Paris Olympics: Cost of Air Taxi Ride Around EUR110

14 months from now and the Paris Olympic Games will have start­ed, herald­ing with it, an extra­or­di­nary oppor­tu­ni­ty for the nascent eVTOL indus­try to show off its poten­tial to over four bil­lion peo­ple world­wide (expect­ed num­bers who’ll attend the event plus those who will watch it on TV).

Such a piv­otal moment comes, per­haps, once in a life­time for a new indus­try attempt­ing to break through into the rough and tum­ble mar­ket­place of com­mer­cial life. The Olympics offers that chance and the organ­is­ers are seiz­ing upon it to assist in pub­li­cis­ing the biggest sport­ing event in France.

ADP Groupe, the organ­i­sa­tion plan­ning the eVTOL appear­ances, has put for­ward Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer, Augustin de Romanet, to begin dri­ving the pub­lic­i­ty, and he appeared on the Fran­ce­in­fo TV news chan­nel last week.

While dis­cussing the gen­er­al logis­tics around the use of French air­ports and air flights dur­ing the Olympics (July 26th-August 11th, 2024), he com­ment­ed, “The big attrac­tion of the Paris Olympics will undoubt­ed­ly be the com­mis­sion­ing of fly­ing taxis. These are small heli­copter-type air­craft that will explode in the world from the years 2028 to 2030.” He con­tin­ued, “For the Olympics, it will be exper­i­men­tal. We will sell a few thou­sand tick­ets at very rea­son­able prices. Per­haps, it could be around EUR110”.

While, some point out this cost will be more than dou­ble that of a road taxi, giv­en the nov­el­ty and pres­tige of being one of the first to fly in an eVTOL, the price lit­tle mat­ters. Ger­man-based eVTOL com­pa­ny, Volo­copter, will almost def­i­nite­ly be the pri­ma­ry com­pa­ny involved, employ­ing its Voloc­i­ty at Paris. Spec­u­la­tion remains rife as to where the flight routes may be; will the craft be used for demon­stra­tion pur­pos­es only; and might there be oth­er eVTOLs involved?

The Count­down Begins: Fly­ing Taxis and the Paris Olympic Games

The Count­down Begins: Fly­ing Taxis and the Paris Olympic Games (Part 2)

It is sug­gest­ed flight routes may occur between Charles de Gaulle Air­port and Le Bour­get Air­port, and/or between Le Bour­get and the Quai d’Austerlitz in Paris. It has also been spec­u­lat­ed that at least one ver­ti­port could be employed with oth­ers used being exist­ing heli­ports (please read arti­cles). The craft will be pilot­ed, there­fore, only offer­ing one avail­able pas­sen­ger seat per flight. Augustin de Romanet talks of sell­ing “sev­er­al thou­sand tick­ets for air taxi rides”, so pre­sum­ably there would be mul­ti­ple Volocity’s fly­ing in the sky at the same time, giv­en the close to 120 indi­vid­ual flights per day required to sup­port de Romanet’s aim?

By ear­ly March, 3.25 mil­lion offi­cial tick­ets had been already sold for the Games, mak­ing it the largest ever sale of tick­ets in France.

The Count­down Begins: Fly­ing Taxis and The Paris Olympic Games (Part 3) — Media Per­spec­tive

Mean­while, back in Sep­tem­ber 2020, news broke that Volo­copter had begun sell­ing 1,000 tick­ets for VoloC­i­ty air taxi rides at Paris, for a price of EUR300 each, with the flight time to be a 15-minute spin. They were sold out with­in a week. So, it is unclear how the new EUR110 pro­posed price equates to this pre­vi­ous more expen­sive offer?

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.volocopter.com/solutions/volocity/