A cargo airline with some big plans for autonomous flying recently set up its headquarters at the Albuquerque International Sunport through a 10,000-square-foot hangar and facility expansion.
Reliable Airlines, the Albuquerque-based cargo airline, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Reliable Robotics Corp., an aircraft automation company based in Mountain View, California. Founded in 2004, Reliable Airlines is a Part 135 airline — a type of Federal Aviation Administration charter service authorization — that services FedEx Express.
The airline operates daily cargo flights from Albuquerque to Gallup, Farmington and Durango, Colorado, and it has a fleet of five Cessna 208 Caravan aircraft.
It's those aircraft that Reliable Airlines wants to retrofit with Reliable Robotics, its parent company's, autonomous flying technology, said Tom Klassen, the airline's president and director of operations. That technology is an autonomous flight control system that uses a software platform called ReliableOS, which includes precision navigation, airborne detection and automatic braking, for example.
The Federal Aviation Administration signed off on a certification plan the California robotics company designed for its autonomous flight control system, Bay Area Inno reported in late July of this year. Klassen, Reliable Airlines' president, said the airline hopes to have fully autonomous operations starting out of Albuquerque in about two years.
But leading up to that point, Klassen said Reliable Airlines' Sunport facility will house a remote pilot station with a flight testing team that can operate a test vehicle in California remotely from its site in Albuquerque. The airline employs about 20 people at the new Albuquerque hangar and facility.
Klassen said Reliable Airlines could have established its headquarters "anywhere" because most of the airline's operations are remote. While Reliable has had operations at the Sunport for several months, he said discussions about setting up its headquarters facility in Albuquerque started back in February of this year.
"With our one customer FedEx, we could base our headquarters anywhere, really," Klassen said. "We chose Albuquerque because of the relationship we have with the airport, the state and city are very supportive of new technologies, and we really think Albuquerque is the place to grow our business."
Reliable invested $85,000 in upgrading an existing facility at the Sunport, Klassen said. The company will receive rent reimbursement from the City of Albuquerque for its permanent improvements to the building, he added; Reliable is paying north of $10,000 per month to rent the hangar and facility.
It's Reliable's work using "innovative and safety technology" that makes the airline's choice to set up its headquarters and expand at the Sunport exciting, said Manny Manriquez, the innovation and commercial development manager for the Albuquerque International Sunport.
"It helps define the Sunport as a locus for innovative technology advancement," Manriquez told Albuquerque Business First.
Amazon.com Inc. occupied the 10,000-square-foot building before it moved out in November 2022, Manriquez said, occupying a new 35,000-square-foot facility. Its air cargo operations — which include an average of 36 air cargo flights in and out per day — make the Sunport an international airport, he added.
"It's a very important element of what we do at the Sunport," Manriquez said about its cargo operations.
Companies like CSI Aviation, Eclipse Aviation and Aero Charter have similarly sized hangars to the 10,000-square-foot one Reliable Airlines now occupies, Manriquez added.
For Reliable, specifically, the company hopes to rapidly expand its fleet to around 15 aircraft next year, up from its current tally of five, Klassen said. Not all of those aircraft would be based in Albuquerque, though, as Reliable looks to expand out to other regional cargo routes from cities in the Southwest like Phoenix.
