DEFENSE AND SPACE
Draganfly Inc. | June 27, 2022
Draganfly Inc. an award-winning, industry-leading drone solutions and systems developer, is pleased to announce that Alabama State University is offering the Draganfly Drone Technology Course through ASU’s Division of Continuing Education.
Draganfly’s experienced team is sharing their vast industry knowledge with a variety of ASU faculty members and students. The program provides an introduction to unmanned aerial vehicles and explores advanced topics including regulations, airspace operations, and navigation.
“Being able to learn from the experts at Draganfly is an incredible opportunity. As more businesses and governments turn to drones, it is crucial for us to understand how to meet their needs effectively,” said O’Nesha Burke, an ASU student and recipient of the Draganfly Drone Pilot Scholarship.
Draganfly’s Drone Technology Course includes a Federal Aviation Administration Part 107 drone preparation course. To fly drones under the FAA’s Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Rule a Remote Pilot Certificate must be obtained. The certificate demonstrates that pilots understand the regulations, operating requirements, and procedures for safely flying drones.
“As drone demand continues to rise, so does the need for technologically-proficient workers. We are grateful for the opportunity to further expand our partnership with ASU and provide a robust technology program that properly prepares students for the future,”
Cameron Chell, President and CEO of Draganfly
“Following the success of the Drone Pilot Training Program last year, we are thrilled to be working with Draganfly once again to provide industry-leading drone education,” said Dr. Quinton T. Ross Jr., President of ASU. “Draganfly continues to ensure our students have the knowledge and skills required for a rewarding career in the rapidly growing drone space.”
About Draganfly
Draganfly Inc. is the creator of quality, cutting-edge drone solutions, software, and AI systems that revolutionize the way organizations can do business and service their stakeholders. Recognized as being at the forefront of technology for over 20 years, Draganfly is an award-winning industry leader serving the public safety, public health, mining, agriculture, industrial inspections, security, mapping, and surveying markets. Draganfly is a company driven by passion, ingenuity, and the need to provide efficient solutions and first-class services to its customers around the world with the goal of saving time, money, and lives.
About Alabama State University
Founded in 1867, ASU is a comprehensive, regional institution offering students from across the nation and around the globe a world-class education. ASU’s learning experiences are holistic and are designed to develop intellectual, as well as social, moral, cultural and ethical values. ASU graduates are equipped with the skills, insights, attitudes and practical experiences that will enable them to become well-rounded, contributing citizens, fully qualified to take their places in their chosen professions and in service to humanity.
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AVIATION TECHNOLOGY
Tealium | March 16, 2022
Today, Tealium, the most trusted and largest independent customer data platform (CDP), announced their Spring 2022 product release "Integrate Everything" for 'technical marketers who need options but don't have tons of time'.
With these product improvements, spanning Data Connect, Data Sync and Tealium Functions and more, Tealium's customers can leverage more data across the enterprise into their customer experiences than ever before, regardless of which systems need to be integrated. By combining the data from these disparate sources with real-time customer data collection across owned customer touchpoints, businesses can build rich experiences across numerous outlets while saving their teams' valuable time.
With these new capabilities, technical teams gain:
Workflow automation: access and use enterprise data sources (data warehouses and cloud applications) within the platform
Unparalleled ability to immediately activate data directly from companies' data warehouses or reference that data alongside the customer profile for better context
Synchronize customer engagement data with enterprise data warehouses
Developer tools and APIs that customize data flows to transform, enrich and integrate data for the most flexible infrastructure possible
New and enhanced integrations to world class marketing applications (e.g. TikTok Events, Google Analytics 4, Meta Custom Audiences, Amazon ads)
Maintain better security and privacy controls when using data for customer experience
"As we've grown into our use cases with Tealium, we've seen incredible opportunities to leverage more data that lives outside the CDP. For instance, there's a wealth of data that lives outside of our own first-party data that could help enrich our datasets, and personalize a web experience. With Tealium Functions, we are now able to query databases through their third-party APIs to enrich our customers' web experience. It gave our team more flexibility without added complexity, and we were able to develop, test and stand up this use case in hours rather than weeks."
Jeff Newell, Technology Manager at Meridian Energy
"At Alaska Airlines, we're driving to create personalized travel experiences for every guest," said Joshua Benard, Product Manager at Alaska Airlines. "In order to do that at scale, we need to supply the right customer data, to the right tools across our stack, at the right time. Tealium's integration marketplace helped us get started in that effort, but as our use cases advanced, we found more need to customize how those integrations were working for us."
Benard continued, "With Tealium Functions, we're given a canvas to work with our developers and customize existing integrations within the Tealium integration catalog with some simple JavaScript. In a day, we were able to write some code to customize our integration with a key personalization tool in our stack in order to bring in a broader set of events to inform how we'd deliver the customer experience. Tealium Functions gives us extra flexibility with our customer data infrastructure to bring new, custom ideas to life."
About Tealium
Tealium connects customer data across web, mobile, offline, and IoT so businesses can better connect with their customers. Tealium's turnkey integration ecosystem supports more than 1,300 built-in connections, empowering brands to create a complete, real-time customer data infrastructure. Tealium's solutions include the most trusted customer data platform with machine learning, tag management, an API hub and data management solutions that make customer data more valuable, actionable, privacy-compliant and secure. Nearly 900 leading businesses throughout the world trust Tealium to power their customer data strategies.
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BUSINESS AVIATION
National Airlines | January 13, 2022
Responding to the sudden surge in COVID-19 cases in the U.S., National Airlines is airlifting testing kits to different states in the country. During this month-long mission, in a series of N8 B747-400F flights, around 4,000,000 testing kits will be delivered to the respective state authorities for distribution across hospitals and COVID-19 testing centers. Flights originating from Chinese regions like Shanghai (PVG), Zhengzhou (CGO), Wuhan (WUH), and Tianjin (TSN) are headed to New York (JFK), Los Angeles (LAX), Texas (IAH), and Chicago (ORD) with the testing kits.
Later this month, National Airlines is also shipping COVID-19 testing kits to Canada and the U.K. from South Korea and China. Lately, new variants of the COVID-19 virus are triggering a sudden spike in cases and there is an immediate requirement for multiple batches of testing kits, as early detection is vital to controlling the virus spread especially among children and those going back to work.
"This is yet another mission by our teams to support governments in mitigating the recurring COVID-19 spread. Our aircraft, crew, and teams will continue to ensure the timely delivery of emergency medical supplies and equipment to support the various nations fight against COVID-19."
- Mr. Christopher J. Alf, Chairman, National Airlines.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, National Airlines, with its B747-400 Freighter fleet of six aircraft, has been at the forefront partnering with International Governments and Aid Agencies, coordinating missions, and delivering immediate medical supplies such as protective masks, PPE kits, oxygen cylinders, COVID-19 vaccines, and other equipment to crisis-hit regions.
About National:
National Airlines is a U.S. FAA-certificated Part 121 air carrier, with a fleet of six B747-400F's, A330-200, and B757-200 which provides global cargo and passenger solutions. National Air Cargo offers international freight forwarding, sea-to-air multi-modal transportation and logistics solutions worldwide. Established in 1990, the global reach of National is maintained via global operations centers and strategically located offices in the U.S., Middle East, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, Malaysia, and Hong Kong.
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AVIATION TECHNOLOGY
The Sterling Group | March 03, 2022
The Sterling Group ("Sterling"), an operationally-focused middle market private equity firm, is pleased to announce the acquisition of West Star Aviation, LLC ("West Star") from Norwest Equity Partners. West Star is a provider of maintenance, repair, and overhaul ("MRO") services to the business aviation industry providing maintenance, modification, and other services to aviation customers. West Star provides services at four primary locations in East Alton, Illinois; Grand Junction, Colorado; Chattanooga, Tennessee; and Perryville, Missouri, as well as fifteen mobile repair bases and satellite MRO facilities. West Star also provides parts distribution and composite repair services through its Avant and DAS businesses respectively.
Sterling has deep experience in the business aviation industry, having previously partnered with entrepreneur owners to build Lynx, an FBO Network. Greg Elliott, a Partner at The Sterling Group, has been involved in building several business aviation platforms in the past twenty years, including as either Chairman or Board Member of Lynx, Encore, Trajen, and Landmark Aviation.
"We believe that our experience coupled with West Star's industry-leading customer service capabilities will make us a powerful combination, Jim Rankin has built a stellar leadership team, and we are eager to help accelerate their growth plans."
-Greg Elliott, Partner at The Sterling Group.
"Sterling's employee-focused approach to their business partnerships and their expertise in the general aviation space makes them the perfect fit for West Star, As we enter our 75th year, the combined efforts of our experienced employees, our founders, and now the Sterling team, will allow West Star to continue to offer the best customer experience in the industry,"
-Jim Rankin, CEO of West Star Aviation.
West Star has been voted the #1 Preferred MRO for eight consecutive years from 2014-2021 in Professional Pilot Magazine's annual PRASE Survey. The survey first included the 'Most Preferred MRO' category in 2014 and West Star has won the #1 slot each year since its inception.
About The Sterling Group
Founded in 1982, The Sterling Group is a private equity investment firm that targets controlling interests in basic manufacturing, distribution, and industrial services companies. Typical enterprise values of these companies at initial formation range from $100 million to $750 million. Sterling has sponsored the buyout of 62 platform companies and numerous add-on acquisitions for a total transaction value of over $14.0 billion. Sterling recently closed its fifth investment fund with $2.0 billion in commitments and currently has over $5.7 billion of assets under management.
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