San Antonio company has a coronavirus transport solution
Knight Aerospace has a hospital room that flies inside cargo planes and can operate anywhere in the world, which is the kind of equipment doctors need when pandemics start claiming lives.
Good thing Bianca Rhodes started developing the company’s modules six years ago so one will be ready this summer.
“I would’ve liked to have 20 of these in inventory right now,” Rhodes said, standing in front of the first edition. “You have one of these outbreaks, and everyone freaks out and says, ‘Oh, we need this, we need that.’ When it’s not the end of the world, they forget what they thought they needed.”
For 30 years, Knight Aerospace has made pallets that roll on and off cargo planes used by 30 air forces around the world. The holds of C-130s and C-17s are noisy, austere spaces designed for utility. They have a basic track system that allows crews to switch configurations quickly for different missions.
Within an hour, a C-130 can
disgorge a tank and roll on a pallet mounted with a desk, computers and 12 office chairs. Other pallets are designed to carry missiles, while some carry wounded soldiers. But pallets do not have walls and are open to the rest of the plane.
To provide VIPs with a little privacy, the U.S. Air Force bought an Airstream trailer in the 1990s, took the wheels off, and strapped it to a pallet. It’s functional, but not especially safe and only works in the extra-large C-17.
Over the years, Knight has made enclosures for militaries, spy agencies and Arab rulers to roll onto a C-130 or C-17 to provide privacy, enforce secrecy or enjoy luxury. When the sultan of Oman’s physician requested a mobile intensive care unit, the company suspected there might be a broader market for medical modules.
In 2014, Knight hired Rhodes, an executive with experience in finance and medical devices, to create a subsidiary to build the medical modules. She met with clients, found them enthusiastic, but with exacting requirements.
The need for enclosed medical modules became apparent later in 2014 during the Ebola crisis in West Africa. A Spanish air force C-130 evacuated two doctors infected with the virus, but it took three months to disinfect the plane.
A U.S. Air Force doctor designed huge plastic enclosures made from shower curtain material and zippers, but they cost $1 million each and could be used just once.
“The big issue was separating the aircrew from the medical,” Rhodes told me.
Other companies tried retrofitting shipping containers, but the Air Force said they were not airworthy to carry people in flight. Rhodes and her team had to build something that could withstand g-forces and pass muster with Boeing, Lockheed Martin, the FAA and military clients around the world.
Knight also needed to answer the demands of doctors and create an environment as clean and disease-resistant as an operating room. After the Ebola epidemic faded away, so did the buyers.
In between orders for pallets, staff engineers modified the VIP module design to create a space that fits four intensive care beds or nine stretchers. Rhodes hired a subcontractor to design an air handler that could disinfect the air supply 30 times an hour and create negative or positive interior pressure. Doctors use negative pressure to contain pathogens, while positive pressure helps burns heal.
“This is self-contained. You roll it in, you hook it up. All it takes is power from the aircraft. Everything else is independent,” Rhodes said. “Then you take it off, and there’s been no exposure to the aircraft or the people on the aircraft.”
Knight’s modules run between $5 million and $10 million, depending on the fittings, she said. Aircrews also can drop one off anywhere in the world and pick it up when it no longer is needed.
Rhodes believed in the product so much that she bought Knight in 2017 and became CEO. She has 45 employees at the Port of San Antonio, the former Kelly AFB, which has been converted into a technology and manufacturing hub. She recently tripled the size of her factory floor to 120,000 square feet.
In November, planners from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Department of Health and Human Services visited Rhodes to check on her progress. Four months later, and the government could use units now to safely ferry COVID-19 patients.
The novel coronavirus outbreak demonstrates what happens when penny-pinching politicians fail to think ahead. Dozens of companies like Knight have solutions for the next predictable crisis, but because the threat is not immediate, political leaders don’t prepare, Rhodes can’t sell her equipment and we pay a much higher cost.