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Founded in 2004 in Dubai by aviation experts, Titan Aviation began with modest goals and an enduring mission. Today, almost 20 years later, it stands as one of the world’s premier aviation service providers, offering aircraft management solutions for traditional and advanced aviation, with private je charters, an extensive fleet and unparalleled consulting services.  
In this interview with the President U.S. for Titan Aviation, Toni Drummond, we explore the company’s = expansion into the United States and its capacity to address challenges in Advanced Air Mobility (AAM), uncrewed aircraft system (UAS) operations, electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft and electrification.  Read on to learn how Toni has spent her entire career on the cutting edge of general aviation and now leverages her experience and expertise to move Titan and the entire UAS and AAM communities forward. 

Dawn Zoldi: Toni, tell us about yourself. 
Toni Drummond: I consider myself a specialist in general aviation, meaning private and corporate business aviation, which I’ve focused on for more than 25 years of my career. Over the past couple of years, I have transferred my knowledge and skills into uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) and advanced air mobility (AAM) as well. 
Dawn Zoldi: Tell us a little bit about Titan and how you got involved in the company. 
Toni Drummond: Titan Aviation, a 20-years strong general aviation (GA) company, has headquarters in Dubai and India and a robust presence across the Middle East. Around this time last year, the CEO of Titan tracked me down at a drone show last year when I was there doing some work for Global Aerial Management Group (GAMG), my drone service-turned-consulting company. He had a specific interest in learning more about emerging aviation, both UAS and AAM, and bringing it to his GA company. He recruited me to assist in opening up an emerging aviation division for Titan and to also open up a U.S.-based charter aircraft sales, services and management line of effort here in the United States.  
Dawn Zoldi: You are from the GA community, which has not always welcomed drones with open arms. What ignited your interest in drones? 
Toni Drummond: My passion for drones started around 2020, when COVID hit. At the time, I was working for Prestige Air Group, a GA charter company. I initially started my fully woman-owned drone company, again called Global Aerial Management Group, to enable Prestige’s GA use case. We used drones and other means to disinfect both our charter aircraft and stadiums so that performers could keep flying and entertaining. We called it “Jet-to-Stage.” That started my journey with drones. 
Dawn Zoldi: How has your GA background informed the work you’ve been doing in the drone and AAM space? 
Toni Drummond: Aviation is highly regulated. Me and my team have run flight departments all over the world under FAA and other country’s regulations. There’s a lot of overlap between GA, drones and AAM. We’re all figuring out how to share the same airspace. There are lessons to be learned from the GA industry that can be applied to help support these emerging aviation industries. We talk about some concepts like they are new, but they’re not. Some of them, like airspace deconfliction, we’ve been doing for 60 years. Even though people may not be actually flying physical planes, they are still digitally flying them. We have to figure out a better way to share the sky more effectively, in an environmentally sound manner that puts safety first. We tend to focus on our differences. To me, the key is understanding the similarities and connections across aviation. Coming to these new industries steeped in GA standards and regulations provides a unique perspective. 
Dawn Zoldi: Under your leadership, what is Titan doing to help UAS and AAM integrate the national airspace system (NAS)? 
Toni Drummond: Titan is carving out a vertical that will act as a support network for UAS and AAM. We have a Part 135 federal aviation certificate that allows us to transport cargo and goods and passengers for hire. We run an aviation company with a safety culture. We have things like a safety management system (SMS), key to operating safely in the NAS. We operate many different jets globally, on a daily basis. In fact, we just added another company’s Hawker 800 to our certificate here in the U.S.  Because we have the Part 135 approval, and are constantly talking to the regulatory bodies, we can leverage that certificate and our expertise to assist with other aircraft models, including UAS. We have drone companies that we’re working with right now that are doing deliveries and need to scale. We have to have the regulatory framework in place and we are going to be partnering up with multiple companies to help them do that. 
Dawn Zoldi: What’s Titan’s vision for assisting with eVTOL aircraft specifically? 
Toni Drummond: We’re taking our GA model and applying it first to UAS and then eventually to fleets of eVTOL and other AAM vehicles, to offset and complement our current aircraft offerings. For crewed eVTOLs, we will make sure that it’s safe, put the crew in it, ensure it’s fueled or charged,  make sure that the crew has training and take care of that asset for companies. That’s what we do with all of our aircraft offerings and it carries over directly to UAS, eVTOL and AAM. 
Dawn Zoldi: What are you and Titan doing on the infrastructure side of the house? 
Toni Drummond: Our focus is not so much on vertiports but more so on electrification. When we talk about aviation in general, we have about 5500 airports within the U.S. right now that are used commercially. Just a tiny fraction of these are GA airports, meaning those that only have private aircraft going in and out of them, like Teterborough in New Jersey, where I started my career, and Van Nuys, California. All of these are right outside of the hub cities. Teterborough is just outside of New York City; Van Nuys out of Los Angeles. These are regional airports that connect the cities. Electrifying these airports will be key to the AAM industry. Electrification will assist not just eVTOLs but also electrical short takeoff and landing (eSTOLs) that will still need to use a runway, as well as conventional takeoff and landing (CTOLs) craft. They will all need electricity. Titan continues focusing on how to electrify some of these airports, to plug this all together and even connect the cities that are not yet connected by  
commercial airlines.  
Dawn Zoldi: Where do you think AAM will really make a difference in everyday lives? 
Toni Drummond:  AAM is going to really shine, in my opinion, by connecting places that are not normally connected. I’ll give you an example. In Las Vegas, certain parts of California are not too far away. Reno and Elko Nevada are about 45 minutes away. These areas are really starting to build up with people and infrastructure, like hospitals. But there’s no way to get there easily. It’s very hard to go commercial air and the drive takes a crazy amount of time. That’s where regional air mobility (RAM), a part of AAM, is really going to plug. We’re looking to electrify the Elkos and the Reno’s of the world to implement a more sustainable way of flight and mobility. 
Dawn Zoldi: Do you see supply chain issues as a major limited factor for electrical infrastructure? 
Toni Drummond: Current transformers, switch gears and breakers are all on huge lead times. Some are taking up to 30 to 50 weeks or more. So we’re looking at other sustainable options. We’ve met, for example, with some solar companies. They are not currently in the aviation space, but they have some interesting solutions that just might work. For example, we’re dealing with one airport in Nevada where we could put up a solar farm. We need to determine how many planes might be coming in and out everyday, how much extra will we need. We are just in the beginning states and Titan is an enabler for all of this. There is no blanket solution; everything will be case-by-case.  
Dawn Zoldi: Titan is involved in so many interesting projects. Can you highlight any others? 
Toni Drummond: I’m going to give a shout out to Greenport, Texas. Greenport has a very organic way of looking at electrification. Within their ecosystem, they’re addressing the electricity source issue by putting up their own substation to pull from, to support their entire environment. It includes airports, research 
centers and other things within that community, which will all be self-sustaining. 
Dawn Zoldi: In addition to all of the ways Titan is helping to support the future of flight that we just discussed, you are also deeply involved in education. Tell us about that. 
Toni Drummond: We have a huge heart for education and support the diverse workforce we need to sustain the UAS and AAM industries. For example, Titan Aviation was a proud sponsor of the Titan Scholars Program at this year’s Law-Tech Connect Workshop at AUVSI. I think it’s really important that people understand how easy it is to be involved in the future. This industry will be worth billions of dollars and we have to give back. The Titan Scholars was an easy way for us to do that. It enabled 15 people, ranging from higher education students, to Part 107 pilots, to employees from MassDOT, to attend the Workshop and the XPO this year and get Dawn’s drone law text book. The main thing that came out of that was that they networked. I help them literally build their LinkedIn profile from zero to to 300 just by bringing them into our community, Now they’re now part of our ecosystem. When they graduate college and they’re ready for a job, we’ll be there to help them launch their careers. We can’t just hope somebody else is going to do that. As a company, we were able to give our power to 15 other human beings. It doesn’t matter what event you’re going to – think about taking one or two students with you. Invite them to a convention. Create an intern program. These are all life-changing experiences and, in the end, a way to bolster the industry. 
Dawn Zoldi: In your role at Titan, you have the opportunity to travel globally. What trends have seen over the past year in the AAM industry? 
Toni Drummond: I have a full year under my belt since starting my worldwide speaking sprint. I’m blessed to have been in this position and to have had those opportunities. As someone who’s been an aviator since I graduated college when I was 22 years old, the biggest thing I noticed was the relative lack of progress in the U.S compared to what I saw overseas. My first overseas trip in 2023 was to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a place that has welcomed AAM. They want to be first to everything. Titan has a huge footprint there with offices that overlook the Dubai airport. People have come to us from all over the globe looking to bring their concepts into Dubai, prove it out and then bring it into the US. It shouldn’t necessarily be that way. The same with India. Companies want to activate in India, prove out their concept and then come to the U.S. It shouldn’t necessarily be that way, but as large as the U.S. market will be, our country seems to have fallen behind others. And companies know it. 
Dawn Zoldi: What can we expect over the next year from Titan? 
Toni Drummond: We are going to continue putting ourselves out there. Next up, we’ll be at the Air Taxi World Congress, where I’ll be participating in a session on emerging aviation. After that, we’ll be at the National Business Aviation Association – Business Aviation Conference and Expo. This year NBAA has an Emerging Tech Zone. Through the end of this year, we’ll continue to spool out to other aviation shows including as co-chair of the Advanced Air Mobility Committee for the National Air Transportation Association (NATA). We kick off the New Year at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Titan will be almost everywhere that there’s either an aviation or a tech show that applies to UAS or AAM. We’re there to talk about partnerships and collaborations, how our models can help your models. 
Dawn Zoldi: Toni, how can people connect with you, besides at these various shows? 
Toni Drummond: You can find me on LinkedIn. Please connect with me and the team. We want to sit down and work through solutions for you! 
Watch Toni on the Dawn of Drones 2023:

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