Flying Taxis to Take Off at Paris Olympics? “The Silence is Deafening”

Did you hear that pin drop? The pin rep­re­sent­ing a deci­sion by a cer­tain French author­i­ty con­cern­ing whether eVTOLs will fly over Paris dur­ing the Olympic Games in July and August.

Poten­tial­ly four bil­lion peo­ple glob­al­ly could be watch­ing the new green avi­a­tion rev­o­lu­tion unfold via their TV screens, excit­ed, mes­merised, even astound­ed by see­ing the future play out in their present. 

This author­i­ty promised us the sky, even sug­gest­ing that eVTOLs would fly the Olympic con­tes­tants to and from the dif­fer­ent sta­di­ums with the pub­lic fol­low­ing suit. We were promised a deci­sion in Jan­u­ary, then March, yet with just 84 days to go, not a sound. The silence is deaf­en­ing.

The con­spir­acists might sug­gest, it is down to a cru­el stub­born­ness from the Paris polit­i­cal-left, deter­mined to stop the cap­i­tal­ists from herald­ing their next mon­ey-mak­ing ven­ture or just, may be, a direct  attack at the increas­ing­ly unpop­u­lar French leader, Pres­i­dent Emmanuel Macron, to stop the blaze of pub­lic­i­ty the Olympics will gain, if fly­ing taxis become the nat­ur­al star of the show away from track and field?

Yet, the very lat­est revolt against eVTOLs being at the Olympics is beyond belief. A spark of mad­ness where the world has been turned upside down. There is no rea­son or ratio­nale for this lat­est defile­ment. 

For elec­tric fly­ing taxis are aimed at the grow­ing mass of green enthu­si­asts. eVTOLs are clean, mean and ultra-green. Designed to lessen the car­bon foot­print as well as be ultra-qui­et com­pared to oth­er craft like the heli­copter, there­by mas­sive­ly less­en­ing the sound foot­print. It is the avi­a­tion answer to all the greens’ prayers, sure­ly? 

So, why did Extinc­tion Rebel­lion activists spray paint on the build­ing of the DGAC (Gen­er­al Direc­torate of Civ­il Avi­a­tion) on Wednes­day (May 1st), while break­ing win­dows for good mea­sure, to protest against the deploy­ment of eVTOLs dur­ing the Games?

The organ­i­sa­tion post­ed on ‘X’, “We redec­o­rate DGAC to draw atten­tion to its role in the “fly­ing taxis” project, a project as stu­pid as it is use­less, planned for the Paris Olympics 2024.”

In Paris, activists from Extinc­tion Rebel­lion sprayed paint on the build­ing of the DGAC (Gen­er­al Direc­torate of Civ­il Avi­a­tion) to protest against the deploy­ment of fly­ing taxis dur­ing the Paris Olympic Games.

📹 Cred­it : Arnaud César Vilette @ArnaudCesarV pic.twitter.com/ALejXIYQg0

— FL360aero (@fl360aero) May 1, 2024

Who is to blame for this per­verse mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion? The French author­i­ties, the eVTOL com­pa­nies, the main­stream media? Why has no mon­ey been spent on actu­al­ly edu­cat­ing the Parisian pub­lic?

Back in Novem­ber, cer­tain Paris coun­cil­lors react­ed to the fly­ing taxi notion with a stun­ning neg­a­tive reac­tion, call­ing the plans as “absurd” and an “eco­log­i­cal aber­ra­tion.” For exam­ple, Dan Lert, a Deputy May­or of the Con­sul de Paris, described such fly­ing oper­a­tions as “a total­ly use­less, hyper-pol­lut­ing gim­mick for a few ultra-priv­i­leged peo­ple in a hur­ry.”

And yet this abject igno­rance becomes even more absurd when Par­ti Social­iste coun­cil­lor, Flo­ri­an Sit­bon, remarked, “To save a few min­utes for a few wealthy peo­ple in a hur­ry, who are igno­rant and con­temp­tu­ous of the cli­mate emer­gency, we would be pol­lut­ing the atmos­phere and destroy­ing the sound envi­ron­ment.”

How could this nihilis­tic sci­olism become so dan­ger­ous for the devel­op­ment of the eVTOL indus­try? The Paris Olympics is a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty, yet seem­ing­ly, it is evap­o­rat­ing in a puff of green acrid smoke in front of our very eyes.

Volo­copter Suf­fers Two Recent Set­Backs as Com­pa­ny Vies to Pio­neer the Emerg­ing eVTOL Indus­try

politico.eu warned us back in Feb­ru­ary that dreams might be shat­tered. With an arti­cle head­line “Why you won’t fly in an air taxi at the Paris Olympics”, it blames the reg­u­la­to­ry path. Jour­nal­ist Tomas­so Lec­ca writes, “It’s not there are no such air­craft — the tech­nol­o­gy is there — but get­ting reg­u­la­to­ry approval in a hyper safe­ty con­scious area like avi­a­tion is a much longer slog.”

Is EASA to blame for this? Sen­si­tive to the left-wing polit­i­cal out­rage as well as the extreme safe­ty require­ments, giv­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to Volo­copter to fly over Paris is too much of a “patate chaude?” Too far a stretch in 2024? Bet­ter to be safe than sor­ry?

To be fair, amidst the past media hype and hul­la­baloo, Dirk Hoke, CEO of Volo­copter, did warn, “To be hon­est, I can’t guar­an­tee that we’ll be fly­ing cer­ti­fied oper­a­tions dur­ing the Olympics.”

This is backed up by quotes from a politico.eu “source” involved in the reg­u­la­to­ry process, pre­sum­ably work­ing for EASA. The anony­mous indi­vid­ual stat­ed, “Although it was intend­ed that the reg­u­la­to­ry struc­ture for air­craft cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and pilot licens­ing would be in place, it is high­ly unlike­ly this will be ready at the EU lev­el, with a min­i­mum expect­ed delay to 2025.” 

Even so, the per­son offers hope. “Instead, I expect Volo­copter to fly under a nation­al­ly issued Per­mit to Fly from the French DGAC on pre-defined and high­ly con­trolled routes, with pre-select­ed non-pay­ing pas­sen­gers such as celebri­ties, ath­letes and prob­a­bly jour­nal­ists.”

At present, even that seems unlike­ly. If a deci­sion has been already made to fly the Voloc­i­ty, flaunt this knowl­edge to help mar­ket and pub­li­cise the Games. Yet, the silence remains deaf­en­ing.

Dirk Hoke with French Pres­i­dent Emmanuel Macron and Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Olaf Scholz (Cred­it: Volo­copter)

Mean­while, politi­co points out, the French Envi­ron­men­tal Author­i­ty mea­sured the noise lev­el of an air taxi in flight at 65 deci­bels and con­clud­ed that “it was not silent as promised.” Hoke retort­ed, per­haps exas­per­at­ed, “The noise lev­el is so low that it can’t be heard by two peo­ple hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion.” He con­tin­ued, “We are fight­ing so hard to fly in Paris because we believe that every­one knows how dif­fi­cult it is and mak­ing that hap­pen will send a big sig­nal to the world.”

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, such hopes and dreams, seem­ing­ly, won’t be the ones the pub­lic were promised. For the idea of “air taxis fly­ing and hov­er­ing over Paris, as the world’s best ath­letes com­pete for medals,” points out Hoke, ini­tial­ly came from, yep, you’ve guessed it, Emmanuel Macron “to demon­strate inno­va­tion in France in the sum­mer of 2024.” The Pres­i­den­t’s unpop­u­lar­i­ty, per­haps, has done the fly­ing taxi indus­try no favours.

What is becom­ing obvi­ous is that with­out full polit­i­cal and pub­lic sup­port, the roll out of eVTOLs, espe­cial­ly in the West, is going to be one hard and remorse­less slog, allow­ing coun­tries like Chi­na and the Mid­dle East to dom­i­nate the indus­try over the next ten years or so.

(News Source: https://www.politico.eu)

(Top graph­ic image: Voloc­i­ty Fly­ing over Paris — Cred­it: Volo­copter)

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