The Innovators
 
In this issue, The Leader begins a series profiling individuals whose creation of unique products, systems, or better ways of doing things reflects Embry-Riddle's tradition of innovation.
 

Mehdi Alaoui Mehdi Alaoui, airline monopoly buster

Before I introduced Regional Air Lines (RGL) to Morocco, the situation was the classic one of a state-owned airline, Royal Air Maroc, trying to address all of the country's air transport needs - domestic links, medium-haul traffic to Europe, and transcontinental and transatlantic service. It is also important to be aware of the unique geographic position of Morocco - at the northwestern tip of Africa, only seven miles away from Spain across the Strait of Gibraltar.

There was a need for a regional carrier that would operate not only between the major business centers within Morocco but also provide service to Spain and Portugal. The new operator would target business travelers, providing high frequency, on-time performance, and good passenger service. It would add to existing service or provide new service, where needed, in a way that would complement, not compete with, the historic airline.

The challenge was to introduce the concept of a regional/commuter operator in a country where it had never been tried.

The idea of starting a second airline in Morocco -- a regional operator -- came to me while I was going to graduate school. I started working on the idea in 1990 when I was working at Royal Air Maroc as an engineer in the technical department.

"During my annual vacation I scheduled a two-week trip back to Embry-Riddle in Daytona Beach to use the university's library to gather data for a business plan."
 The first step was to start doing research on how regional and commuter companies operate and what makes them successful, in order to define a concept for the new airline. So during my annual vacation I scheduled a two-week trip back to Embry-Riddle in Daytona Beach to use the university's library to gather data for a business plan. After I wrote the plan, I needed to test the concept and get expert opinions on its quality and viability, so I called on a number of industry professionals who had become my friends
during my previous work experience. I included their valuable information and comments in a new version of the plan. I then contacted three selected aircraft manufacturers, and, at the same time, armed with my business plan, started the process of finding investors. By then, I was on a leave of absence from Royal Air Maroc and on my way to resigning from my position as assistant to the chairman of that airline. I had to use all of my savings as seed capital to support my travel expenses.

The aircraft selection process ended after I organized demonstration flights in Casablanca by the manufacturers that were on my short list and I received their final commercial proposals. The efforts to secure the needed capital were still ongoing.

I had to face many obstacles, but the greatest was that of obtaining the right from the Ministry of Transport to start a private airline. To do so, I had to get them to agree that this was the time to let someone break the monopoly of Royal Air Maroc. A second major hurdle was that of securing the appropriate funding in the highly capitalist airline industry.

The state-owned airline took a firm stance in saying no one else should be allowed to start an airline or be designated as an air carrier. From the time I first approached the civil aviation authority to the time when the license to start the airline was granted, it took a little over four years of lobbying and working hard. Another obstacle was that of finding qualified young individuals who were willing to work on the project and join the company before it had secured final authorization from the civil aviation authority and before the airline had been founded officially.

The search for investors took a little over 10 months. With the help of an investment bank, we organized a road show and made one presentation after another to potential shareholders until the process was completed. Once these two major milestones were achieved, we began preparing all the necessary documents to get the airline airworthiness certificate.

It seems strange, even to me when I look back at it, but I never thought I would be defeated, and there was never the shadow of a doubt in my mind. I think I must have had a very strong inner drive that kept helping me overcome all the difficulties and hurdles.

I realized I had finally succeeded in my mission when I saw our first aircraft in the paint shop with the RGL paint scheme. As simple as this special moment was, I will always remember that the way that led to it had been long and difficult.

We hope at RGL that we have answered a need: that of providing safe, reliable quality air service between the major economic centers of Morocco. We have also made the regions of the country and Morocco more accessible, even from the Iberian Peninsula. RGL today offers five daily flights from Casablanca and Tangiers to Malaga and two daily flights from Casablanca to Lisbon and from Casablanca and Agadir to Las Palmas in the Canary Islands.

RGL's goal today is to increase the area it covers. This will be done with the introduction of a new type of regional jet to its fleet. We have ordered five of these aircraft. Our challenge is to make this a successful venture, while continuing to secure new commercial ties with other operators and consolidate our existing ties with partner airlines. The airline is getting bigger, but it is also important that we don't forget the basic elements that have made it successful.

I don't think there is a specific profile that will enable an individual to develop a new business, such as starting an airline from nothing, but rather a few elements that are necessary. Education is very important, as is a previous work experience in the field gained from the manufacturer side and the airline side, establishing contacts in the industry, having an entrepreneurial spirit, and last, but not least, believing in what you want to achieve.

Mehdi Alaoui graduated from Embry-Riddle in 1986 with a B.S. in aeronautical studies.

David Rehm at KohlerDavid Rehm, inventive engineer

I was always a creative, inspired person, with a bug to be a self-employed entrepreneur. That seemed to be the only way to develop the things I dreamed about as a kid. I worked through high school and saved money so I could start a business and not go to college, but my parents and friends pressured me to go. I'm glad I did. Embry-Riddle seemed to me more like aviation camp than college.

In high school in Mequon, Wis., I designed and manufactured a radio-controlled snowmobile that used air for propulsion and had few moving parts. I took odd jobs designing and fabricating mechanical things for people I knew, such as composite sprint car wings and composite driveshafts for tree-trimming equipment. This seemed very natural to me. Maybe it stemmed from my experience building model aircraft in my parent's basement from the age of 8. Very rarely did I buy kits. They didn't let me experiment. Usually I pieced some flying contraption together from balsa wood and foam.

In junior high school I bought technical books and started studying aerodynamics, structures, and general aircraft systems. As a high school senior I began building a full-size aircraft in my parents' garage - an original design - of wood and composite construction. I wanted to make an ultralight, because I had no time or money for a pilot license. The plane had twin booms off the wing and a high tail. Connecting the twin booms behind the pusher propeller was a small wing that was actuated from the cockpit for direct thrust vectoring.

I had to take a break from building it to finish a senior physics project, for which I designed a car-top device for measuring lift, drag, angle of attack, and airspeed. Driving down back roads at night in the calm air, I used my car-top wind tunnel to test a stuffed wood duck to determine its most efficient flying speed. I was pleased to find my results only one mile per hour off.

I put off the ultralight project in order to go to college, where I learned I knew just enough to be dangerous. Some of the engineering I'd built into my plane made me uneasy, so I scrapped it. My parents were delighted.

Embry-Riddle's Prescott, Ariz., campus was a perfect place for me. I was able to build my own wind tunnel models and test them only a few weeks after being there. A group of us formed a campus chapter of the Experimental Aircraft Association, and set out to build an original design of an experimental aircraft. We also helped start the electric car club, and I did the initial design and fundraising for the car.

During my sophomore year, there was a trend in the experimental helicopter community to simplify and reduce parts. Helicopters challenged me more than fixed-wing aircraft, because there's so much room for improvement of their mechanical systems. I set out to learn how they worked, and I came up with a device to simplify their complicated rotor heads. With my roommate and friend, Joel Heck, I built a helicopter rotor that countered its own torque, eliminating the need for a tail rotor.

Everyone had said it was impossible, but the prototype worked. I selected an entrepreneurial patent attorney, who became a partner with me on the invention. The patent was granted in October 1998. The invention was published in the aerospace issue of Design News that year, and I received more than 60 inquiries from helicopter manufacturers. Since then we've been negotiating with Bell and another aerospace company about the use or ownership of the patent.

David Rehm with Aircraft ModelIn a structures and instrumentation class with David McMaster, a team of us designed and implemented a new data acquisition and force balance system for the large wind tunnel at Prescott. [The force balance - a device upon which an aircraft rests in a wind tunnel - enables researchers to measure the lift force independent of the drag and pitching moment.] We wrote a paper on this system, and Joel presented it at an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics conference. The University of Alabama called and asked Dr. McMaster for a copy of the paper.

After battling kidney failure and being hospitalized for a semester, I went back to Embry-Riddle. Just before graduation, an Arizona partner and I started a business to manufacture and sell a commercial water filter I designed to hang from the ceiling in convenience stores, allowing them to filter customers' water without using valuable floor space. We had previously pursued other businesses, including a drag reduction device for light aircraft, which we tested and found to increase airspeed by 10 percent.

After moving home to Wisconsin to build water filters, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease and underwent eight months of chemotherapy and six months of radiation treatments. On the one day per week that I could function, I was in the garage, welding a vacuum forming machine and building water filters. That really helped keep my mind off the illness. We sold these filtration systems throughout the Southwest, but the business was not making enough cash to sustain itself, so we decided to cut our losses.

I then entered the model business. My first concept was a jet boat, which I tested in the river across the street from my apartment. The boat has nothing protruding into the water and is propelled by an aircraft propeller pressurizing the hull. We've sold these jet boats through ads in trade magazines, and we're making deals with other manufacturers and distributors. Through the connections I made, I'm currently doing model design for toy companies on a consulting basis.

I moved back to Arizona to design and build a two-place motorglider ultralight bushplane. After two years, the prototype plane was ready to be built, but my financial backing dried up, and I had to stop.

In February, I took a job in Cheboygan, Wis., at Kohler Co., a high-end maker of plumbing and power systems. I was looking for a company where I could be an entrepreneur and an innovator, and they wanted a creative engineer to help start a new advanced development technology team. I'm in charge of a team of four that includes another engineer and two industrial designers. We've placed several new designs on the table that address problems that have been around since the first toilet.

"Because of my aerospace background, I can look at a toilet from a different perspective. As with an aircraft, it has fluid dynamics, mechanical systems, and energy systems."
Because of my aerospace background, I can look at a toilet from a different perspective. As with an aircraft, it has fluid dynamics, mechanical systems, and energy systems. It must be designed to be a functioning device. For example, when the government limited toilets to 1.6 gallons, Kohler needed to develop one that achieved the same performance using half the water. That's like having half the horsepower and still achieving the same velocity in an aircraft of the same size. It can be done, but it's difficult, and eyeball engineering doesn't work.

I approach design at Kohler as I would an aircraft. I need to see the whole system, and I attack the systems with reliability problems one at a time. I do a drag reduction study. I pick apart anything that can impede performance. It's all about fluid dynamism, just as for an airplane.

I still have enough time to be building an aircraft in my garage. This one is a fast single-seat amphibian with retractable gear and skis for winter flying.

If I'd had more business sense and capital earlier, I could have made a lot of money by now. But I've learned you have to try things and get hands-on experience to succeed. It's important to accept loss not as a failure, but as success in a different sense.

David Rehm graduated from Embry-Riddle in 1996 with a B.S. in aerospace engineering.

NOTE: If you'd like to recommend an Embry-Riddle innovator for a future issue of The Leader, please contact Editor Bob Ross at 386-226-6198 or robert.ross@erau.edu.