After Much Political Wrangling, VoloCity “Will Fly over Paris During Olympic Games”

Final­ly, the silence has spo­ken, the vocif­er­ous polit­i­cal wran­gling is, at least for now, over and after many months of spec­u­la­tion, Volo­copter and its eVTOL VoloC­i­ty, has been giv­en per­mis­sion by the French Gov­ern­ment to fly over Paris dur­ing the Olympic Games. As the Riv­er Seine, after all, is to have its ver­ti­pad.

Yet, there is a major pro­vi­so. Flights will be lim­it­ed to two per hour, between 8:00 am and 5:00 pm, and no more than 900 are allowed over the whole tri­al peri­od between the start of the Games on July 26th and its close on August 11th, reports france24.com. 

Intrigu­ing­ly, the Gov­ern­ment has stat­ed this pad “can be used until Decem­ber 31st, 2024.” Does this mean VoloC­i­ty will still be fly­ing over Paris after the Games are over?

The land­ing site will float on the Seine near the Auster­litz rail­way sta­tion in south­east­ern Paris. While four ver­ti­ports have already been ear­marked around its sub­urbs, includ­ing one at Charles de Gaulle air­port, the Auster­litz site is the first with­in the city itself.

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

Yet, it is the back­sto­ry that makes this deci­sion so inter­est­ing. Amidst the polit­i­cal chaos present­ly con­sum­ing France, the fact that Pres­i­dent Emmanuel Macron want­ed eVTOLs to fly dur­ing the Games — this being his per­son­al desire and wish — led polit­i­cal oppo­nents to vocif­er­ous­ly deride such non­sense. Even more absurd were the envi­ron­men­tal activists like Extinc­tion Rebel­lion along­side an alliance of ecol­o­gy and green groups, who were the most damn­ing towards the plan. (Please read arti­cle above). 

For exam­ple, David Bel­liard, Head of Trans­port at Paris City Hall, who is a Mem­ber of the Greens, told French Pub­lic Radio this week, “All of the Paris Coun­cil – the left, ecol­o­gists and the right –  vot­ed against fly­ing taxis. They’re not use­ful, they’re un-eco­log­i­cal and very expen­sive. Only the wealth­i­est peo­ple are con­cerned by this.” Bel­liard went on to slam a tar­iff of EUR135 for a 35 km jour­ney as “Out­ra­geous!”

Bel­liard also ques­tioned the gov­ern­men­t’s legit­i­ma­cy, since the pres­i­den­tial major­i­ty lost out to a new left-wing alliance (NFP) in last Sun­day’s snap leglisla­tive elec­tions.

Back in Novem­ber, cer­tain left-wing Paris coun­cil­lors had cement­ed this view, after react­ing to the fly­ing taxi notion with a stun­ning neg­a­tive response, 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.”

Mean­while, those close to Paris May­or, Anne Hidal­go, told French news agency AFP this week that City Hall would chal­lenge the land­ing pad per­mit in court.

The Pro­posed Auster­litz Ver­ti­pad (Cred­it: SIPA)

It appears the world has been turned upside down in Paris. Fly­ing taxis are deemed to be “super-envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly” by the major­i­ty of peo­ple. For by using elec­tric pow­er, this reduces car­bon emis­sions and gen­er­al pol­lu­tion, as well as being 100 times qui­eter than heli­copters, so noise lev­els are also dra­mat­i­cal­ly decreased. 

Yet, the very thing that envi­ron­men­tal­ists agree with, are being derid­ed by them in Paris which sug­gests cli­mate con­cerns are now used by some groups as a cov­er for anar­chis­tic and extreme left-wing beliefs. Their view is sim­ple. Fly­ing Taxis are for the wealthy, whether they are green or not, and must be stopped.

To be fair, France’s Nation­al Envi­ron­ment Author­i­ty (AE) pub­lished a report last Sep­tem­ber, stat­ing that an impact assess­ment for the Auster­litz land­ing pad was “incom­plete” on issues includ­ing noise pol­lu­tion, ener­gy con­sump­tion and green­house emis­sions. Also, the VoloC­i­ty has not yet been cer­ti­fied by the Euro­pean Union’s Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA), mean­ing oper­a­tors can only offer free demon­stra­tion flights dur­ing the Games. 

Even so, after all the ini­tial hopes and dreams of eVTOLs fly­ing ath­letes and the pub­lic to and from the dif­fer­ent sta­dia have been quashed, demon­stra­tion flights over Paris which will be seen by those attend­ing, as well as on glob­al tele­vi­sion, how­ev­er brief, by up to 4 bil­lion peo­ple, is a good begin­ning.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, after surf­ing the net, it is still unclear whether cer­tain VoloC­i­ty trips will include pas­sen­gers as part of these demon­stra­tions.

(News Source: www.france24.com)

(Top image cred­it: Volo­copter)

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