EASA reveals results of first study conducted on public acceptance of urban air mobility in European cities

The Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA) has pub­lished results of the first study con­duct­ed in the EU on Urban Air Mobil­i­ty, which shows 83 per cent of respon­dents have a pos­i­tive ini­tial atti­tude and 71 per cent are ready to try out ser­vices.

The com­pre­hen­sive study, which was done with con­sult­ing firm McK­in­sey and Com­pa­ny, was based on tar­get­ed research, a lit­er­a­ture review, mar­ket analy­sis, sur­veys and inter­views. The online quan­ti­ta­tive sur­vey polled 4,000 res­i­dents liv­ing in six Euro­pean urban areas, which was com­ple­ment­ed by more than 40 qual­i­ta­tive inter­views as well as a noise sim­u­la­tion test.

Cities cho­sen for the online sur­vey were Barcelona, Budapest, Ham­burg, Milan, Öre­sund (Dan­ish-Swedish cross-bor­der area) and Paris, with a min­i­mum of 600 peo­ple from each loca­tion invit­ed to respond. These cities were select­ed via a stan­dard mar­ket analy­sis and the sur­vey recip­i­ents select­ed to be rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a cross-sec­tion of the local pop­u­la­tion of each city.

Patrick Ky, EASA’s Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, said: “As a result of this study, for the first time, EASA and the EU have insights into what the gen­er­al pub­lic in Europe thinks about this entire­ly new devel­op­ment in the field of avi­a­tion. For EASA as a reg­u­la­tor this infor­ma­tion is cru­cial. It will allow us to set up the rules and reg­u­la­tions for this area in a way that is aligned with the expec­ta­tions and per­cep­tions of cit­i­zens.

“The fact that the results were homo­ge­neous across the var­i­ous cities is a good start­ing point, giv­en that we are look­ing to cre­ate a sin­gle reg­u­la­to­ry play­ing field at EU lev­el.”

EASA also pub­lished the top ten key sur­vey results:

• There is a pos­i­tive atti­tude towards urban air mobil­i­ty. Six­ty four per cent of respon­dents were ready to try out drones, with 49 per cent ready to try out air taxis
• Emer­gency or med­ical use cas­es received the great­est pub­lic inter­est. The top three were trans­port­ing an injured per­son to hos­pi­tal (41 per cent), drone deliv­ery of med­ical sup­plies to hos­pi­tals (41 per cent) and trans­port of emer­gency med­ical per­son­nel (36 per cent)
• Top three expect­ed ben­e­fits were improved response time in emer­gen­cies (71 per cent), reduc­tion of traf­fic jams (51 per cent), reduc­tion of local emis­sions (48 per cent) and devel­op­ment of local area (41 per cent)
• When it came to con­cerns with air taxis, both envi­ron­ment and noise were most pop­u­lar (38 per cent). Oth­er fac­tors includ­ed safe­ty (38 per cent) and secu­ri­ty (27 per cent). For drones, safe­ty was the high­est (44 per cent)
• Most con­cerns came from the neg­a­tive impact on wildlife, noise pol­lu­tion and the envi­ron­men­tal and cli­mate impact from pro­duc­tion, includ­ing bat­ter­ies
• Respon­dents expect oper­a­tions to be as safe as cur­rent avi­a­tion. Con­cerns increase with the age
• Respon­dents said famil­iar city sounds at the same deci­bels are bet­ter accept­ed
• Lev­el of trust on secu­ri­ty and cyber secu­ri­ty of UAM tech­nol­o­gy is slight­ly above 50 per cent. Half of the respon­dents would bet­ter trust UAM if secu­ri­ty and cyber secu­ri­ty reg­u­la­tions were adopt­ed by all lev­els of Euro­pean author­i­ties work­ing togeth­er
• Ver­ti­ports need to be inte­grat­ed with­in the local mobil­i­ty net­work. Drone deliv­er­ies pre­ferred close to the house, while con­cerns of noise, safe­ty and visu­al impact need to be addressed
• There was an expec­ta­tion by respon­dents that sim­i­lar trust lev­els towards local, region­al, nation­al and Euro­pean author­i­ties to address UAM

EASA will use the study results to pre­pare an impact assess­ment and reg­u­la­to­ry pro­pos­al for Urban Air Mobil­i­ty in Europe in 2022. 

More details on the study and its results, includ­ing a break­down of the results per city and an overview of the top find­ings can be found on the EASA web­site (www.easa.europa.eu/UAM). 

A video of the press brief­ing with EASA Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Patrick Ky is below, where he goes through the pub­lished study and par­tic­i­pates in Q&A.