I'm Itay Michaeli. It's a pleasure to kick off day three of our conference with Blade for a fireside chat and also an overview of the company for those who are newer to the company. Very pleased to have from Blade, the company's Founder and CEO, Rob Wiesenthal. We're gonna do a fireside chat. If you have questions, feel free to raise your hands. I think we're gonna kick off first with a video. Sit back, relax, and then we'll kick off the session.
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Awesome. Thank you. Good, great video. Rob, first, thanks again for being here. Great to see you.
Thanks for having me.
Maybe for those who are still new to Blade and coming up to speed, I was hoping we could kick it off just with an overview of the story as well as kind of where you were, you know, when you went public and what's changed and where you are today.
Sure. We started the company in 2014. This was after many, many years, over a decade at Sony, as CFO of the Americas and also head of corporate development globally. We spent a lot of time working on lithium-ion battery strategies and relationships. Obviously, the consumer electronics business at the time was probably the biggest user of lithium-ion batteries, whether it be in, you know, laptops, cameras and such. It was clear that the technology on the battery side, which was already moving into cars on the ground, was gonna quickly move into the air and that battle was gonna move into the air. There were people starting to really move beyond the experimentation phase. You saw drones, things like that.
The idea was that at some point, there would be a transition between helicopters and these electric vertical aircraft. We built this kind of ecosystem in order to accommodate helicopters today, but enable very fluid transition to EVA when it was time. That was built on three pillars. One is an exclusive terminal infrastructure that's at heliports and airports where you can process passengers, assess luggage, do security. There are certain areas where we can have flights, you know, moving every five minutes. Turning those aircraft very quickly is very important. We have a technology stack that goes from consumer to cockpit.
That's everything from the consumer-facing app, where, you know, you can book instantaneously, any of the routes that we have, all over the world. Really focusing on routes that were scalable and profitable using conventional rotorcraft today. We really look for routes that were either very, very congested cities or geographically contested. Like in Southern Europe, where you have mountains and such, where you can't draw a straight line with a car, but you can draw a straight line with an aircraft. We like to see things, you know, like in New York City, when we fly to the airport for $195 or $95 on an airport pass, which beats both Uber Black and UberX with the pass. We're turning two-hour drives into five-minute flights.
That's an example of one of those kinds of routes. The brand and then the customer base, and now we have in the hundreds of thousands of flyers. We're the largest kind of vertical aircraft or operating Urban Air Mobility company in the world with respect to moving commuters and travelers on these short hops. We're in North America and Canada and the U.S. We're in India. We're in Southern Europe. We now have that footprint of, we think, all of the right routes for this phase of Urban Air Mobility before we get to electric vertical aircraft. What's interesting is that You know, we're constantly looking at how can we kind of maximize these use of these aircraft and what are the other use cases?
Then we got into the medical business largely because in New York City, the Langone Hospital, who one of our board members had a relationship with, literally sits on top of the Blade lounges. We started getting to the organ delivery business, which now represents over half our business. That is, you know, essentially, you know, hospitals that need, you know, real-time information and delivery of organs and moving doctors to places where they do extraction and moving back to where they do transplants. It's, as I said, it's about half our business right now in revenues. There's no marketing costs. They're long-term contracts. We're paid by hospitals, not insurance companies. Third quarter, I think we're up about 173% year-over-year. It is growing incredibly fast, and we're the largest in the United States.
What's interesting about that is that the same helicopters that are being used for our passenger business are being used at night, so operators can amortize the cost of their pilots, their insurance, their hangars, their maintenance. What happens is that, you know, their costs go down on an hourly basis, and that can accrue to us on both the medical and passenger side. They fit, you know, really well together. That's kind of like the snapshot of what we're trying to do. Obviously doing a lot of tests. We just did a test, the very first test of Beta in the New York City area, working on our relationships with all these EVA manufacturers so we can make sure that we're where we need to be when this transition happens.
Absolutely. That's a great overview and lots going on, so congrats on all the progress. Wanted to just hone in on the MediMobility business that you talked about. Organic growth has been strong. At a high level, kind of where do you see that business, how, you know, in the next three, four, five years? What's the competitive landscape look like?
Sure.
I'm pretty sure we have a different kind of margin profile as well, maybe a bit more stable as well. Maybe just talk a little bit more about, you know, the outlook there.
Sure. When we take a look at the medical business, the market really competing with mom and pops. I think part of the reason why we got a lot of this business was that we really worked in hard what our core competencies are with logistics, recovery, which is when something goes wrong or something's delayed, 24/7 customer service, and really the kind of military precision that we were doing on the passenger side, kind of moving that over to the medical side, and then also giving transparency in terms of chain of custody. You know, where that organ is, where those doctors are, and really reducing the price.
Before Blade, we would see hospitals in New York City, you know, pay $2,500 for an ambulance to really, like, literally drive 35 minutes through Manhattan, and then another 20 minutes to Teterboro Airport, charter literally a Gulfstream IV, fly to Philadelphia, get another ambulance with the doctors to the hospital, extract the organ, the ambulance back, G4 back to Teterboro, another ambulance. That could be a $65,000 trip easily. We can land literally from hospital to hospital, take off in a helicopter with doctors from Langone, fly to Philadelphia, land on-site, eliminating oftentimes the ambulance, definitely eliminating the jets on all these shorter missions. That would be about a $4,000 to $6,000 trip, depending on waiting time and other factors. We cut the cost dramatically.
We improve outcomes by doing this in a more speedy fashion. We're competing with, as I said, mom and pops who don't have the technology, don't have the twenty-four/seven resources, don't have the access to aircraft, which we have tons of access to aircraft. When a hospital calls and wants an organ moved or wants a team to go do an extraction, there's no like, "I'm sorry, I can't get you an aircraft." You have to be able to provide. I think with that level of professionalism, and right now we're in the teens in terms of market share. I see a very rapid path to getting to about over 50% market share.
We look at acquisitions, and I think the team feels that these are contracts that we win over time and that we don't necessarily need to pay a multiple for it. As long as the growth is there, I'm, you know, very, very comfortable with it. Then in terms of where it's going, there's no question as we kind of make this transition from rotorcraft to EVA, if you think about drones, which will be the very first type of EVA, which will be, you know, FAA-approved. Now, they're approved now, but we have to get to the point where there's no line of sight required. Since we're moving a lot of organs without doctors, drones are a fantastic method of moving organs without doctors. Very cost-efficient and a great use case.
We're spending a lot of time working on that.
Does the entry of drones potentially increase competition? You mentioned your access to aircraft being a significant competitive advantage. How does the entry of drones kind of change that, if at all?
If you think about it, just like today, you know, in the businesses where drones are used, anybody can buy a drone. There are drones that are being used for site inspections. There are drones that are used, you know, filming films. It's really the layer of right now there are people with aircraft that could easily do these missions, but it's all that wrapper, that ecosystem you put around it from the 24/7 customer service. We have people on the ground. The same lounges that you'll go into, the terminals, the Blade terminals, we have people there. Doctors can go there. They can wait. If it's in the middle of when would be a meal, they can be, you know, be fed.
Our team can go help with the extraction, put it into our, you know, our ambulances that we do now have as a result of the Trinity acquisition. All this infrastructure, technology. 24/7 on the phone customer service and like I said, the tech, not tech stack. You really need that. You can't just kinda go out and buy a plane or buy a drone and try to do it yourself.
Perfect. If there are questions, feel free to raise hands. Why don't I just zoom in on some recent news, of RedBird Capital announced a large position in the company. Hoping you can just talk about the partnership there, and what they bring to Blade.
Sure. I've known the founding partner of RedBird, Gerry Cardinale, for probably over two decades when he was at Goldman Sachs and I was at Sony. We worked on a lot of deals together. He has extremely successful funds that is in both has a good position in aviation and a very strong position in, you know, live sports. Also has an investment in Beta, which was one of our first EVA partners. I think, you know, given what's happened with, you know, the macroeconomic environment for small cap stocks, he was in our cap table since being a seed investor individually, and then RedBird came in during our going public transaction.
I mean, I think he saw the same thing we're seeing today, which is, you know, a strong company, strong balance sheet, global footprint, very recession-proof on the medical side. Lot clean $200 million in cash, no debt, a really undervalued opportunity. We were not willing to issue stock at these kind of prices, obviously, and he went out in the open market and accumulated a position, and now we put together a working group where we're looking at using his numerous aircraft assets to see how we can supplement our medical side. Then also, he recently bought the soccer team, AC Milan.
We already fly because we did a roll-up of three of the largest helicopter company retail businesses in southern Europe, Monaco, Cannes, Nice, Saint-Tropez, Courchevel, and Milan. One of the great use cases for, you know, are live events. A lot of people going to the same place at the same time. It's not only great for visibility, but it's also great to kind of prove the Urban Air Mobility thesis. We're thrilled to have, you know, an investor with a great track record take a sizable stake and, you know, we hope to do a lot of it, a lot of stuff with him that's just that's strategic.
Perfect. Maybe to shift gears to the passenger side of the business, the other half of the revenue. Can you give us a sense of the footprint you have today in short distance in particular, different routes you operate? How do you choose routes as well? You mentioned I think earlier that you think you're sort of set with routes for this phase of kind of the industry journey. Maybe talk a bit more about that business.
I really do think I've said to you over many years now, you're never gonna see, at least in a pre-EVA world, a globe with dots all over the world where Blade operates. We want the really juicy routes. Those are cities, very concentrated, lots of density, as I said, lots of congestion. We want it to be geographically contested, if possible, like we have in southern Europe. The opportunities are the biggest markets in the world are, no question, Northeast Corridor, where we're very large. Western Canada, Vancouver, where, you know, what's always interesting to me about Western Canada, Vancouver was it. Helicopters are a way of life. 40% of the people we fly are government employees. There are no bridges. There are very slow ferries.
You either take a helicopter or depending on the weather and the time of year, maybe you can take a seaplane. It's just a way of life. It's just another form of transportation. I see a lot of, you know, opportunity there, and I really do like the way it fits into the kind of, you know, the whole transportation alternative mix there. In southern Europe, you know, definitely well accepted. Nice mix between business and leisure. Weather's terrific, obviously, you don't have a lot of days where you're really not flying for weather. In India, you know, same thing, you know, very different in the sense that really weak infrastructure, obviously. We're turning five-hour drives between Mumbai to, you know, Pune and Shirdi into half-hour flights.
A very strong population that can afford the product right now, which is, you know, I think commensurate with what we're charging right now. It's a joint venture. It's at an earlier phase, but it's something we feel good about, you know, for the long term. That's really, you know, where it is today and where I think it's gonna be until we start rolling these new aircraft out. In terms of growth, I take a look at the New York City airport business, where we're competitive with Uber Black and UberX with an airport pass. 28 million people use private transportation to go between the New York City airports and Manhattan. Forget all the other boroughs, forget New Jersey, Connecticut, Long Island, just Manhattan.
Take out all the public transportation, take out shared buses, things like that. These are really rental cars, ride-sharing, and your own car. Last time I think we gave a number, we were north of, you know, 25,000 run rate. You know, we're obviously growing, so we're higher than that now. When I take a look at that opportunity, that gap, we don't have to get, you know, 25% of those, you know, we can get 5%, 10%, 1%, whatever it is. There's a lot of growth coming our way with that. Now that we have a relationship with JetBlue, where if you buy a Mint ticket on JetBlue, any Mint ticket to or from JFK, you get a Blade airport flight that gets you to or from the airport.
If you're Mosaic or Mosaic Plus, you get a certain number of free flights a year. If you're TrueBlue, you get discounts. Hopefully, we'll be seeing a lot more airline integration because I think the sooner we can start really bundling it and having it part of that journey, I think you're gonna see really enormous take-up rates. Then I think in Europe, you know, that business was really because they kind of had this dominant position, all these three companies, they didn't really invest in technology. They didn't invest in marketing. There were three companies, Héli Sécurité, Azur and Monacair. We're building great lounges there, and it's all gonna be under a common brand.
I'll tell you right now, even last year when the deal it was closed, but not fully integrated, or even right before closing, you know, we participated in the Monaco Grand Prix, you know, flying people from Nice to Monaco because we're the only place you can land in Monaco. You know, the brand did, you know, really well there. I was very surprised then and even now, how many of our bookings for Europe are coming from U.S. customers.
There's definitely, you know, because we started so early with airport, everyone thinks about airport as, oh, this is a New York business. You know, this is very concentrated in New York. People fly to New York from all over the world, and those are all Blade customers. When we open in another city elsewhere, they think about us.
That's, that's. Thanks for the detail around that. Why don't you kinda go a bit deeper into adoption, and particularly around what you're seeing at a high level from a repeat flyer as opposed to kinda new to Blade. So both adoption of new flyers as you open routes or some of your more mature routes as well as those once they get in or bypass, how long are they? You know, what's, what are the usage rate that you're seeing?
Well, sometimes the numbers get clouded because we're growing so quickly. We have a lot of first-time flyers. I think generally, someone who starts with, like, a very, you know, a product that can be used for both leisure and for business, and they live, kind of, they live in New York, so they're probably flying about an average about six times a year. You know, within the, you know, first six months, kind of like 1.4 times they're doing it. They're definitely a big cohort that's flying, you know, a second time. Again, like the growth of new people and also people who may not use it as much but are coming, you know, that 1 trip to New York.
You have a lot of people who are on the leisure side globally who are using it in a way to kinda start their trip because, you know, face it, you know, starting your trip in two hours of traffic isn't great. You know, you're seeing the Freedom Tower and the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island and Brooklyn Bridge and the Barclays Center. It has that kind. You really have that scenic aspect, which I think, you know, we've done a lot of surveys, and there's definitely maybe about 25% of the people are saying, "I'm not really doing it for traffic.
I just wanna be in a helicopter and enjoy some of that route, you know, some of that. That is not that important to me. Especially you see that on the, you know, on the leisure side. A lot of those international flyers, so bigger groups, you know, that are more on the leisure side than business. Business, you know, right now on our surveys, 60% of the people who fly us to airport are saying they're doing it for business. As much as we hear about business travel, leaving, it doesn't look that way to us. Look, there's no question there's a lot of people who are remote, who are coming in regularly, have a little more disposable income in terms of transportation.
There are people that may be living remotely who come to the home office, so to speak, every so often. Look, we're competitive with grounds. I think, you know, the corporate sales that we're doing, I think that's starting to reach fruition. We do that on a bottoms-up basis, really by going after the employees. Eventually, you know, these things get expensed, and they see the price, and the kind of CFO relents.
Right.
That's working well as well. Also, if you think about New York City on the West Side of Manhattan, we are part of Hudson Yards, essentially, where you have 50,000 people living and working and recreating, who can just literally walk two minutes to it. I think that's very interesting. I think in Canada, as you know, they were very late with COVID restrictions ending, the remote work is starting, you know, subsiding a little bit. We fly the big route there is Vancouver to Victoria. Victoria is kind of like the Washington, D.C. of the province, so a lot of back and forth there. In Europe, it's much more year-round.
I mean, I was very shocked to see, like, you know, in skiing, you know, this year very early, you know, between Geneva and Courchevel, which are extremely high-end, a lot of charter. Again, you know, Monaco is definitely a financial center there, but also big in leisure. Then you have everything from the Cannes Lions Festival to Cannes Film Festival, Monaco Grand Prix, the yacht show. There's just event after event, conference after conference. So we're getting them in all ways. You know, they're, you know, getting it through, you know, travel agencies. They're seeing it through their conference providers. Also It's much more ingrained and known that, you know, this is the way you can kind of traverse the coast very easily.
Terrific. How should we think about growth in the passenger side of the business over the next few years? Maybe within that, Rob, how do you think about customer acquisition, marketing, your premium brand? I've probably asked you this question before, but maybe latest thoughts on, A, kind of organic growth, but then how much do you wanna lean into growth through promotions, get them in the first time, and then, you know, try to kinda create a recurring user.
Well, I take a look at the growth coming from. Look, there's still a lot of word of mouth. You know, heard from a friend, this and that. We're very omni-channel in terms of marketing, and sometimes go places where people don't go. You don't see a lot of people thinking about, television or print. Television's worked really well for us. In airport, you cannot walk through pretty much any terminal in Newark Airport or JFK without seeing our digital signage. Also marketing partnerships like JetBlue. What we're working on now is distribution, again, this concept of bundling. When you're booking your trip, you're saying, you know, I'm gonna click the box and get a helicopter to JFK. Whether on arrival or return. You know, on Europe, we. Sorry.
On the West Coast for Silicon Valley and L.A., we really reinvented the red-eye. We have a lot of companies that say, "You know what? Before Blade, I had guys leaving at, you know, 2:00 P.M in the afternoon, checking into hotels. Now they can fly the red-eye instead of going through all that commuter traffic at 6:00 A.M to 8:00 A.M in the morning in New York. They're flying there, they're getting to their hotel about 7:00 A.M in the morning. They're using their Marriott points for whatever, early check-in, and they can go to a meeting at 9:00 and not look like they're, they weren't out in a bender all night.
Totally. Let's talk about recession, downturn. Obviously, there's a broad concern, you know, a lot of questions around this conference about the companies. How does Blade get affected? What are you seeing today? Kinda how you think about Blade through a, maybe of a hard landing?
Sure. Well, I will tell you this, you know, third quarter, we actually raised passenger prices in the Northeast outside airport about 30% to leisure routes, our revenues still increased meaningfully. I think the most important part about BLADE with respect to the recession is with over 50% of our business being medical, an organ transplant is about as recession-proof as you can get. We have passed through costs on fuel increases, which only really impacts more of the fixed wing side because helicopters, you may not know, only burn about 40 gallons of jet fuel an hour. You know, your five-minute flights to the airport isn't a really big part of our cost structure on the helicopter side.
I think one of the great things with this company is that, you know, we're just gonna see continued growth. It's because of the technology on the medical side. You know, the definition of an organ that's suitable for transplant is getting wider and wider every day. The definition of a person or patient who is suitable and for a transplant and can actually has a better than a good chance of recovery is getting wider and wider every day, which means you're gonna see more. The growth in transplants themselves are gonna increase, and also technology to allow those organs to last longer. We're now flying longer distances than we would do before. We're doing basically heart, liver, lung.
I also see growth in kidney, in the sense that kidneys actually can be out of the body for a very long time, what, a day or even two, and can actually fly commercial, so to speak. They work on a last flight out business, but I think they can benefit from our logistics as well. The kidney business is obviously a huge business, but the growth we see just in what we're doing right now is just tremendous. No, I think we're probably the best positioned in terms of the recession of anybody in our peer group.
Are you doing kidney yet or is that-
No.
So that's-
I shouldn't say that. We do kidney. There's certain instances in which, you know, there needs to be rapid response. In terms of the kind of the kidney work where you know, you can be out of the body for 24 hours, there isn't that kind of intensity in terms of when you have to do, which is usually on the patient side. That's a business we're looking really hard at, not in yet.
I wanna talk about MediMobility and passenger. I kinda wanted to connect the two for a moment. holding on the benefits the network derives from that synergy and the extent to which you can therefore offer lower costs in the future to create sort of a bigger competitive advantage. I think you touched upon it a little bit before, but maybe focus a bit more on the synergy and as you grow, are you able to then just reduce costs even pre-EVA.
Yeah.
on these network benefits?
Well, I think that it's very interesting. There are a lot of BLADE operators. Again, we're not a marketplace. This is not like Uber. You know, you don't go out and take your phone and put on a suction cup on the windshield of your helicopter and say, "Let me do a couple trips for BLADE." It doesn't work that way. We have, you know, 29 or more very highly integrated operators. We have a seven-member safety team. You get highly vetted for safety in terms of, you know, everything from maintenance, your FAA records, your pilot hours on airframe for aircraft. It's very intense.
You have to use our tech platform for an operator dashboard where it communicates with our logistics, we can make sure we're using the right tail numbers and getting the most optimized missions from aircraft that are in the right place. Not unlike Walmart, we have an accounting dashboard where we invoice you immediately after a trip, and we pay you within five days. You don't need customer service. You're not working with credit card declines. You don't need people on the ground. Their cost structure is lower there. They have an idea from our previous years with them, or sometimes they'll make hourly commitments that we, you know, we make sure those are really low, that we can always beat them, how many hours they're gonna do.
If they're part of our medical program, they then know those aircraft are going to be used at night, so they have to crew for night. Again, they're amortizing all these costs, such as, you know, hangars, insurance, pilots, maintenance, over 24 hours. There is no company that can use their aircraft for 24 hours besides Blade, period, end stop. It fits really well. Their costs go down, and then we can negotiate prices in which they can still have a decent margin, and then we can enhance our margin. That happens both on the rotorcraft side and the fixed-wing side. Which also allows for better call-out times on the passenger side.
You need an aircraft at 6:00 A.M., there's pretty much no one you can call, period, in at least, you know, the Northeast and the U.S. I'm not saying, I'm saying Europe, you can call us because, again, the same pilots, the same aircraft, you have, you know, people are working 24/7. Typically before Blade, you know, you could call at 7:00, it'd be a two-hour call-out time, and you'll get a flight at 9:00. That doesn't happen with us. In New York, we can scramble an aircraft on 20 minutes on demand. Probably a little longer in the overnight, but the only one that can do it at all in the overnight.
Perfect. If you guys have any questions, feel free. We can definitely get to you. Right in the middle. We can get you a microphone over here if we can.
Hi. Just thinking about, what is it? Transition. Modal transitions is probably what I'd call it. You get off your plane, you get into a helicopter, fly to Manhattan, and then you've got to move from the helipad to wherever you're going. How much? You know, the five, 10-minute flight time is great, but how much time does it really save compared if you're waiting for an Uber at the other end, et cetera?
Well, let's talk about that. In terms, you know, obviously, this multimodality is very important because you're not starting or ending at a Blade terminal. When you land at an airport, you're not starting or landing when you're landing in a helicopter. We have captive cars and staff at each of these airports. When you get off your helicopter, you get right in a car that takes you straight to your terminal. With certain airlines, at least on an arrival, they can actually, because you're quote-unquote clean because of TSA, you've already gone through your security, you could get off the aircraft and get on the jet way, go down the stairs into a car from that airline, and go straight to a Blade helicopter. On arrival, which is very important, we have two services.
One is a stage-ride sharing car or our own Ground Connect service. The moment you get out of, land at a Blade lounge in Manhattan, you can have a car waiting for you. With a stage car, it's like a very minor fee, the same you do if we're in your Uber. But because of where these heliports are located isn't the greatest place to get a car. Usually 20 minutes advance, we'll have one waiting. You literally waste no time. You get off, you get in your car. That's a choice. You don't have to buy it. I think it's about $40. But we have a lot of people using that. Also, you know, there's definitely a zone of where people know where they're saving time.
If you're at some other part of town, you know, Manhattan, we're lucky we have Blade Lounge East, Blade Lounge West, and Blade Lounge Wall Street. You know, if you're another borough, obviously you're living in Queens, we know we're not gonna be of any help. Most places in Manhattan, it probably makes sense, especially during peak rush hour. You're right, you're not. If you're at Hudson Yards, you walk across the street, or you're in Chelsea, you have a five-minute walk and such. You don't have outside those zones or in the East Side, if you're not kind of east of Park Avenue, you're kind of in that Midtown zone, you're not saving as much time. Still, even when you carve out 20 minutes for that trip, it's random. We survey our flyers.
People are saying certainty of arrival trumps how much time I'm saving. In other words, when certain areas, you could go to these airports, it could be 40 minutes, it could be three hours. They just wanna know when they're getting there. I find it really interesting because I'll go to these lounges a lot at these terminals, and I'll talk to passengers, and they'll say they're on a 3:00 flight, and it's 1:30. I'm like, "Why are you here so early?" He's like, "You know what? I just wanna go to the airport, wanna relax, wanna work on my laptop at the lounge, and that's it. I just know when I'm going.
This is part of my process." Where we have other people have a 4:30 flight, and they'll leave at 4:05, go have CLEAR TSA PreCheck and go straight to the gate. Sometimes you have a cup of coffee, and like, we have people who play it both ways. It's not, you know, the use cases are interesting. It's not always for that. You know, to the point you made, in an EVA world, the big unlock is quiet. As much as we love electric, as much as we love green, the big opportunity for Blade and Blade investors is the fact that they're quiet. The reason we don't have more landing zones is because helicopters are allowed.
Cities now know, having spent a fair amount of time with the governor, Mayor Adams, and the city, they know in order to be competitive in City 2.0 that they have to have an Urban Air Mobility strategy. Once we get to this point where, you know, we just tested the beta in the Greater New York City area, that we can actually fly them and they're certified. If we had one landing zone south of Central Park, South in Manhattan, north of Forty-third Street, I believe that the network effects of that would create an ecosystem in New York City that could be a half a billion dollar business.
You're not only flying from Manhattan to the airport, you're flying West Side to Midtown, East Side to Midtown to Wall Street, Midtown to all the three airports. It's kind of this network effect, and that's what the great unlock is for us. That's where the exponential growth happens when we are working with one of these EVA providers, and we have deals with most of them. What a lot of investors early on said, "You know, I don't know who's gonna win, but you're gonna be using them." For those manufacturers to be successful, they have to get to automotive scale. It's gonna be very difficult to not have us use their aircraft. We're excited about that.
If they wanna try to do it themselves, they're gonna need terminals, they're gonna need a brand, they're gonna need customers, they need a lot of stuff. This was not easy even on the rotorcraft side. I think we always use this analogy. It is like those early years of Netflix when they were moving DVDs in bags. What streaming was to Netflix, which unlocked everything on a distribution basis, EVA, electric vertical aircraft or Blade, that's where we'll see the growth.
That's great. Thanks for the question. I do wanna touch on EVA. Congrats on the, on the recent flight demo. It sounds like things went well there. How should investors think about the timing? What's your latest thoughts on the timing on, you know, post these certifications, of how quickly the scenario you outlined, the half a billion opportunity can become a reality for Blade? Are you already taking steps now to prepare for it, or is it kind of still wait and see and then plenty of time before you have to?
No. I mean, the whole DNA of the business and our work with, you know, our captive infrastructure was to make this a seamless transition. We believe there's gonna be a cohabitation phase, which a lot of people aren't thinking about, which means that you'll have kind of helicopters and EVA living in harmony. It's not a light switch. Especially when you think about the rollouts of aircraft, in the first year, the tolerance for the, you know, what the indications are on the aircraft in terms of, you know, engines and battery life and all those things. Those tolerances are gonna be very low. There's gonna be a lot of time that early first year, two years, where those aircraft will be grounded because it's the first time they're in the wild.
They wanna make sure everything's safe, everything's okay. We're gonna really, really high tolerances. sorry, low tolerances for anything that isn't right in terms of, you know, any kind of specifications. You know, it could be everything from in terms of the wind that it can handle, it could be the battery life, it could be anything. We will always need a helicopter for backup for that, but it will be in the ecosystem at some point. I think we've always been much more conservative. I mean, we've been in this business long enough to remember when people were saying 2021, 2022, 2023. When we went public, you know, we were saying by 2025, and I think You know, people are still saying 2024. We're kind of...
You'll see them in the air in 2025. In 2026, hopefully, we'll be flying passengers, you know, on a revenue basis. I think that's the idea. That's when you show the local legislators. You know, in an instance of Beta, they're quiet on takeoff and landing, and they're absolutely silent in overflight. The vast majority of noise complaints or concerns are in overflight because, obviously, that's the longest distance you're covering so many people. The fact that it's, you know, green and emission-free, despite the fact that helicopters don't burn a lot, it's critical importance. Everybody's focused on even more in Europe than in the U.S.
Absolutely. That was perfect. I think we're past our time, so we'll end it there. Really great conversation. Learned a lot, as always.
Great.
Thank you so much for being here and participating. Thank you, everybody, for joining and for your questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Itay.