KPMG Air Taxi Readiness Index 2022

KPMG is assess­ing the pre­pared­ness of 60 ter­ri­to­ries in advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) with its air taxi readi­ness index (ATRI), a tool to facil­i­tate dis­cus­sion on the lev­el of pre­pared­ness for the upcom­ing gen­er­a­tion of pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing Short or Ver­ti­cal Take-off and Land­ing (S/VTOL) vehi­cles.

It is a com­pos­ite index that com­bines over 47 indi­vid­ual exist­ing met­rics from a range of sources into a sin­gle score: con­sumer accep­tance, infra­struc­ture, pol­i­cy and leg­is­la­tion, tech­nol­o­gy and inno­va­tion, and busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty.

In terms of con­sumer accep­tance, the US leads as in 2021, with Chi­na in sec­ond place, and Sin­ga­pore and Brazil in third and fourth. As for infra­struc­ture, the US has moved to the top with Chi­na down to sec­ond, fol­lowed by South Korea, UAE and Japan to make up the top five.

With regards to pol­i­cy and leg­is­la­tion, the top spot is tak­en by the UK, with the US com­ing sec­ond, while third, fourth, and fifth slots are tak­en by Den­mark, Cana­da and the Nether­lands.

The US remains the clear leader in tech­nol­o­gy and inno­va­tion, whilst the Nether­lands and Sin­ga­pore are replaced in sec­ond and third spots by Chi­na and the UK, respec­tive­ly, with Japan and Brazil com­plet­ing the top five. Busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty is dom­i­nat­ed by the US again, fol­lowed by the UK, France, Cana­da and Ger­many.

The US has the high­est air traf­fic vol­ume of any coun­try in the index, indi­cat­ing strong con­sumer demand for air trav­el, as well as a high­ly devel­oped air traf­fic con­trol infra­struc­ture, which should form a sound basis for AAM reg­u­la­tion.

The US FAA has this year announced changes to its cer­ti­fi­ca­tion path­way for fixed-wing eVTOL air­craft, which will now be cer­ti­fied as ‘pow­ered lift’ air­craft rather than small plane. In addi­tion, the FAA has released draft guide­lines for ver­ti­port design.

Chi­na jumps from 6th to 2nd place this year, com­ing sec­ond in con­sumer accep­tance, infra­struc­ture, and tech­nol­o­gy and inno­va­tion, and remains espe­cial­ly dom­i­nant in mar­ket size, ride hail­ing and taxi mar­ket pen­e­tra­tion, air traf­fic quan­ti­ty and sky­scraper den­si­ty.

Its mod­est per­for­mances in pol­i­cy and leg­is­la­tion can be account­ed for by its data-shar­ing envi­ron­ment and trans­paren­cy, whilst the busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty score is depressed by low net nation­al income – clear­ly an exam­ple where China’s scale and urban vs. rur­al con­trasts mean that afford­abil­i­ty will dif­fer wide­ly by province.

The UK is ranked third over­all, up 1 place from 2021, with strong per­for­mances across pol­i­cy and leg­is­la­tion, busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty, and con­sumer accep­tance. The rel­a­tive­ly low score for infra­struc­ture is large­ly account­ed for by broad­band and mobile con­nec­tion speeds.

The UK is the over­all leader in pol­i­cy and leg­is­la­tion, reflect­ing mature reg­u­la­to­ry func­tions and sig­nif­i­cant gov­ern­ment invest­ment. Oper­a­tors, air­craft man­u­fac­tur­ers, air traf­fic man­age­ment, phys­i­cal assets and infra­struc­ture providers are encour­aged to work togeth­er to cre­ate viable and sus­tain­able con­cepts of oper­a­tion (ConOps). The UK’s Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA) is also adopt­ing Euro­pean Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for next-gen­er­a­tion eVTOL air­craft.

Brazil comes in at 8th, a sig­nif­i­cant improve­ment of 17 places on its 2021 rank­ing, dri­ven large­ly by the addi­tion of busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty to the index, which takes greater account of Brazil’s scale and depth as a poten­tial air taxi adopter.

Ireland’s strongest per­for­mance is in con­sumer accep­tance, with infra­struc­ture and busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty being its weak­est, due to fac­tors like low nation­al pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty, and a mod­est heli­copter mar­ket today.

India ranks rel­a­tive­ly con­sis­tent per­for­mances with one of its strongest indi­vid­ual met­rics being its poten­tial mar­ket size.

Bel­gium sits mid-table, sim­i­lar to 2021, scor­ing rel­a­tive­ly high­ly for tech­nol­o­gy and inno­va­tion, but below par for infra­struc­ture. Nonethe­less, Bel­gium enjoys fea­tures that still have the poten­tial to play into its air taxi readi­ness.

Israel’s high­est per­for­mance this year is in pol­i­cy and leg­is­la­tion and its low­est in busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty, with a vibrant unmanned air­craft and drone indus­try with a large num­ber of com­pa­nies devel­op­ing tech­nolo­gies and prod­ucts in the advanced air mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem, includ­ing a num­ber of air­craft OEMs cur­rent­ly work­ing on eVTOL con­cepts.

Poland sits mid-table with its worst per­for­mance, as in 2021, in tech­nol­o­gy and inno­va­tion, and its high­est in con­sumer accep­tance. Over­all there is remark­able con­sis­ten­cy in its scores.