Revolutions in Vertical Flight

Mission Focus - the Role of Autonomy

In our first series, we learnt about the history of vertical flight and discovered the key pioneers and revolutionary moments that created the rotorcraft industry we know today. In our second series, we learn more about the helicopter’s role in society, and how it helps overcome obstacles, protect the public and ultimately save lives. In this episode, we hear how autonomy will be a defining trend in the future of aviation. Fully autonomous aircraft could one day supplement or even replace traditional helicopters. In particular, huge investments have been made in electric vertical takeoff and landing, or EVTOL platforms, which could one day transport goods and passengers within cities and beyond. But what does this mean for the future of the industry?

Mission Focus - Disaster Relief

In our first series, we learnt about the history of vertical flight and discovered the key pioneers and revolutionary moments that created the rotorcraft industry we know today. In our second series, we learn more about the helicopter’s role in society, and how it helps overcome obstacles, protect the public and ultimately save lives. In this episode, we'll hear about the many advantages that helicopters offer during disaster response and hear from pilots from around the world about this most stressful of missions.

Mission Focus - The Utility of the Helicopter

In our first series, we learnt about the history of vertical flight and discovered the key pioneers and revolutionary moments that created the rotorcraft industry we know today. In our second series, we learn more about the helicopter’s role in society, and how it helps overcome obstacles, protect the public and ultimately save lives. The helicopter has become an essential tool for militaries, parapublic agencies and emergency services. But its unique characteristics have also ensured a vital role for the helicopter across a myriad of commercial activities. 

Mission Focus - Law Enforcement

In our first series, we learnt about the history of vertical flight and discovered the key pioneers and revolutionary moments that created the rotorcraft industry we know today. In our second series, we learn more about the helicopter’s role in society, and how it helps overcome obstacles, protect the public and ultimately save lives. In this episode, we hear how at the end of the Vietnam War, thousands of young helicopter pilots returned to the US looking for work. Many of these men used their flying skills to adapt the helicopter for new jobs, along the way creating entirely new industries that still play a critical role in society today. Airborne law enforcement is one of the most important examples.

Mission Focus - Emergency Medical Services

Content warning: This episode contains content that may be upsetting to some listeners, including descriptions of how helicopters have responded to real-life tragedies. While we feel the comments are essential in telling the complete story, listener discretion is advised. In our first series, we learnt about the history of vertical flight and discovered the key pioneers and revolutionary moments that created the rotorcraft industry we know today. In our second series, we learn more about the helicopter’s role in society, and how it helps overcome obstacles, protect the public and ultimately save lives. In this episode, we hear how an unforeseen consequence of the Vietnam War was the introduction of helicopters as civilian air ambulances. The arrival of thousands of young experienced helicopter pilots in need of a job helped drive the evolution of helicopter EMS in the US, offering their skills to rapidly transport patients to hospitals - massively increasing their chances of survival.

Mission focus - Search and Rescue

In our first series, we learnt about the history of vertical flight and discovered the key pioneers and revolutionary moments that created the rotorcraft industry we know today. In this second series, we learn more about the helicopter’s role in society, and how it helps overcome obstacles, protect the public and ultimately save lives. We'll hear from a range of operators about how they use helicopters to carry out those tasks that are too expensive or dangerous to conduct by other means. We consider the future, discovering how greater autonomy is poised to reshape the role of rotorcraft even further.In this episode, we focus on the search and rescue mission.The helicopter’s lifesaving role was a key motivation in the early days of its development. Since their introduction to the role, helicopters have only grown in importance in search and rescue, saving lives in almost every environment and operational context for militaries on the battlefield, to coast guards in sectors such as oil and gas.

The Future of VTOL Innovation

Welcome to Shephard Studio’s Revolutions in Vertical Flight, brought to you in partnership with Bell.The Revolutions in Vertical Flight podcast tells the little-known story of the history of rotorcraft, from the autogiro and helicopter, to the tiltrotor and eVTOL platforms in development today. Revolutions in Vertical Flight reveals the stories of a small group of pioneers, the visions and beliefs that drove them, and their approach to invention and innovation.And the Shephard Studio podcast series looks at the vertical flight innovation underway today, revealing how it will transform military operations and revolutionise urban mobility.In this episode, we learn more about the urban air mobility revolution and hear how manufacturers pursuing new advances in a wide range of areas, from autonomy to propulsion. These technologies are laying the groundwork for new types of rotorcraft, perhaps most notably in the urban air mobility and electric vertical takeoff and landing spaces, better known as UAM and EvTOL.Advances in a wide range of technologies are driving this revolution and today’s aviation pioneers are developing enabling technologies to help make urban mobility a reality, including electric propulsion, autonomy and fleet management.

The Dream of Urban Air Mobility

Welcome to Shephard Studio’s Revolutions in Vertical Flight, brought to you in partnership with Bell.The Revolutions in Vertical Flight podcast tells the little-known story of the history of rotorcraft, from the autogiro and helicopter, to the tiltrotor and eVTOL platforms in development today. Revolutions in Vertical Flight reveals the stories of a small group of pioneers, the visions and beliefs that drove them, and their approach to invention and innovation.And the Shephard Studio podcast series looks at the vertical flight innovation underway today, revealing how it will transform military operations and revolutionise urban mobility.In this episode, we learn about the revolution underway in urban transportation, one that will have an impact on the same scale as when the internal combustion engine took over from the horse-drawn carriage.Industry giants and start-ups alike are racing to develop electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft.Better known as EvTOLs, these platforms could turn the visions of science fiction into reality, providing low-carbon travel in the urban environment, without the need for runways or the other infrastructure associated with earlier types of aviation.Innovations like the Bell Nexus, CityAirbus and UberAir are deep in development, with companies expecting significant advances over the course of the next decade. We hear how passengers could one day hail an air taxi through a smartphone app, transporting them from one building to another within or between cities, without facing the traffic of urban streets.

The Future Battlespace

Welcome to Shephard Studio’s Revolutions in Vertical Flight, brought to you in partnership with Bell.The Revolutions in Vertical Flight podcast tells the little-known story of the history of rotorcraft, from the autogiro and helicopter, to the tiltrotor and eVTOL platforms in development today. Revolutions in Vertical Flight reveals the stories of a small group of pioneers, the visions and beliefs that drove them, and their approach to invention and innovation.And the Shephard Studio podcast series looks at the vertical flight innovation underway today, revealing how it will transform military operations and revolutionise urban mobility.In this episode, we turn to the future and hear how the US Army’s plan to replace its current fleet of helicopters is set to introduce entirely new configurations of rotorcraft. We hear how the US Army believes we are at an “inflection point” and how the new rotorcraft designs are set to change the face of modern warfare.And we speak to the industry teams vying to bid for two key helicopter programmes and learn how innovation is being brought to bear across their development programmes.

The Tiltrotor

Welcome to Shephard Studio’s Revolutions in Vertical Flight, brought to you in partnership with Bell.The Revolutions in Vertical Flight podcast tells the little-known story of the history of rotorcraft, from the autogiro and helicopter, to the tiltrotor and eVTOL platforms in development today. Revolutions in Vertical Flight reveals the stories of a small group of pioneers, the visions and beliefs that drove them, and their approach to invention and innovation.And the Shephard Studio podcast series looks at the vertical flight innovation underway today, revealing how it will transform military operations and revolutionise urban mobility.In this episode, we look at a persisting dream of the early rotorcraft pioneers – how to build a machine that combined the vertical takeoff and landing attributes of a helicopter with the speed and range advantages of a fixed-wing aircraft.We hear how a failed military mission in the Iranian desert ultimately led to the creation of the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor. And how Leonardo plans to bring the tiltrotor design to the civil market with its AW609.