The Countdown Begins: Flying Taxis and the Paris Olympic Games

It is two years, just two years, until the Olympic sport­ing pomp, cer­e­mo­ny and com­pe­ti­tion begin in Paris. His­to­ry fea­tures 29 Sum­mer Olympic Games held in 23 cities and 24 Win­ter Games host­ed in 21 cities. Bei­jing will pass the torch on to the French cap­i­tal, where the Olympics start on July 26th and ends August 11th, 2024.

At this major 3 0, there will be 40 com­pe­ti­tion sites, 32 dif­fer­ent sports encom­pass­ing 329 events, close to 10 mil­lion spec­ta­tors attend­ing and, stag­ger­ing­ly, over 4 bil­lion TV view­ers or half the world’s pop­u­la­tion are expect­ed to tune in and watch.

Yet, 2024 is to be dif­fer­ent. The event — we are told — will embrace a tech­nol­o­gy nev­er seen before at any pre­vi­ous Games. A tech­nol­o­gy that some believe will rev­o­lu­tionise and rad­i­cal­ly change the way we fly in the future. This is the moment when eVTOLs or Fly­ing Taxis will show over 4 bil­lion peo­ple around the globe what they’re made of. There has rarely been such a piv­otal time for any new indus­try. Get it wrong and this nascent mar­ket could peter out like a damp squib. Get it right and Fly­ing Taxis might soar to the dizzy heights of suc­cess only dream­ers can imag­ine.

It was back in late Novem­ber, 2021 when Groupe ADP (Aero­ports de Paris) con­firmed that eVTOLs would play an impor­tant part in the 2024 Olympics. Two routes are planned to help spec­ta­tors and ath­letes quick­ly fly around the city. One is to con­nect Charles de Gaulle and Le Bour­get air­ports (the lat­ter area will host the Olympic media vil­lage) with the main Olympic vil­lage. The oth­er link is between the Paris-Issy-les-Moulin­eaux heli­port and the Saint-Cyr air­field. For infra­struc­ture, there will be at least three con­struct­ed ver­ti­ports around the met­ro­pol­i­tan area.

How The Pon­toise Ver­ti­port May Look (Com­put­er Graph­ic)

To reach this ambi­tious point, as part of the Re.Invent Air Mobil­i­ty Ini­tia­tive, Choose Paris Region, Groupe ADP and RATP Group has joint­ly launched the first eVTOL tri­als locat­ed at the Cer­gy-Pon­toise, Cormeilles-en-Vex­in air­field, 35 km north­west of Paris. The over­all area is the size of 45 foot­ball fields and includes two paved run­ways, one con­trol tow­er, and var­i­ous main­te­nance hangars.

A total of 30 man­u­fac­tur­ers have been cho­sen to par­tic­i­pate in the test­ing includ­ing Volo­copter, Sky­ports, Thales, Pip­istrel, Air­bus UAM, Lil­i­um, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, EHang, Ascen­dance Tech­nolo­gies, Joby Avi­a­tion and Zipline.

As part of the infra­struc­ture Sky­ports is con­struct­ing a ver­ti­port at the air­field start­ing this month. It is to be built using mod­u­lar tech­nol­o­gy so that it can eas­i­ly be relo­cat­ed to a new loca­tion at the end of the pro­gram, serv­ing as the first com­mer­cial ver­ti­port in France.

This facil­i­ty will enable the test­ing of board­ing and dis­em­bark­ing oper­a­tions, recharg­ing bat­ter­ies and vehi­cle main­te­nance and is equipped with tech­nolo­gies includ­ing bio­met­ric iden­ti­ty man­age­ment, sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness capa­bil­i­ties and weath­er sta­tions. The data col­lect­ed dur­ing this tri­al phase will be essen­tial for the devel­op­ment of AAM reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works.

In Novem­ber, Augustin de Romanet, Aéro­ports de Paris SA – Groupe ADP’s chair­man and CEO, com­ment­ed, “Our Pon­toise air­field brings togeth­er an ecosys­tem around new air mobil­i­ty and the tri­al plat­form we are launch­ing is unprece­dent­ed in Europe. We will test all the com­po­nents of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty.”

After ear­ly small­er tests involv­ing Sky­ports, Thales and Pip­istrel, in March the pro­posed plans had moved up a gear when news broke that Volo­copter had con­duct­ed noise emis­sion tests. At the air­field, the Ger­man-based eVTOL con­duct­ed two pub­lic flights attend­ed by local offi­cials and stake­hold­ers with its 2X tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor air­craft.

They were a suc­cess and proved noise lev­els were far less than a heli­copter. e.g com­pared with a sim­i­lar sized Robin­son R22, the eVTOL was 10 dB qui­eter while climb­ing and 15 dB qui­eter while hov­er­ing at 246’. In fact, at that alti­tude, the 2X had the same noise pro­file as the R22 at 1,640’.

Volo­copter has been cho­sen as a major part­ner in the Paris Region’s Urban Air Mobil­i­ty project. (pic: Volo­copter)

This prompt­ed Chris­t­ian Bauer, Volocopter’s Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer, to com­ment, “By fly­ing our air­craft in a crewed con­fig­u­ra­tion at a Paris air­port, we are prov­ing to one of our launch cities, first­hand, that our craft will offer a prac­ti­cal addi­tion for poten­tial air­port to city routes.”

Mean­while, futureflight.aero wrote in March that RATP is work­ing close­ly with the eVTOL com­pa­ny. Joran Le Nabat, an engi­neer work­ing on acoustic and vibra­to­ry stud­ies for the com­pa­ny, explained his team is prepar­ing noise maps around spe­cif­ic pos­si­ble routes across the city lead­ing to poten­tial sites for ver­ti­ports.

One of these is the Gare d’Austerlitz rail­way sta­tion on the east side of the city, where RATP is explor­ing the poten­tial of fly­ing taxi flights to shut­tle pas­sen­gers to oth­er trans­port hubs from there.

But wait. Now it is time for a real­i­ty check. Is there not a prob­lem. A big prob­lem? It’s easy to get car­ried away and imag­ine hun­dreds of ath­letes, on a dai­ly basis, being flown back and forth from the Olympic Vil­lage by air taxis. It is even eas­i­er to dream of spec­ta­tors and VIPs whisked around Paris either from an air­port or ver­ti­port to dif­fer­ent sport­ing events dur­ing a two-week peri­od, but how real­is­tic is all of this?

Giv­en the Olympic Games is just two years away, how many eVTOL com­pa­nies will have even gained full cer­ti­fi­ca­tion by then to com­mer­cial­ly fly? Per­haps, just two, Joby and EHang. And what of the air reg­u­la­tions when the Parisian skies could expe­ri­ence one of its busiest peri­ods in many years?

The notion that an air taxi lands out­side the lux­u­ry Four Sea­son George V Hotel, locat­ed just off the Champs-Ely­sees and flies film star, Tom Cruise, to the 100 metre final is pure fan­ta­sy, sure­ly?

For exam­ple, Le Nabat told reporters the chal­lenge is not a case of achiev­ing a spe­cif­ic “mag­ic num­ber” of deci­bels, but pri­mar­i­ly about pub­lic accep­tance. For air taxis involve “a com­plex matrix of con­sid­er­a­tions” that include oper­a­tional safe­ty and eco­nom­ic impact. So, come July 26th, 2024, what is actu­al­ly fea­si­ble. What will be the real­i­ty?

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What do you think? is it real­is­tic that air taxis will be fly­ing peo­ple to and from sport­ing events dur­ing the Games in 2024? What are the reg­u­la­to­ry chal­lenges to over­come? We would love to hear your views on the sub­ject to be includ­ed in a fol­low-up fea­ture.

Please send your com­ments to this email address: chris@evtolinsights.com