ABOUT PHOENIX AIR
Cartersville-based Phoenix Air, known internationally for transporting Ebola patients and now entering the drone business, actually got its start in skydiving. It has survived and grown over the years by constantly seeking new niches.
Founder Mark Thompson, an Army helicopter pilot in Vietnam, had decided to launch an aviation business after coming home from the war. He started with a skydiving center and tried other lines of work, eventually finding his niche in small air cargo.
“Our unofficial motto was boxes don’t argue,” said Dent Thompson, Mark’s brother and vice president at Phoenix Air.
In its early days the company was based out of DeKalb-Peachtree Airport, but by 1985 it moved to Cartersville where facilities were less expensive.
The company grew, but the brothers wanted to avoid the “roller-coaster” of economic cycles, Dent said.
One gleaming target was federal contracts. Phoenix Air started transporting explosives for the Department of Defense, the oil industry, rock quarries and others, Dent said. The company went through lengthy background checks that enabled it to bid for classified contracts.
“That was the single largest event in the history of the company,” Dent said.
The company gained not just U.S. contracts, but also worked for NATO, Canada, Australia and Japan, he said.
When defense spending cooled the company expanded into air ambulance work. Eventually, Dent said, the company won a contract to transport Centers for Disease Control personnel, including flying CDC workers to and from Port Au Prince after the Haiti earthquake.
Several years ago, the CDC asked Phoenix Air if it could put an isolation chamber in a plane to transport personnel who might be exposed to SARS, bird flu and swine flu and would need to be flown from Asia to the United States for treatment.
The company spent more than two years developing an aeromedical biological containment system, or ABCS. But by the time it was ready, the bird flu, swine flu and SARS scares had evaporated.
“So we simply put it in a warehouse and there it sat,” Dent said.
Then last summer, the State Department called and asked if the ABCS would work with Ebola patients, Dent said. That led to Phoenix Air’s evacuations of Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, followed by many other patients.
Today, the company has about 42 aircraft in its fleet, with 250 employees and offices in Florida, California, Virginia and Hawaii. About 200 of the company’s employees are based in Cartersville.
And it’s still true that “we want to look for niche areas,” Dent said. “Aviation as a whole is a stagnant industry. The only element of aviation that is growing right now is the unmanned element.”
The company started a unit called Phoenix Air Unmanned and set out to get federal approval.
“We anticipate this being a good portion of our growth plans,” said Will Lovett, managing director of Phoenix Air Unmanned.
Steve Justice, director of the Georgia Center of Innovation for Aerospace, said Phoenix Air’s extensive background in aviation and work with the government likely helped its case to get clearance for commercial drone operations.
“They have a great amount of experience in manned aviation and they’re going to be bringing that to the unmanned area,” Justice said.
Georgia’s emerging drone industry is setting its sights on filmmaking.
The combination of two growing industries in the state could spur innovation in both, though there are still hurdles to overcome.
The Federal Aviation Administration in late March granted an exemption allowing Cartersville-based Phoenix Air to use unmanned aircraft — commonly known as drones — for commercial filmmaking and several other uses. That has opened the doors for a new era of camera-carrying commercial drones in Georgia.
Phoenix Air’s exemption allows it to film videos of, say, golf courses for promotional videos or real estate developments. But it is still seeking approval for closed-set filmmaking.
Unmanned aircraft are “able to do so many things safely that some aircraft or other systems might not be able to do,” said Will Lovett, managing director for Phoenix Air Unmanned.
Camera-equipped drones could replace helicopters and cranes used to shoot video, enabling more creative shots.
“It’s not only safer, it’s cheaper,” said Ric Reitz, Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists president in Georgia and South Carolina. “It is far more useful to have something that small and that safe doing aerial shots.”
When an aerial shot is needed, filming crews typically charter a helicopter to fly from an airport or heliport with fuel and people on board, an expensive and time-consuming operation, said Mark Dombroff, co-chair of the unmanned aircraft systems practice at McKenna Long & Aldridge, who represents Phoenix Air.
“Now all of a sudden you’ve got a 20-pound drone” with a camera, capable of operating at low altitudes, Dombroff said. “It allows aerial photography in circumstances where it might not otherwise be practical or economic…. (And) it allows the shots to be taken from various vantage points that might not be achievable with a helicopter.”
Legal vs illegal operators
There are, of course, many examples of videos on YouTube that were shot with drones, by hobbyists, overseas where it’s legal or by unapproved operators.
Going with an unapproved operator might be cheaper than using an approved operator like Phoenix Air, but Dombroff said it could present safety risks.
“I think there are significant opportunities for people who want this service but want it done right and want it done safely and efficiently by professionals,” Dombroff said.
Those in the industry say drone operators in California that are already certified have already been doing work on movies in Georgia. But the state’s film tax credit incentivizes filmmakers to use Georgia-based companies, which could generate demand for Phoenix Air’s services.
“The use of unmanned aircraft is becoming more and more prevalent in many different kinds of films,” said Steve Justice, director of the Georgia Center of Innovation for Aerospace. “So now, having a Georgia company that can offer those services… it’s a great opportunity.”
Drumming up business
Perhaps the biggest test will be how much demand the technology actually generates.
Lovett said Phoenix Air is still working on developing its pricing. The company plans to operate a Vulcan Octo copter, a relatively complex system that is made to navigate around a movie set for filming, and the Pulse Vapor 35, he said.
Phoenix Air — a longtime player in light cargo and other services that recently became known for flying Ebola patients — has also leased a 10-acre field in Bartow County to use for demonstrating the drones and training operators.
Hollywood productions typically require heavier equipment and larger drones, which are more complicated to operate than consumer unmanned aircraft.
“I definitely think it’s a big plus to have someone here in Georgia that’s certified,” said Craig Miller, co-president of the Georgia Production Partnership, a local film industry group.
Drones are “far more safe than anything you would put in the air otherwise, just because of the compact nature of what they are,” Reitz said. But, he said, there are other issues to be aware of with drones including privacy concerns, air traffic and other safety issues.
For those reasons, having a trained, approved operator is “a good thing,” Reitz said.
Miller said there are federal regulations and restrictions to be aware of for outdoor production to protect nearby airspace. For closed-set productions in particular, safety — not only of the stars, crew and surrounding property – is of the utmost importance, Miller said.
“You do have to be careful, you don’t want to put the blades too close to anybody.”
Skilled cinematographers will likely also be in demand to work alongside a drone operator, since shooting a film with a drone often involves at least one person flying the drone and another controlling the camera attached to the drone.
Future filming visions
Along with Norcross-based VSG Unmanned and Atlanta-based Solusia Air, Phoenix Air is one of three firms in Georgia to gain FAA approval for commercial drone operations, and it’s the first company in the state to gain approval for drone filmmaking. But other companies may also seek approvals and begin offering services if the market demands it.
Depending on the authorizations and approvals Phoenix Air or other companies get for closed set operations and specific activities, Georgia could be getting ready for its close-up by drone.
Hollywood and the motion picture industry have already used drones for years overseas, including in “Skyfall”, “Smurfs 2”, “Tranformers: Age of Extinction” and the Harry Potter films, according to the Motion Picture Association of America.
Unmanned aircraft “are not a complete substitute for manned helicopters in filmmaking, but they are a safer, more efficient, more flexible alternative in so many cases,” according to Kate Bedingfield, spokeswoman for the Motion Picture Association.
While Phoenix Air’s current approval is limited, those in the film industry are already envisioning many possibilities that could arise through drone filmmaking in the future.
“You could fly over Turner Field, you could fly it along the river,” Reitz said. “You could run up the side of a skyscraper inside of city limits… Cinematographically, that could look really cool….
“Think of a Star Wars sequence where they’re racing through the woods and going through trees. That’s all done through CGI (computer-generated imagery). Sometimes it’s much more cost-effective to let a real object fly between trees or between buildings.”
