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Profile

Todd co-founded Aerolane in with a simple mission: Radically expand the availability of air freight at the same cost as traditional trucking (and do so while reducing emissions, improving payload velocity, and reimagining existing aerial technology). Aerolane has started trial operations in Florida and Texas.

Before co-founding Aerolane, Todd co-founded BNSF Railway’s safety-focused use of remotely piloted aircraft and advanced analytics. Todd and his team at BNSF paved the way for much of today’s commercial operations in the drone industry. His team partnered with The Federal Aviation Administration in 2015 to create pathways for long range, beyond visual line of sight operations in the national airspace – a partnership that continues to this day. During the partnership, The BNSF UAS/FAA team made aviation history multiple times including, in 2015, the first Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) commercial operations in the lower 48 United States – flown by an aircraft now on display at The National Air and Space Museum.

During Todd’s tenure as leader of BNSF’s program, the team grew from 12 pilots to over 250 employee drone pilots using both line of sight and beyond line-of-sight drones in 28 states operated both day and night in a wide range of weather. Milestones include launch of commercial line of sight operations in 2015, the first production/scaled BVLOS operations in 2016, The first Part 107 commercial authority, first night operations authority, multi-state expansion of BVLOS in 2017-2019 and then The FAA’s first approved nationwide commercial BVLOS flight approval in 2020 – which covered 23,000 miles of flight routes.
The team that Todd founded continues to lead the industry for advanced sensor/navigation fusion and fully automated flight operations.

Todd serves on AUVSI’s Board of Directors, served on The FAA’s BVLOS Advisory and Rulemaking Committee (ARC) where he co-chaired the ARC’s Flight Rules working group

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Sessions

• Navigating Dual Use of Uncrewed Systems
• XPONENTIAL 2024 KEYNOTE DAY 3

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