Airlines Plan To Plow Billions Into Flying Taxis

Flying taxis moved a step closer to becoming a fixture buzzing across urban skyscapes, as a closely watched effort was unveiled in Los Angeles and startups in the U.K. and Brazil made commercial breakthroughs. From a report: Vertical Aerospace Group, based in Bristol, England, won conditional orders for as many as 1,000 electric aircraft that could total $4 billion from buyers including American Airlines Group and Virgin Atlantic Airways, it said late Thursday. Meanwhile, Brazil's Embraer SA said it's in talks to merge its unit developing electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft into a public company, sending the stock surging.

And in California, startup Archer Aviation showcased its future eVTOL after nabbing a $20 million investment from United Airlines Holdings. The carrier plans to buy as many as 200 of the aircraft, dubbed Maker. While none are certified for commercial use, approvals for electric flying taxis could come as early as 2024, according to Europe's top aviation regulator. Airlines are placing orders because they see the potential to develop a new business tied to local transport, as their main activity shuttling people on longer trips comes under pressure over carbon emissions and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Not Until

[theshowmecanuck]

Not until there is a serious upgrade to all the air traffic control systems where they want to use them. Systems barely keep track of existing flights. Add a thousand little craft like these, it's only a matter of time before they're flying into each other and killing their passengers and people on the ground. Especially in dense areas where obviously there will be the most demand.

Re:

[cygnusvis]

They will all be drones running on a specialized 5g network accessible to only them. I've been saying for years that if auto-vehicles are a thing, there is no reason they should stay on the ground.

Re:

[ShanghaiBill]

The obvious answer is to use reserved corridors. The air-taxis fly on pre-determined routes. They aren't going to pick you up from your driveway.

Re:

[Immerman]

>They aren't going to pick you up from your driveway.
Why not? Makes them kind of pointless as a taxi if they don't. Pre-determined routes work okay for buses, but aren't well suited to high-dollar customers that can afford to travel by air to avoid traffic delays. Though, at least initially, you might need to install a licensed helipad for them to land. Chump change for the target clientele.

Reserved corridors is a good idea, but there's no reason you couldn't have your corridors be something like "fl

Re:

[EvilSS]

Well, it depends on the size of your driveway. These are not landing on your suburban subdivision postage stamp yard. It's also going to depend on how the FAA treats them. Both companies mentioned are perusing similar designs, a 12 rotor vertical and 6 rotor horizontal winged aircraft. Kind of like the military Osprey, but only the front 6 motors/props rotate instead of the wings. The question is will the FAA give them the same leeway they give helicopters. Helicopters are allowed to takeoff, land, and fly

Re:

[theshowmecanuck]

And what would keep track of them in the reserved corridors? An air traffic control system. They won't be allowed to self monitor to make sure they stick to where they are supposed to be. "I promise to go where I'm supposed to so I don't cause crashes." Right. We have traffic lights and rules of the road etc for cars. This will be no different. And the systems we have right now won't do it.

Re:Not Until

[OzPeter]

Not until there is a serious upgrade to all the air traffic control systems where they want to use them.

Upgrades and even the philosophy of future ATC are already being studied. This was discussed recently in this NOVA episode

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/... [pbs.org]

Re:

[stabiesoft]

Saw it, pretty interesting stuff. Sounded like the US was behind several other countries in adoption. If I remember right China is using one for some tourist site seeing. Thousands of trips accumulated. I think somewhere in the middle east was also using them in production. US is closer than many here think. Several mentioned in the episode are on track for FAA approval. I just have a feeling these things are going to get adopted like smartphones were. Almost overnight once it is ready.

Re: Not Until

[Type44Q]

I just have a feeling...

And I imagine that's about all you have to offer on the subject... which is good, because "thoughts" that led to said conclusion would probably be suspect.

Re:

[Solandri]

Ironically, automated planes are easier to make than automated cars, simply because the only thing you have to worry about colliding with while in the air are other planes.

And unlike cars, there is always a clear avenue to escape a collision in the air. In a 2D geometric plane, if you plot another vehicle's 1D path, that divides the plane into two halves. If you want to be sure you avoid the other vehicle, you cannot cross into the other half. Which may be impossible if there are obstructions (trees, bui

Re:

[bubblyceiling]

Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) is now live and was made for this exact purpose

https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/pr... [faa.gov]

Re:

[tlhIngan]

Not until there is a serious upgrade to all the air traffic control systems where they want to use them. Systems barely keep track of existing flights. Add a thousand little craft like these, it's only a matter of time before they're flying into each other and killing their passengers and people on the ground. Especially in dense areas where obviously there will be the most demand.

it's already here. NextGen has mandated ADS-B (Out) mandatory since January 21, 2020. The US is a bit weird because it uses grou

Re:

[EvilSS]

I don't see these getting super dense anytime soon. As someone else already said, these can serve the same purpose as a helicopter can today. And like a helicopter, they probably won't be cheap. Looking at the websites both companies seem to be perusing similar designs and they look to top out at maybe 4 passengers. This is not something your average Joe will take to work every day. So don't expect thousands in a city. Maybe dozens in a big city, which the current system can handle just fine, especially

Re:

[mjwx]

You're overthinking things.

These are "conditional orders", meaning the airlines have put no money down on a product that doesn't exist so they can all get their names mentioned in major news publications for free publicity.

This is why Michael O'Leary of everyone's favourite crappy low cost airline, Ryanair, continually says stupid things that will never see the light of day like charging to use the lavatories or training up the stewardess so they can get rid of the co-pilot. O'Leary knows these things

Wait until the noise becomes subject to lawsuits

[ffkom]

"Flying taxis" sounds oh so nice until it is your neighbor who wakes you up at night when taking off of landing in a flying noise generator. I do not see how outside of scarcely populated rural areas this is ever going to fly...

Re:Wait until the noise becomes subject to lawsuit

[rsilvergun]

Easy, these will be the domain of the super wealthy. When they land it'll be on an 100 acre estate where the neighbors won't hear a thing or it'll be in a city where nobody cares if the noise bothers you because you're not as important as Elon Musk or Bill Gates' commute.

Re:

[ffkom]

I doubt that. The super wealthy can buy their own helicopter, always available on their own helicopter landing pad. They don't need airlines trying to sell individual flights to the plebs.

Re:Wait until the noise becomes subject to lawsuit

[RockDoctor]

their own helicopter, always available on their own helicopter landing pad.

There's a reason that's not so common. "Always available" means at least 3 qualified pilots (and co-pilots, for dual-pilot aircraft) on salary, each one with no more than 8 hours flying + standby time per day. That's staff members with externally-controlled certification, mandatory requirements for rest periods, for training and regular re-certification ... a huge palaver. Renting a chopper and pilot(s) is a lot less hassle, unless you are absolutely committed to saving ... well however much you save on top of the time it takes to file a flight plan and get a landing slot at wherever you're planning to go to.

Don't confuse Hollywood with reality. Most of the "my personal helicopter" shit is much closer to "the air taxi I rented.

And helipads need to comply with planning laws as much as any other noisy operation. The neighbours can object and shut you down. So, your billionaire needs to buy them off, or out. A lot of additional hassle.

Re:

[EvilSS]

I know a few that have their own, but they also fly them (some of the Busch (as in beer) family in particular are avid helicopter pilots). Others usually have pilots on staff, but they are employed through whatever big company they own. Although having a company airforce is frowned upon these days by investors, so those are getting rare.

Re:

[Bert64]

Build houses with better insulation...
Insulation keeps the heat in during winter, and the heat out during summer, as well as keeping noise out. You shouldn't be able to hear noise coming from outside.

I've stayed in hotels which are adjacent to major highways or airport runways, but you still get a good rest because the insulation keeps the noises out. Stand outside the entrance and you cant have a conversation while a plane is climbing directly above you, but once in your room you cant hear a thing.

There's

Re:

[jbengt]

Build houses with better insulation.. . . You shouldn't be able to hear noise coming from outside.

Sure, as long as you only have quadruple pane bulletproof windows that can't open.

Re:

[ishmaelflood]

Some of us sit outside on our decks or verandas for much of the summer, and listen to birds and frogs. This is not compatible with silly drone type noises.

Noise in rural areas

[ishmaelflood]

Writing as an occupant of a rural area I can assure you that the noise from sightseeing planes is bad enough, and proposals for a heliport meet with universal local opposition, other than from the businesses that would benefit.

Re:Not hub and spoke?

[spiritplumber]

It's an entirely different kind of flying.

Re:

[Wookie Monster]

Altogether: It's an entirely different kind of flying.

Re: Not hub and spoke?

[cpt kangarooski]

It's an entirely different kind of flying.

Not Helicopters?

[quantaman]

So these are kinda like helicopters but the claim seems to be that these are quieter, more agile and emission-free, utilizing multiple small electric rotors.

So I can imagine a world where better (though shorter range) helicopters make "flying taxis" a feasible industry.

But I'd expect a more achievable world where they start displacing traditional helicopters in some markets.

Many eVTOL makers plan to eventually transition to pilotless aircraft.
[...]
Commercial use of eVTOLs is expected to begin with carrying packages before passengers are added to the cabins.

And automated flights, without pilots, will come around five years later, as global regulators work out their approaches to safety.

This seems a little nuts, we haven't even managed automation in 2-dimentions and they want to jump to 3?

Sure, commercial jet autopilots are pretty close, but they're operating in a VERY constrained environment. These folks are talking cities.

Re:

[Ostracus]

So these are kinda like helicopters but the claim seems to be that these are quieter, more agile and emission-free, utilizing multiple small electric rotors

Makes you wonder if these people have ever heard a drone. Quiet isn't their forte.

Re: Not Helicopters?

[Åke Malmgren]

That's mostly because neither a gram nor a cent is spent on noise mitigation.

Re:

[ffkom]

There would be plenty of reason and incentive to apply the same noise optimizations they claim for their drones on helicopters, but such has not materialized. And it is not the combustion engine in helicopters that produces their awfully loud noise. So unless they can actually demonstrate a "quiet" vehicle, which they have not, I am not convinced this is anything but marketing bullshit.

Re: Not Helicopters?

[Åke Malmgren]

You can't make the main rotor of a helicopter into a ducted fan. It's sometimes done with the tail rotor though.

Re:

[edi_guy]

Yeah, this whole thing seems like a re-hash of the Segway story. Super innovative, cool tech, transportation invention. But there was nowhere to really operate them, they were really expensive, and not a huge improvement over walking/biking/driving.

I don't know where an air taxi is meant to land in any urban environment. Perhaps on helipads on tops of buildings, but that's a pretty narrow market. Also hopefully no repeating the problems of yesteryear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

And in suburbia, fo

Re: Not Helicopters?

[Type44Q]

more agile and emission-free, utilizing multiple small electric rotors

in other words, aerodynamically unstable, vulnerable to hacking and magnetic pulses, no autorotation or any viable failure modes other than a parchute. Maybe.

Re: Not Helicopters?

[Type44Q]

Oops, I left outextremely inefficient...

Re:

[iikkakeranen]

It is far easier to automate flight than ground transportation. I mean, we already have drones that can be programmed to fly autonomously, including large groups of drones moving in unison. On the ground there are many more variables to take into consideration. Cars are often in close proximity to each other, people and other obstacles that don't always behave in a predictable way, and there's very little margin for error. For manned drones it'll be relatively simple to just stay above the buildings and tre

Re:

[ffkom]

You are correct that 3D collision avoidance is easier than 2D collision avoidance, but it is not quite trivial if there are many vehicles sharing the same airspace with intersecting places of departure and destination, plus "in 2D" a minor collision at slow speed is not good but usually does not kill the passengers, while it pretty likely does so when 2 vehicles collide at altitude.

The claim is "emission-free"

[Alain Williams]

This is not true. They might be electric and so no direct emissions from the chopper, but the power has to come from somewhere. Miles per kilowatt hour will be more than most other forms of travel.

Re:

[CrimsonAvenger]

Miles per kilowatt hour will be more than most other forms of travel.

So, they'll be MORE energy efficient than most forms of travel? Really?

I think not.

Of course, I also think you mistyped "kilowatt-hours per mile" (Or perhaps, joules per meter if we actually want to go SI)

Re:

[Alain Williams]

Oh,yes: less miles/kwh or more kwh/mile - which is what I meant.

Re:

[timeOday]

Dispersing shit into the air directly above the very places where the largest number of people live really is the worst possible place though.

Vertical Aerospace Group

[The-Ixian]

Anyone want to share a VAG going up town with me?

It isn't going to be as cool as you think.

[jellomizer]

While Musk, Google, and a bunch of other companies are thinking once self driving tech reaches stage 5, they can have autonomous fleets of robo-taxies, that show the people riding in luxary to their destination. However the problem is going to be harder to implement than just Self Driving Technology, which I think is attainable.

It is the fact that people in general do not respect other peoples property. If I had a Tesla that costed me over 50k, that had nice plush interiors, I wouldn't really want to rent it out as a Taxi, to some guy in soiled pants, or was holding a knife in his pocket. Or just kinda decided to eat his lunch in my car and drop some crumbs or ketchup all over the place.
To make your car a good taxi, you are going to have to replace the seats with something that is easy to clean and cheap and easy to replace or fix. Carpet and other things that make the car look nice and feel nicer will be replaces with more utilitarian materials. So you drive in a Robo-Taxi will be just as comfortable as taking the Bus or Subway.

Now these flying taxis, will probably be a fun toy for the moderately wealthy, and perhaps a major splurge for a middle class folk. (Like renting a Limo) but they are going to be too expensive for most people, and the short range flights will not offer too much of an advantage over normal driving. But for most the time saved is going to be worth less than if they were drive there with a cheaper method. So this grand vision of taking the flying taxi from your home to the office 20 miles away, probably isn't going to be such a sweet propitiation. When you have to pay a lot more, perhaps wait for it to arrive at your home, then take you to the office. Also if they get cheap enough for the Middle Class person to afford it, they are going to cut a lot of luxury, smaller seats, cramming a bunch of people together....

These images of luxury for the masses never come out, because the masses are stinky, careless and if it isn't their will not pay as much attention to what they do.

"Airlines plan to plow billions into flying taxis"

[tchdab1]

... and vice versa.

Re: "Airlines plan to plow billions into flying ta

[Åke Malmgren]

Billions of flying taxis plan to plow into airliners?

Corbin Dallas

[PFritz21]

Someone better call up Bruce Willis, as someone is going to have to drive these thingsâ¦

It's all free money from the government

[fustakrakich]

Gotta do something with it.

They'll be plowing a lot more money into making the noise levels tolerable.

Already there?

[Bert64]

We already have helicopters for hire. If you can afford one, you can hire a helicopter and pilot to take you anywhere. There's nothing new here, just trying to make the existing technology available more cheaply.

Kobe Bryant

[Latent Heat]

Helicopters for hire are not without their risks.

No autorotate death zone

[ishmaelflood]

VTOL aircraft that cannot autorotate and will have high number of takeoffs and landings per hour of flight time may have an interesting risk profile. I haven't looked into it, and I suppose multiple rotors is good for redundancy.

Re: No autorotate death zone

[Åke Malmgren]

Direct drive electric motors do wonders for mechanical simplicity and reliability. No idea if they'll turn out safer overall, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Meaningless without FAA buy in

[schwit1]

Certification takes on huge time and costs when passengers are involved. This is one reasons Boeing didn't build a new A/C instead of kludging together the 737Max.

Enough with the 737 Max already

[Latent Heat]

It seems like everyone is an expert on the design decisions behind the 737Max.

Everything in engineering involves all manner of design tradeoffs along with possibility of hidden risk, or even obvious risk that gets glossed over.

How do we know that Boeing, according to its current corporate culture, would not have made a bigger hash of the 737 replacement?

"Clean sheet of paper" designs are not the Magic Bullet. They are also susceptible to the Second System effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

Failed idea gets recycled

[gurps_npc]

They tried this in the 60s and 70s but the idea failed.

Basically, airlines cut fees by putting more people on a larger plane, and smaller aircraft could not compete.

In addition cities do NOT like large number of small airports. With September 11th, 2001 terrorist attack, I doubt that will ever change.

Close location = drive. Moderate = drive, rail or fly red eye. Far = Fly.

No space for air taxis.

Downsized planes

[Latent Heat]

Not exactly.

Back in the 70's and early 80's, airlines were flying DC-10's across the US between major city pairs.

I sat next to a Boeing engineer on a flight from Newark to Seattle on a DC-10, and he spent the time 1) telling me about all the safety shortcuts McDonnell Douglas took with the DC-10 and 2) that the airlines would be better off flying Boeing 727's instead of the larger DC-10s for which they have trouble filling the seats.

Taking a quick look at Chicago-LA,

https://www.flightsfrom.com/OR.. [flightsfrom.com]

Re:

[gurps_npc]

That was the tail end. The idea started in the late 50's, pracitcally identical to the current interration. They tried it in the 60's, by the 70's everyone realized this idea would not work and they moved to the garbage you are talking about. By the 80's it was clear it did not work.

There were a few places that kept something similar, - Alaska with sea planes and large cities (NYC) with helicopters. Even those never became succesfull enough to warrant a major airline getting involved.

Better headline...

[ItsJustAPseudonym]

With thousands of flying taxis overhead constantly, a better headline would be "Airlines Plan to Plow Flying Taxis Into Billions".