French President Emmanuel Macron to be First eVTOL Volocity Passenger in Summer 2024?

The Paris Air­show was a tri­umph for eVTOL com­pa­ny, Volo­copter. Apart from dai­ly demon­stra­tion flights of its two-seater Voloc­i­ty at Le Bour­get Air­port which entranced sight­seers, the com­pa­ny announced a num­ber of new busi­ness deals and col­lab­o­ra­tions as the week went on.

Yet, the most impor­tant news was con­fir­ma­tion of its first com­mer­cial flights over the Paris skies for the 2024 Olympic and Par­a­lympic Games (July 26th-August 11th), where Voloc­i­ty will take-off and land at three flight con­nec­tion routes, along­side two tourist round trip flights, and employ a num­ber of Voloc­i­ty air­craft.

Con­nec­tion Routes

: Paris-Charles de Gaulle air­port <> Paris-Le Bour­get air­port, inte­grat­ing suc­cess­ful­ly into the skies of Europe’s busiest air­port.

: Ver­ti­port of Auster­litz barge <> Paris Heli­port, inte­grat­ing a con­nec­tion over the dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed urban area of Paris.

: Paris Heli­port <> Air­field of Saint-Cyr‑l’École (Ver­sailles); val­i­dat­ing the route poten­tial for tourism use cas­es.

: Tourist round trip flights will be offered from: Paris Heli­port and Paris Le Bour­get.

Volo­copter: “An eVTOL World First in Sum­mer 2024”

This excit­ing news led to Volo­copter CEO, Dirk Hoke, com­ment at the Air­show, “It would be super amaz­ing to have Pres­i­dent Macron as our first pas­sen­ger. He believes in the inno­va­tion of urban air mobil­i­ty. This would be a strong sign for Europe to see the Pres­i­dent fly­ing.”

The prob­lem being, the com­pa­ny still needs to achieve full cer­ti­fi­ca­tion approval from EASA before it can oper­ate in pub­lic, but there is every sign this will occur, espe­cial­ly when the Olympics is still 12 months away. For the Euro­pean Union is deter­mined to have “one of its own” as the first eVTOL to com­mer­cial­ly fly in the world.

Paris Olympics: Cost of Air Taxi Ride Around EUR110

It has also been moot­ed that each com­mer­cial flight at the Olympics will cost around EUR110. ADP Groupe CEO, Augustin de Romanet, the organ­i­sa­tion behind the plan­ning, said on Fran­ce­in­fo TV news Chan­nel back in May, “The big attrac­tion of the Paris Olympics will undoubt­ed­ly be the com­mis­sion­ing of fly­ing taxis, where we aim to sell a few thou­sand tick­ets at very rea­son­able prices. Per­haps, the price could be around EUR110”.

To invite one of the world’s top lead­ers to be the first Voloc­i­ty pas­sen­ger is a genius mar­ket­ing ploy. Imag­ine the pub­lic­i­ty and inter­est from both the media and pub­lic. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Pres­i­dent Macron is also one of the least pop­u­lar judg­ing by the present French riots and those before it.

The real­ly good news though is there is every sign that the eVTOL indus­try has now turned a piv­otal cor­ner judg­ing by the recent mete­oric Joby Avi­a­tion stock mar­ket price rise along­side some oth­er Stock Mar­ket float­ed fly­ing taxi com­pa­nies. This momen­tum could con­tin­ue as the Olympic Games draws ever near­er.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.volocopter.com

(News Source: https://www.insidethegames.biz)

(Top image: Dirk Hoke (l), Pres­i­dent Macron (cen­tre))