Reliable Airlines, a cargo airline based in Albuquerque announced the addition of Tom Klassen as President and Director of Operations to support the growth of operations and future integration of safety-enhancing systems developed by its parent company, Reliable Robotics. The airline team has established a safety management system and operational procedures and has a proven record of safety, 100% flight completion and 99.9% dispatch reliability, earning the airline more routes in New Mexico. "This is the next evolution of aviation." Formerly known as AirDialog, Reliable Airlines aligns the cargo operation brand more closely with Reliable Robotics. The team at Reliable Airlines will have the unparalleled opportunity to lead the industry with the integration of automation that will improve aviation safety.

FedEx Corp. is looking at using small self-flying cargo planes to serve remote areas after experimenting with a technology startup on autonomous aircraft, said Chief Executive Officer Fred Smith. The effort builds on the courier's work with Silicon Valley's Reliable Robotics, which was founded by veterans of Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp. With approval from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, Reliable Robotics demonstrated in June a fully automated remote landing of a Cessna 208 Caravan turboprop owned by FedEx. "This initiative deals with small turboprop airplanes and in this particular case the single-engine C208, which we're looking at putting in very remote and uninhabited areas as part of our network," Smith said Monday at FedEx's annual shareholder meeting. FedEx pilots shouldn't be concerned about robots stealing their jobs -- for now.

Reliable Robotics, a startup developing autonomous flight technologies, this week emerged from stealth with $33.5 million in venture capital funding. Cofounder and CEO Robert Rose says the funds will be used to scale production of the company's products and bring on new engineering talent. Aviation companies pursuing autonomous transportation include Uber, Boeing, and Honeywell. According to management consulting firm Oliver Wyman, replacing single-pilot operations with autonomous planes could save airlines as much as $60 billion annually. Pandemic headwinds have only reinvigorated the search for cost-cutting opportunities as Statista estimates that airlines will lose at least $314 billion in revenue in 2020. Looking to expedite their path to market, companies like Xwing, Airbus, and Elroy Air have explored retrofitting existing aircraft rather than developing hardware from scratch.

Silicon Valley has been hard at work on the vexing challenge of autonomous cars. Now veterans of SpaceX and Tesla Inc. are announcing what they've been up to: a new startup working on self-flying planes for cargo. Reliable Robotics isn't trying to invent a new kind of aircraft. The idea is to bring autonomous capability to existing planes, starting with smaller aircraft that ferry cargo. In June, with approval from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, Reliable Robotics demonstrated a fully automated remote landing of a Cessna 208 Caravan turboprop owned by FedEx Corp. Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Robert Rose led flight software at Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp., then led the early Autopilot program at Tesla Inc. before joining Google.

Robot Rental is a division of Reliable Robotics. Reliable Robotics is at the forefront of developing technologies in the areas of robotics & AI. We seek to build an ecosystem of robots and technologies to enable smart services in airports, banking, hospital, educational sectors through applied innovation, internal initiatives and by building strategic external partnerships.