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spk02: Good morning and welcome to the Blade Urban Air Mobility, Inc. Fiscal Second Quarter 2022 Financial Results Conference Call. All participants will be in the listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star then zero on your telephone keypad. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star 10-2. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Ravi Jani, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
spk04: Thanks and good morning. Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Blade Air Mobility Conference call and webcast for the quarter ended June 30, 2022. We appreciate everyone joining us today. Before we get started, I would like to remind you of the company's forward-looking statement in safe harbor language. Statements made in this conference call that are not historical facts, including statements about future time periods, may be deemed to constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual future results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. We refer you to our SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC for a more detailed discussion of the risk factors that could cause these differences. Any forward-looking statements provided during this conference call are made only at the date of this call. As stated in our SEC filings, Blade disclaims any intent or obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements, except as required by law. During today's call, we will also discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe may be useful in evaluating our financial performance. Reconciliation of the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures to those non-GAAP financial measures is provided in our earnings press release, which will also be available on our website. These non-GAAP measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP. Hosting today's call are Rob Wiesenthal, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Blade, Melissa Tomkeel, President, and Will Habern, Chief Financial Officer. I will now turn the call over to Rob Wiesenthal. Rob? Thank you, Robby.
spk10: Good morning, everyone. I'd like to thank you for your interest in Blade and welcome you to our earnings call for the second quarter ended June 30th, 2022. I'll start with a few highlights from the quarter. Our financial performance in the second quarter was once again well ahead of our expectations. Revenue in the June quarter increased 175% to $35.6 million versus $13 million in the 2021 comparable period, contributing to a record quarter for both revenue and flight profit, and establishing total revenue of $62.3 million for the first half of this year. We are seeing great performance across the broad portfolio of diverse aviation businesses that we have built and acquired since our inception. On a pro forma basis, assuming we had owned Trinity Air Medical and HelloJet's scheduled passenger business in the prior year period, Organic revenue growth would have been 87%. As you can tell from this figure, the benefits of the Blade platform are paying dividends across our divisions, both old and new. This is a testament to our ability to aggressively and efficiently integrate our acquisitions. At Blade, M&A is a core competency. Let me walk through a few highlights from the quarter. In our metamobility organ transplant business, we're making great progress in terms of new client acquisition and are now serving 59 transplant centers and organ procurement organizations. We remain the largest dedicated air transporter of human organs for transplant in the United States. By leveraging the combined buying power of the entire Blake customer base, both consumer and medical, we provide better pricing and reliability for hospitals in a way that few others can. Expect us to continue rolling out our great service and capabilities to even more clients in the coming months. We have also made great strides in short distance as well this quarter. I'm pleased to report that our Vancouver business returned to profitability following the impact of Omicron, in the first quarter, while Blade Airport, connecting travelers between Manhattan and New York area airports, showed significant improvement in utilization with its current passenger run rate well ahead of pre-pandemic levels. And the introduction of dynamic pricing has also driven further revenue growth. As a result of the strong demand for Blade Airport, in June, we announced the launch of an additional route between the east side of Manhattan and JFK. Average seat prices increased across the short distance route portfolio, contributing to significant growth in flight profit, while pricing and customer demand has remained equally strong in the third quarter to date. More than anything, this quarter demonstrated the resilience of our flyers and the enduring value proposition of our services. From our Blade Airport business, starting at $195 per seat, up to our commuter business with seats up to $1,100, we have seen unwavering demand for our short-distance products, even following price increases. Given the flexibility of our Acid Light model, the unique resilience of Blade's short-distance flyers, and the essential nature of our metamobility organ transplant services, we believe Blade is well-equipped to thrive even in a potential recessionary environment. We're also well-situated to combat inflationary pressure. In our consumer-facing businesses, pricing has more than offset cost increases, while our metamobility contracts generally pass through fuel. At the same time we've been driving growth in revenue and flight profit, we've driven efficiency from our other operating expenses. Total SG&A, which includes software development, general and administrative, and selling and marketing expenses, continues to decrease as a percentage of revenue down to 42% this quarter versus 83% in the prior year period, demonstrating the powerful leverage of our platform. Simply put, we have built a diverse and defensive set of businesses with significant growth potential in almost any economic environment. Let me take a moment to focus on this important point. Based on the current third quarter performance to date, we are seeing both consistent strong demand and price elasticity in our consumer business. At the same time, our medical business is enjoying continued growth and remains uncorrelated with the vagaries of the travel industry or the overall economy. Finally, I'm excited to welcome Roshin Branch to our team as our Chief Marketing Officer. Roshin joins us from Equinox and has prior international experience at AB InBev and Diageo. We look forward to having Roshin lead our marketing efforts as we expand our presence to three continents. I couldn't be more happy with how we are positioned. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Melissa to provide you with an update on Blade Europe and a few other focused areas.
spk01: Thanks, Rob. We have made incredible progress on our strategic initiatives this quarter. We are targeting a late summer close for our Blade Europe transactions, where we will acquire the asset-light charter and scheduled air mobility businesses of Monarch Air, Hela Security, and Azure Helicopter. Together, in 2019, these businesses generated an aggregate of approximately 30 million euro in revenue, while servicing approximately 125,000 flyers. All three businesses are performing well pre-closed and are pleased to report that 2022 revenue is tracking ahead of 2019 year-to-date. We've already begun to introduce our existing customer base to the south of France and Monaco by offering seats and charters to and from key events, including the Monaco Grand Prix and the Cannes Lions Festival, demonstrating the significant crossover demand from our U.S. leisure flyers. Our new urban air mobility alliance with JetBlue launched in June, Under the partnership, JetBlue will purchase four Blade Airport transfers per year for top-tier Mosaic Plus loyalty program members, while all TrueBlue members will receive first-time flyer pricing benefits from Blade. We expect this partnership to improve utilization in our airport business and provide a fantastic experience for JetBlue's loyal flyers. All of our strategic and financial accomplishments serve to build an even bigger launchpad for future electric vertical aircraft. EVA, or EVPOL in industry parlance. Whether it's a last-mile connection to bring a donor heart to a hospital helipad or a $200 seat between Nice and Monaco, Blade is aggregating the largest and most profitable existing use cases for electric flight, and we believe we are better positioned than anyone in the world to reap the expected benefits of future quiet, emission-free, and lower-cost EVA. To that end, Blade has been planning an EVA test flight in order to demonstrate the unique capabilities of these aircraft to the communities we serve. Today, we are pleased to announce that Blade will be conducting that test flight during the fourth quarter using Beta's ALEA aircraft in the greater New York City area. With that, I'll turn the call over to Will.
spk09: Thank you, Melissa. I'll start with some quick housekeeping. As you may have noticed from our press release this morning, we have realigned our disaggregation of revenue in order to provide analysts and investors better visibility into our growing metamobility organ transportation business, which is now broken out as its own revenue category. We've provided a schedule of historical quarters in both the current and prior format in our press release to assist you with your models. With that, I'll walk through a few highlights from the quarter. In short distance, revenues were up 89% to $11 million in the June 2022 quarter versus $5.8 million in the comparable 2021 period. Growth was driven by our acquisition of Helijet's passenger routes in Vancouver, increased corporate and leisure flight volumes, the resumption of our Blade Airport service, and price increases. On a pro forma basis, assuming we had owned Helijet's passenger business in the prior year period, organic revenue growth would have been 77%. In airport, we saw significant sequential passenger growth in Q2 of approximately 50% versus Q1, with a larger increase in revenue given higher yields on a perceived basis. We've continued to see passenger volume around the 25,000 flyer annualized run rate that we highlighted on our last call in May. Part of the reason for this is intentional, as we made the decision to allocate excess peak hour capacity to profitable seasonal short-distance routes. We've recently added additional capacity dedicated to airport routes, which we expect to support future growth. Turning to Metamobility Oregon Transport, revenue increased 1,013% to 17.2 million in the June 2022 quarter versus 1.6 million in the comparable 2021 period. Growth was driven by our acquisition of Trinity Air Medical, the addition of new hospital clients, and significant growth within existing accounts. On a pro forma basis, assuming we had owned Trinity in the prior year quarter, organic revenue growth would have been approximately 139%. Fantastic performance any way you look at it. The Trinity acquisition exemplifies the success of Blade's ROIC-focused acquisition strategy, which targets profitable businesses that can leverage the Blade platform to drive incremental revenue and cost efficiencies. By deploying our brand, aircraft operator network, and technology-enabled logistics and customer service, we have significantly accelerated growth in our combined metamobility organ transport business. In concrete terms, for the December 2021 quarter, the first, which included Trinity for the full period, we saw 9.8 million of total metamobility organ transport revenue. In just six months, we've grown revenue 76% to 17.2 million in the June 2022 quarter. We are well capitalized to continue executing against our M&A strategy, which we believe will both accelerate our path to profitability and enhance shareholder returns. Turning to cost of revenue, our flight margin improved sequentially to 14% in Q2, up from 11% in Q1, driven by improved utilization and pricing in our short-distance business, partially offset by mixed-shift to metamobility organ transport due to better-than-expected growth. Our metamobility business generally has lower flight margins versus our mature short-distance routes. Though flight margin declined in Q2 versus the 23% reported in the comparable 2021 period, we don't believe the year-over-year comparison is meaningful given the massive growth in our metamobility organ transport business, which increased from 12% of total revenue in the prior year period to 48% this quarter and drove a 72% increase in flight profit versus the prior year period. This mixed shift was the largest driver of the year-over-year flight margin decrease. The resumption of Blade Airport, which was operating below break-even during its ramp period, had an additional negative impact. Absent the Blade Airport ramp-up, we estimate the flight margin would have been approximately 150 to 200 basis points higher in the current quarter. Looking ahead, we expect flight margin to improve in the balance of the year as a result of stronger seasonal demand, improved short-distance utilization, growth in Blade Airport, and recent price increases. Let's turn now to SG&A, which includes software development, general and administrative, and selling and marketing expenses. SG&A fell to 42% of revenue this quarter, down from 83% in the prior year comparable period, and down sequentially from 62% in Q1. This reduction in SG&A as a percentage of revenue demonstrates the operating leverage of our platform. We will continue to optimize our cost structure to drive further improvements. On the last call, we provided an expectation for the first quarter to be the high watermark for quarterly SG&A expense for the year on an as-reported basis. That outlook was based on the assumption that we do no further M&A this year. Since then, we've announced a pending transaction in Europe, which is the largest transaction in our company's history. As a result, we have begun necessary investments in SG&A, particularly on headcount and technology, to support our expanded international revenue base following the close. As a result, we expect quarterly SG&A expenses to be in the $16 to $17 million range in the coming quarters, excluding any potential one-time expenses. Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter was a loss of $6.1 million compared to a loss of $2.6 million in the prior year period, with the year-over-year decline primarily driven by increased headcount and cost to support our public company transition, partially offset by higher flight profits. Operating cash flow in the quarter was negative $11.6 million, which included a $5.3 million working capital build, primarily related to our significant sequential growth in metamobility. We saw revenue up $4.6 million, or 36%, in Q2 versus Q1. Our hospital clients received 60-day terms, contributing to a $3.7 million increase in accounts receivable. In addition, we made upfront deposits of $3 million on new capacity purchase agreements, which will be credited against our actual flying costs and will provide a cash benefit in future quarters. This increase in deposits and accounts receivable was partially offset by increased accounts payable and unearned revenue. As we discussed last quarter, while we are not immune from industry-wide inflationary challenges, we believe our business is uniquely positioned to mitigate them. Our metamobility contracts are generally structured with fuel price pass-throughs, and our significant scale in the industry has allowed us to lock in two- to three-year contracts at attractive rates, further limiting cost inflation and allowing us to deliver the best possible pricing and service to our hospital clients. In our short distance business, the low fuel consumption of our aircraft and short flight time for the majority of our routes means that our costs are much less sensitive to fuel prices. Price actions taken year to date have more than offset any cost inflation and have contributed to our increased flight profit. With that, I'll turn it back over to Rob for a few closing remarks.
spk10: Thank you, Will. Given our formidable organic growth prospects, as well as our strong balance sheet, Blade maintains an unmatched competitive posture. As we've demonstrated over the past year with our acquisitions of Trinity and Helijet, M&A is a unique component of our shareholder value creation model. We will continue to pursue bolt-on acquisitions of profitable companies where we can leverage our global platform and where we see strong opportunities to generate attractive returns for our shareholders. At the same time, we remain focused on both growing and maximizing the profitability of our existing business. Our New York area airport transfer service alone has an annual addressable market of over 27 million flyers. In short, we have strategically built a flexible and diversified aviation business serving resilient end markets with significant growth prospects irrespective of shifts in the economic environment. With that, I'll turn it over to Robbie for questions.
spk04: Thanks, Rob. As a reminder, we will take questions from analysts and investors on the call today. Reporters should send inquiries to me directly. Operator, we're now ready for questions.
spk02: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, Please press star, then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from the line of Hillary Cacanando from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
spk06: Thank you for taking my questions. Great quarter. Sounds like demand is very strong across all segments. In the Blade Airport segment, could you just talk about just like the corporate travelers, are you seeing a change in the way they travel? And I guess, what are you expecting for corporate travel in the third quarter?
spk10: Hi, it's Rob Wiesenthal speaking. I think we've been pleasantly surprised. We're at 57% business versus 43% leisure based on our own The bulk of the action is clearly the JFK. I think a number of the airlines have had some issues at Newark Airport. And I think that we're seeing, especially the smaller companies and senior executives going back on the road again, differentiate themselves versus their peers, to also even visit offices that, you know, are sometimes remote to gather everybody who was remote into regional offices. So business travel, from our perspective, is definitely an important part of this product. And we see nothing kind of in the current quarter that would make us think that that would not continue.
spk09: We're also seeing good results in terms of the per C yield. In Q1, we were around the $200 level, and currently we're seeing around $225 with our dynamic pricing. So that's also really encouraging in terms of average price. Yeah.
spk06: Oh, wow. Okay. That's great. That's great to know. And then obviously, you know, you mentioned, you know, M&A is your core competency and, you know, your European deal is going to close late summer. So what could we expect in terms of, like, the M&A – I guess, like the number of M&As and the frequency of M&A transactions? Could we expect another one maybe late this year? Or should we expect one per year? How should we think about that?
spk10: We really don't put it in terms of targets, in terms of number of deals. We're really being opportunistic. Where we are right now is we've basically aggregated what we believe are the largest markets in the world, the Northeast Corridor, Western Canada, um southern europe in terms of uh monaco and the south of france and we also have a joint venture in india there are a bunch of other markets that we've targeted and essentially what we do is we do a very strong a very comprehensive and in-depth analysis as to whether or not you know build versus buy because there's an investment either way you can buy the passenger part of a company uh in their customer list and that brand and those routes and you reduce your risk and you're paying up front and you can be pretty close to immediately profitable, or you can invest in a route, build utilization, take early ramp up losses and do it that way. And as you know, and to a certain extent, the MNA is a, many times less risky if you have an incumbent like many of the companies that we bought have been there some for 30 years, 50 years or more with huge customer list, very valuable. And also where there's cross fertilization between say the US flyer and the European flyer or the Canadian flyer. So I would expect more M&A. It is a core competencies and we'll stick with what we've done in the past, which are very new routes that really offer a reduction in friction in people's travel. infrastructure uh whereby we can service we can service uh more places those are really i would say kind of the two key areas that we you know retain our focus with respect to acquisitions or other types of alliances all right great thank you so much recorder you're welcome thank you next question comes from the line of stephen jew from
spk02: Credit Suisse, please go ahead.
spk07: Okay, thank you so much. So, hey, Raoul. So, it looks like the footprint of the pending European acquisitions seem more leisure-focused, and that is, of course, a large opportunity. But as a supplement, can you also talk about potential commuter opportunities, hopefully along the lines of what may already be the case for the Northeast Corridor in our country? Thanks.
spk09: So on the Europe point, this is Will here, definitely a little bit more exposed to leisure markets, but we've seen incredible strength in that consumer. So we're happy to report that we're actually ahead of 2019 levels in what we underwrote for that acquisition on a pre-closed basis. So everything we're seeing from that market is showing real strength. And I think Rob can address some of the points on the commuter side of things.
spk10: Yeah, I think that, you know, we're watching very carefully, you know, traveler patterns. But if you think about it, the best way we can attack the business flyer is from, you know, what we believe is the biggest market in the world in terms of New York, where people come from all over the globe to do business. So we think, you know, with 28 million people is an addressable market. coming to and from the New York City airports, we see a very huge opportunity. There are obviously other opportunities in the Northeast that we continue to evaluate. You know, we're not, we have not given any New guidance as to specific timing, but we're going to continue to look at acquisitions versus building new routes. And I think that you will definitely see in the coming months, new routes emerging that will have both a business and a leisure component. When we have both, that's obviously optimum. And I would also say in Europe, especially with respect to the Monaco side of the acquisitions, you know, there is a meaningful business component that is year-round. It is not purely seasonal. Melissa, I don't know if there's anything else you want to add to that.
spk01: Yeah. No, this is Melissa Tomkiel, President of Blade. Yeah, while we do see the core group of our flyers in Europe being leisure, there certainly is a business element there because the service that we're providing provides regular and frequent connectivity from a major hub in the region at Nice Airport to Monaco. And there's many business people that travel that route every day.
spk03: Thank you. Thank you.
spk02: Next question comes from the line of Phil Peterson with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
spk05: Yeah, hi. Good morning and nice job on the quarterly results. Two questions, if I may. The first question on the organ transplant business, I think in the past you've talked about this business having somewhere like 15% market share. I'm not sure if that was when this business was a $10 million business or a $13 million business or now a $17 million business. I guess based off your recent quarter, where do you think share is and And I guess at this point, how should we think about the growth of this business over the longer term and ultimately what kind of share you could achieve, I suppose, in what areas or geographies do you have further share opportunities?
spk09: Thanks for the question, Bill. Will here. 15% is sort of an estimate that we still think is about right. That's our share just of heart, liver, and lung. So that's about half, a little less, of the 40,000 transplants that happen in the United States every year. So there's a separate opportunity in kidneys that we're not really attacking directly right now. And we think, given our scale, both in the retail and organ transport side of things, We've really been able to create a network across the U.S. that gives us better availability than a lot of our competitors and also better pricing for those hospitals. So particularly when folks at transplant centers and organ procurement organizations are a little bit more focused on cost. we think we have an advantage in that market. So we really think there's a huge opportunity to grab the majority of share in the overall heart, liver, lung market, and that's what we're focused on doing right now, very aggressively working to add new hospitals to our network across the U.S.
spk05: Thanks for that. Thanks for breaking out the realigned segments. It makes it a lot easier to see the growth patterns as well as seasonality. And I wanted to ask about how we should think about seasonality, you know, going forward amongst the various segments. If we think about, you know, jet and other, it looks like there's some pretty clear seasonality on the short distance. You have Vancouver, you have, you know, southern Europe coming soon. If you can help break that out amongst the segments so that we can, again, sort of better calibrate our models.
spk09: Sure, happy to help with that. Start with the organ transportation piece. That's generally non-seasonal. We expect it to generally be a sequential grower. You're also seeing some intrinsic growth within that market as a whole as hospitals start going farther to pick up organs than maybe they've gone previously. And as folks start working together better to make sure fewer organs go to waste. So there's both hopefully some growth in the volume overall of organ transplants that take place. And part of the way that you unlock that is by going farther to pick up organs that maybe wouldn't have been matched that distance. So you've got a number of growth drivers there that are non-seasonal. On the European and U.S. leisure side of things in short distance, both of those businesses are going to continue to have some summer seasonality. On the Vancouver side of things, you actually see reverse seasonality from what we see here in the US. And that's because the instrument flight rules helicopters that are utilized up in Vancouver have a competitive advantage in the winter months because they can fly in weather conditions Their competition, the seaplanes, cannot. So you actually see strength in that business coming into December, January, February. Still good volume in the summer, but you see more volume and you're able to get better pricing in the winter months. And then finally, going to our jet and other segments. You've got a little bit of jet charter business, but what really is going to drive the seasonality there is our scheduled by the seat jet services, blade one, as we call them. That's a seasonal business that starts around Thanksgiving. and currently goes through the beginning of April. So you'll see that jump in revenue there in those months. And then for the remaining parts of the year, you'll see some lumpiness from brand partner payments that come in as we sign some contracts with some brands that work with us. And then the rest will be some retail jet charter. And that's just a nice strategic add-on for us because we're able to utilize the same swing aircraft that we use for the medical business. And it tends to come the demand for jet charter during the day, whereas the demand for medical transport tends to come at night. So it's a nice way to put more hours on those aircraft and ultimately create lower pricing for our hospitals.
spk05: Okay. Thanks for that caller. It's helpful. If I can ask one more on flight margins, you gave some nice color. It sounds like your price increases are outpacing some of the cost increases. I think you mentioned you have two- to three-year contracts. I believe you said that was related to metamobility. I guess more on the helicopter side, you know, considering wage pressures, you know, pilot shortages, things like that. Do you have similar contracts? Or I guess what I'm getting at is do you still expect price increases to outpace some of the – presumably you're seeing some cost inflation, but just try to understand how the contracts and costs work.
spk10: Yes, you know, we enter into generally agreements with our helicopter operators that are based on a fixed hourly rate that includes pilots, fuel, all of the above, based on fixed distances. And so they kind of, you know, so they're kind of, you know, some are midterm, some are long-term, some are short-term. We don't see any changes. any kind of, we don't have any concern on our part in terms of our ability to kind of outpace the cost of business. We don't see the kind of pilot shortages and helicopter business that We see in, say, commercial jets and in private jets you may have. And, you know, I guess the short answer is that, you know, also on the fuel side, you know, we're looking at aircraft that are burning about 40 to 45 gallons an hour of jet fuel versus, say, 450 gallons an hour for a G4 jet. So fuel is not as large a component for short-distance aviation in helicopters and amphibious seaplanes and such than in other parts of aviation. So that's something that we're not overly concerned with. I think that this year in particular, we were pleasantly surprised by the amount of demand that we've had. and could have certainly used more aircraft. And we have now arranged to enter into deals where we do have more aircraft, which is terrific. And we haven't had any kind of issues with respect to availability.
spk09: Yeah, seat pricing has been a margin driver for us rather than just an offset to inflation. So it's been a good driver for us.
spk05: Yeah, it sounds like you have some opportunities to keep driving that higher. Is that Is that the right way to think about it?
spk10: Yes. Well, you know, I think across the board, the resilience of the flyer that we're seeing, they see the value in reducing the friction. The traffic is only getting worse. There's clearly still pent-up travel demand, especially on some of the higher-end products that we have. We have buy-to-see products that are now at the 1,100-hour mark for 35-minute flights, and they just keep growing.
spk03: Operator, next question.
spk02: The next question comes from the line of from Citi. Please go ahead.
spk08: Great. Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Just to continue the conversation on the flight margin, maybe, Will, could you just maybe provide a bit more context into, you know, where you kind of see second half flight margin going as well? Just how should we think about the impact? often the pending acquisitions over in Europe. And second, maybe for Rob, any update on the use of drones in the metamobility business? And I know we've talked about that in the past. Just curious if there's any update there.
spk09: Thanks for the question. When we think about flight margin, as we've talked about before, we generally see a slightly higher contribution margin from our mature routes in the short-distance side of things. So as we talked about on the seasonality there, Q3 is always going to be the biggest quarter for us, particularly in the New York short distance business. So you'll see probably the highest margins seasonally in that Q3. But then broadly across the businesses, we've talked about optimizing our pricing. And so you'll see a benefit across the business lines going into second half. But generally, you would expect Q3 to be the highest And then Q4 is not going to match the margins that you see in Q3 because some of that seasonal short distance revenue that's on these mature routes that we've been building for seven years now is going to be less prevalent as a percent of the overall mix. Does that answer the question for you? Yep, that's very helpful.
spk10: With respect to the medical side and drones, you know, we continue to believe since we're flying hospital to hospital, And more and more organs are being moved without doctors that drones are going to be an important part of this business going forward. They are not yet, as we've discussed on previous calls, there have to be changes in terms of the FAA line of sight regulations with respect to flying drones. However, we do have a team and we are actively meeting with both drone manufacturers and drone service providers. I think they offer unique opportunities for alliances and our acquisitions, especially as they start to develop books of business. So this is something we're keenly focused on.
spk08: That's very helpful. If I could sneak one last one in, just with the strength that you saw in the quarter to just an overall short distance demand, Just curious kind of what you're seeing in terms of the mix of first-time flyers as opposed to kind of repeat flyers and kind of how you see that shaping in the last few quarters.
spk09: Well, we're bringing a lot of new flyers into our network, particularly through the airport product. That's been growing really quickly. And also the partnership that we talked about with JetBlue has really increased our visibility. In fact, this month, you started seeing some promotion for Blade on seatbacks. for select flights that are coming in here to the New York market. So that's driven a lot of new visibility and a lot of new flyers. Of course, on some of our mature routes, you see a higher percentage of folks that love us and come back every year.
spk10: I would say that, you know, obviously in the short distance, there are a lot of kind of commuter routes that, you know, continue to have, you know, repeat flyers. But one thing that's important to note, you know, in the past, Blade has been very focused on advertising within the markets we serve, specifically think about New York for the New York market. We've been extremely, as you may see yourself, both at Kennedy Airport and Newark Airport, very active in digital advertising within the airport terminals, which obviously gets the attention of flyers from all over the world. So we are seeing many more, you know, flyers that are not from our core areas that are first-time flyers.
spk03: That sounds very helpful. Thank you. Operator, next question. Thank you.
spk02: Just give me a moment. Next question comes from the line of Jason Hellstein from Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.
spk11: Thanks. I just wanted to ask just a bit more about two questions around airports. How are you thinking about it? Obviously, you don't give us a specific number. You do give us seats, but maybe help us size how big short-distance flight services need to get to suggest that airport has really seen kind of the margin inflect, you know, kind of to a more run rate level, or is it kind of number of seats? And then maybe talk about any kind of changes to the service that you think that would drive more usage, any discussions with airports about, you know, kind of, you know, post-security, just any kind of enhancements you're thinking about to the airport business. Thank you.
spk09: Sure, Jason. So, you know, it's a combination, right, of growing the number of seats, but also growing the concentration of those seats, the load factor on individual flights. So in the past quarter, you know, we've had weeks that, you know, were profitable on JFK. So we're hovering around that level. It's not a place that we've gotten to consistently yet. And so that's where we're starting to look at dynamic pricing, which, as we talked about earlier, has already driven up our average yield per seat. And so I think it's a combination of looking at the times when the value proposition is even stronger and making sure that you've got availability for people who really want it by having the price match the demand. and then also continuing to grow our capacity. And so with respect to some of the changes that we were making, we had to make those decisions as we talked about earlier in the call to allocate capacity to our most profitable routes here in the summer, because as Rob mentioned, We saw incredibly strong demand for some of the seasonal short distance businesses, and we wanted to make sure that we were maximizing margin above all. We've moved quickly to bring an additional capacity that's dedicated to airport. So we're going to have ability to service additional flyers. going forward and also we recently launched an additional route from the east side of Manhattan to JFK which is available in the afternoons now servicing a flyer that maybe it wasn't as convenient to drive over the West 30th Street Heliport so we're attacking this from a lot of different directions to try to pull all the different levers that help us get the overall profitability and we've gotten much much closer just trying to get to that profitability on a consistent basis
spk10: Jason, it's Rob speaking. You raised a very good point in terms of what else we're trying to do. We've done a lot of things that I think have really improved the service. And they've also increased the average ticket price in terms of checkout. We introduced something called staged cars, which allows cars that are basically waiting upon people's arrival at the heliport since they're not always easy to find, and you don't want to necessarily wait. If you're taking a five-minute flight, you don't want to wait 10 minutes for an Uber. We introduced that. We also mentioned the last call, and it will be opening up starting this fall, our first full dedicated lounge at an airport. It will be at Newark Airport at Signature Aviation. So that gives a great place for people to aggregate before a flight if they need to take a phone call before heading back to the city or if they arrive early for a flight. I think that'll be a terrific experience for people. And with respect to the airlines, we continue as we have had in the past with respect to Delta and American Airlines. explore ways with the Port Authority and with the airline to get to the point where we can have, you know, a more seamless experience getting people, you know, from behind the tarmac to helicopters, which is something we've done in the past and is achievable. Right now, usually through some of the higher end services at these airlines as opposed to straight through blade. So those are very important. We're continuing to work on those to make kind of smoothed out anything in terms of the experience to make it as seamless as possible. It's still a five minute flight. And I think we've really, the guys on the ground have really mastered logistics to get people to their flights on time and from their flights to the aircraft for the trip back to the city.
spk03: Thank you. Thank you. Next question.
spk02: This concludes, we do not have any questions anymore. Can we go ahead and conclude? Great. Yes, you may now end the call. All right. This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Rob Wiesenthal, CEO, for any closing comments.
spk10: Hi, it's Rob Wiesenthal. I'm very proud of the quarter, proud of the team. you know, great performance on all key metrics across, you know, across the company. So we look forward to having more calls. Glad we've given you more data on the segments. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to email us or call us, and we'll be doing a number of conferences, which you can find on Bloomberg, you know, during the week to really dive a little bit deeper into the performance of the company, and we appreciate your continued support. Have a great day, everybody.
spk02: Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
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