LONDON – To begin this article, Blade Air Mobility has just delivered a strong financial statement. Blade Air Mobility is dubbed the UBER of the skies, offering affordable helicopter rides to the public as an alternative measure for urban travel.  Is their positive financial statement a signal of a new era of urban air mobility with eVTOL aircraft? 

Rob Wiesenthal, Blade’s Chief Executive Officer stated: “Blade delivered record revenue and flight profit this quarter, with strong growth across all business lines. We have seen continued strength in our consumer-facing businesses with revenue and average seat prices for both the second quarter and third quarter to date well ahead of our 2019 and 2021 levels.”

“Given unwavering demand from our fliers coupled with continued strong sequential growth in our MediMobility Organ Transport business, Blade has proven it is well positioned to thrive in this uncertain macroeconomic environment.”

Will Heyburn, Blade’s Chief Financial Officer stated that: “Our strong financial performance is a testament to our success in leveraging the Blade platform across the diverse portfolio of businesses that we have built and acquired since our inception.”

“By deploying our brand, aircraft operator network, and technology-enabled logistics and customer service, we have significantly accelerated growth, including in our MediMobility Organ Transport business, which experienced 139% pro forma organic growth compared to the prior year period.”

Blade’s President, Melissa Tomkiel said: “We look forward to closing our acquisitions in Europe, where our roll-up of the commercial activities of three prominent urban air mobility operators will fortify Blade’s leadership in the region.”

“Our urban air mobility alliance with JetBlue has now been launched, providing preferred pricing and other benefits for seamless air transport between Manhattan and New York area airports for the TrueBlue loyalty program membership base.”

Financially, Blade did amazingly well, with a total increase in revenue of 175% to $35.6 million. This figure was only $13.0 million in 2021 in the same period. Thus, the second quarter ended with an 87% revenue increase. 

There is an increase on 14.4% in-flight margin, which is a substantial improvement from the 1st quarter, but unfortunately a decrease of 23.0% in the first quarter. This was attributed to the revenue shift towards the MediMobility Organ Transport and re-launch of Blade Airport service, which gained slower than expected traction.

With that being said, MediMobility Organ, a MEDEVAC business, synonymous with being high in value, saw an increase in revenue by an impressive 1,013% to $17.2 million in this quarter compared to $1.6 million last year within the same period.

Interestingly, short-distance travel revenue also saw a spike of 89% to $11.0 million in this quarter compared to $5.8 million in the same period of 2021. This growth was witnessed due to Blade’s purchase of Helijet’s passenger service in Vancouver, and the resumption of Blade Airport service. 

Jet and Other revenue witnessed an increase of 32% to $7.4 million in the quarter compared to $5.6 million in the same quarter last year. This is due to the strong demand for the seasonal offshoot service of the BladeOne jet, between New York and South Florida. 

To sum up, Blade’s net income increased to $8.4 million in this yearly quarter, against a net loss of $24.3 million in 2021 in the same quarter. This was attributed to the increase in revenue and demand, and also a change in the fair value of warrant liabilities of $19.3 million.

Lastly, Blade released the adjusted EBITDA, which has decreased to $6,1 million from the present quarter from $2.6 million in last year’s same quarter.

As Blade is gaining popularity all over the world, the company’s existence is nonetheless under threat from fierce competition, due to the strong growth of interest in drones and eVTOL usage. Blade’s MEDEVAC unit has posted a strong result, due to the ever-growing demand for such services, and that makes it somewhat ‘recession or slump’ proof.

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