Air taxi

• Volocopter plans to launch its air taxi services as early as the next two years.
• German urban air mobility company Volocopter will be working closely with The Economic Development Board of Singapore and the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore to launch air taxi services in Singapore within the next three years.
• Volocopter is preparing to launch air taxi services with its Volocity eVTOL aircraft in Singapore by the end of 2023.
• As the first eVTOL company to receive Design Organisation Approval by the European Aviation Safety Authority, the German air taxi service, Volocopter, provider is alread actively pursuing commercial certification and expects the first commercial routes to be opened within the next two to four years.
• Embraer X, a US-based Embraer subsidiary and self-styled 'aviation disrupter' hopes its eVTOL air taxi concept could fulfil Uber's ambition to launch a commercial air taxi service within the next decade.
• Working together with the Economic Development Board of Singapore and the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore, Volocopter plans to make air taxi services a reality in the Southeast Asian city-state within the next three years.
• As Uber's goal of conducting demonstration flights with experimental air taxis over several cities around the world in 2020 draws closer, more electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing prototypes are expected to be trialled in 2019, including Airbus' Vahana, Kittyhawk's Cora and Boeing's Aurora.
• Dubai is expected to be the launch pad for commercial air taxis, with services projected to begin by 2022.
• Industry experts expects a 50+ seat hybrid-electric airliner to debut in commercial operation by 2032 for routes like London-Paris.
• Roland Berger's latest study predicts 160,000 air taxis by 2050, and the Urban Air Mobility market to be worth $90 billion.
• By 2040, the urban air mobility market will be worth $1.5 tn with 430,000 air taxis globally.
• Air taxi operations are anticipated to begin on a limited scale by 2022, with commercial operations expected as early as 2025.
• Korean carmaker Hyundai plans to invest $1.5 billion in the development of a UAM ecosystem including electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) air taxis and multimodal mobility hubs.
• Enabling the emergence of an entirely electric air taxi service is a natural fit with New Zealand's goal of being zero carbon by 2050.
• Along with Hyundai, Bell is one of six vehicle partners working with Uber to launch electric air taxis, which are due to begin demonstration flights this year and be operational in 2023.
• NASA is working on the Grand Challenge, the first of which will stage a series of UAM demonstration challenges with the aim of accelerating certification, developing flight procedure guidelines, develop airspace operations management and identify community concerns.
• Uber sees the helicopter service as an opportunity to gather data for its plans to launch a fully fledged air taxi business in 2023 using lightweight, electric aircraft.
• The number of ultra-wealthy individuals will increase by 43% by 2022 and the number of demi-wealthy individuals will increase by 39% by 2022, fueling demand of aerospace avionics market during the forecast period.
• The Ehang 184 is a concept for 5G-connected urban air mobility, controlled through a smart city command center, and is set to be a world's first Air Taxi to debut in Qatar for the FIFA World Cup in 2022.
• A new study analysing whether commercial timelines for developing e-air taxi services at scale are feasible pours cold water on the idea of rapid adoption.
• Uber has a target date of 2023 to launch Uber Air, while others in the market think it will take far longer for flying taxis to get the blessing of the Federal Aviation Administration.
• The ride hailing company is adamant that it will have a fleet of air taxis in operation by 2023, dubbed UberAir.

Last updated: 17 January 2021