we use a portfolio of different aircraft used for different missions. Some of these EVAs will be good for longer missions and some will be good for shorter missions. We'll probably still be using heavy helicopters for long distances that require a lot of weight. So you're going to see a cohabitation phase with helicopters, seaplanes, and EVAs.
Over time the cost will go down. Landing fees, which are the bulk of our costs for short trips to the airport, will likely go down as the industry scales and we get volume discounts. On maintenance, because there are so few moving parts on an EVA, that should go down as well.
Does owning the ground infrastructure help you reduce friction and get more value out of an EVA?
We already have turn times down to a science: we're about a five-minute turn time right now. We do hot loading, which means the rotors are spinning and we have ground staff to make sure people are walking to and from the aircraft safely. Turn times are also reduced because of our terminals. We're checking you in, we're assessing your luggage, and we’re “stacking passengers,” which means they're in a certain order when they get on and where they sit on the aircraft—so they aren’t stepping all over each other. People are belted and headsetted by our staff. The door is closed and checked, the bags are checked, and the helicopter is off.
You need that infrastructure for check-in, security, and passenger aggregation by flight. You can't do that on a street corner as some future mobility concepts suggest.
To clarify, if you're not an operator, how do you classify yourselves? What do you call the business you're in?
Right now, we fly more people by helicopter, in terms of civilian commuting, than any other company in the world. The only difference is that we enter into long-term agreements with our operators and pay an hourly fee. They supply the pilots and the aircraft. We don't get involved in the maintenance, but we do our own safety audits. So you could call us an asset-light air mobility company.
Would you compare your business to Airbnb, which doesn’t own any real estate, yet manages more rooms than any hotel chain in the world?
No, they're very different because of their scale and their level of control. It’s similar to how Uber is dealing with hundreds of thousands of cars. Every car and every driver is different, with varying driving abilities, so there are potential safety issues. We, on the other hand, have a network of only 22 operators. We get them consistent with our standards of operation, both from a quality and a safety perspective. It's much easier to manage, and they have to use our platform, our livery, and such. So really it's just an asset-light differentiation of not owning the aircraft, and then paying an hourly fee to the people who do.
Right now your service starts at $195 per seat for an airport transfer ($95 if you purchase an annual pass). Does Blade eventually expand to a broader economic demographic?
We have a long way to go. Twenty-eight million people per year use private transportation to go between Manhattan and the three major New York airports. That figure includes ride-sharing cars, rental cars, people's own cars, taxis—almost everything except public transportation. We beat Uber Black on price almost all the time, and always during rush hour. We beat UberX with the BLADE Airport Pass+ and we beat rental cars or personal cars (parking in a city could be a hundred dollars a day). We look at our addressable market as about 28 million people a year, and right now our customer base is in the low tens of thousands.
Being a prominent company in a sexy space has gotten you your fair share of attention, both positive and negative. Is any press good press?
I definitely don't agree that any press is good press. We’re mentioned in four books, we're in five movies, we're in a Chainsmokers music video, and we're in various song lyrics. Blade has become kind of the “Kleenex” of helicopters. That’s excellent, but when anything negative happens, people think, is Blade the one causing the noise, or whatever the problem might be? Being high-profile is always a double-edged sword, but having that mindshare for the customer, as long as we're offering a safe and quality service, is good: I would want as many people to know about Blade as possible.
You declined to have Blade featured in HBO’s Succession, is that right?
Yes (laughs). It's very tough to show cabin-class aircraft that costs sometimes up to $12,000 a flight when we’re leaning into the idea that this is a substitute for ground transportation. We pick our battles wisely, but I love the show, with or without our helicopters
What’s the latest on the East Hampton Airport, and what impact will changes have on your business?
There was a lawsuit last year in which the aircraft operators and friends of the airport prevailed, so the East Hampton Airport was open without restriction last year. It looks like it's open without restriction this year as well, coming up this summer. That being said, we still want to be a good neighbor, so we have voluntary curfews we fly, we have voluntary routes that literally are a hundred percent over water until you get to East Hampton. We're maybe flying over eight homes total and doing that close to 3,500 feet, coming down when you get to the airport 2,000 feet and lower. We’re doing everything we can to minimize any kind of impact on neighbors.
Because we have a big network, we're using schedule and pricing to encourage people to fly to other areas of the Hamptons. You can fly to Westhampton, Southampton, Sag Harbor, or Montauk; everything doesn't have to go to East Hampton. We’re trying to modulate traffic, and in fact, I think last year we did fewer missions to East Hampton compared to the year prior, even though overall our business to Long Island grew pretty meaningfully.
The Southampton Heliport has a few homes right in front of it. Does Blade fly into that one? How many complaints do you get?
The East Hampton Airport was around way before any of the houses near it, and people bought their homes knowing there was an airport there (in fact, one of the streets with a lot of houses is called Airport Road). It’s a similar story with the Southampton Heliport: there are two or three houses near it that traded hands in the past five years and, believe me, those people knew exactly what they were getting into. I imagine the purchase price probably reflected the perceived convenience or inconvenience of that heliport.
One of the best articles / interviews I have read in the EVA space. And have to admit, that name is bazzilion times better than eVTOL.