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

The present tri­als at Cer­gy-Pon­toise Air­port, lead­ing up to the Paris Olympic Games in July, 2024 are imper­a­tive for the future suc­cess of the eVTOL indus­try. Over 4 bil­lion peo­ple world­wide may watch the Games on TV, not for­get­ting the 10 mil­lion spec­ta­tors attend­ing. It is like­ly they will see air taxis fly­ing over the French cap­i­tal. There­fore, the cor­rect prepa­ra­tion for this momen­tous occa­sion is essen­tial.

Philip But­ter­worth-Hayes who has been involved for over 35 years in the avi­a­tion indus­try, offers a media per­spec­tive on this poten­tial real­i­ty. He is the edi­tor and pub­lish­er of www.unmannedairspace.info and www.urbanairmobilitynews.com and edits EUROCONTROL’s Sky­way mag­a­zine.

His back­ground includes posts as the direc­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tions and strat­e­gy at the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Nav­i­ga­tion Orga­ni­za­tion (CANSO) in Ams­ter­dam; the launch edi­tor of the Euro­pean Defence Agency’s Euro­pean Defence Mat­ters; the Man­ag­er of Jane’s Air Trans­port Divi­sion and lead con­sul­tant for Jane’s Infor­ma­tion Group on civ­il avi­a­tion con­sul­tan­cy stud­ies; found­ing edi­tor of Jane’s Air­craft Com­po­nent Man­u­fac­tur­ers, Jane’s World Air­lines and Jane’s Air­port Review; a for­mer edi­tor of Inter­avia Aero­space Review, Air­ports Inter­na­tion­al, Jane’s Defence Indus­tries, Jane’s Mil­i­tary Air­craft and sev­er­al unmanned air sys­tem pub­li­ca­tions. Also, he has been an avi­a­tion con­sul­tant for BBC Tele­vi­sion and Time-Life books.

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Chris Stonor Asks The Ques­tions

Air taxis will be fly­ing ath­letes and spec­ta­tors to and from dif­fer­ent sports sta­dia dur­ing the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. How real­is­tic is this?

This is very ambi­tious and prob­a­bly one year ahead of what both the indus­try and the reg­u­la­tors would accept as a real­is­tic com­fort lev­el. But it is cer­tain­ly pos­si­ble.

So, the Expo 2025 in Osa­ka, Japan is more real­is­tic?

Yes, but it doesn’t mean air taxis can’t or won’t fly over Paris the pre­vi­ous year. In terms of all the plan­ets align­ing, 2025 is more real­is­tic.

Giv­en the eVTOL indus­try has come such a long way in just the pre­vi­ous two years, won’t it work itself to the bone to make sure it does hap­pen?

It is cer­tain­ly pos­si­ble and mar­gin­al­ly prob­a­ble, but in avi­a­tion terms, it nor­mal­ly takes 7 years for a reg­u­la­tion to trans­fer from a draft to the statute books. So, what needs to be done here, is to accel­er­ate the tra­di­tion­al reg­u­la­to­ry process­es by over 100 per­cent. Peo­ple have not ful­ly under­stood the chal­lenges that lie ahead. 

What are the most impor­tant of these to over­come?

First, and most impor­tant­ly, to under­stand the risks involved. Do we ful­ly com­pre­hend the risk pro­file of urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM)? There are lots of dan­gers out there which, so far, have not been planned for because we don’t have the oper­a­tional expe­ri­ence yet.

For exam­ple, a rogue drone inter­fer­ing with an eVTOL flight. Has this been tak­en into account? What is the UAS coun­ter­mea­sure pol­i­cy to make sure the Paris air­space is ful­ly secure? That rep­re­sents just one of a whole raft, for the ques­tion to ask is: “What are the unknowns?” Until we start oper­at­ing we won’t know.

Oth­er exam­ples include: What hap­pens if some­one boards an eVTOL and then goes bonkers? Or what is the cor­rect place­ment of emer­gency land­ing sites? We won’t know until such events occur, as there is no data to base a risk assess­ment on, as the indus­try doesn’t exist, yet.

“Volo­copter, def­i­nite­ly,” will be Pri­ma­ry eVTOL Fly­ing over Paris (Pic: Volo­copter)

There­fore, is this not an extra­or­di­nary gam­ble the eVTOL indus­try is tak­ing when over half the world’s pop­u­la­tion will be tun­ing in with a fur­ther 10 mil­lion attend­ing. It is like pok­er when you go all-in.

This is cer­tain­ly true and why safe­ty is absolute­ly para­mount to pre­vent a crash, for exam­ple. Although, I am not so wor­ried about this pos­si­bil­i­ty, but more con­cerned over the soft­ware not work­ing. 

When you look at avi­a­tion, nowa­days, not too many peo­ple board­ing an aero­plane are imme­di­ate­ly wor­ried about it crash­ing. They are more con­cerned about the air traf­fic con­trol or air­line IT sys­tem fail­ing, where the plane can’t take off. There­fore, it is these issues which need to be focussed on. That an eVTOL can’t fly because the com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem fails.

So, it is the tech­nol­o­gy sur­round­ing such sys­tems?

Yes, that for me is the biggest risk. Paris is an exper­i­ment. Impor­tant lessons will be gained and every­thing learned there then becomes main­stream lead­ing to prop­er com­mer­cial flights a few years lat­er. For the first step is rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple. Few eVTOLs are fly­ing, so there’ll be straight-for­ward flight cor­ri­dors cre­at­ed. It is the scal­ing-up that becomes the real chal­lenge. 

eVTOLs will Use Riv­er Seine as a Flight Path (Pic: Matthieu Col­in)

You have been involved for over 35 years in the avi­a­tion indus­try. Has there been any­thing quite like this when a new technology’s been so rapid­ly pushed through?

In the past, new reg­u­la­tions and an ecosys­tem had to be cre­at­ed for super­son­ic flight to sup­port the tech­nolo­gies involved. Then in 2008, there was the per­son­al jet rev­o­lu­tion. But giv­en the sheer amount of eVTOL prepa­ra­tion required due to the brief timescale, the avi­a­tion indus­try has seen noth­ing like it before. This sit­u­a­tion is unique. And why there is so much con­cen­tra­tion on air wor­thi­ness and oper­a­tions. Yet, there must be a bal­ance with the over­all ecosys­tem. We are cer­tain­ly nowhere near that yet.

How impor­tant is the state of the econ­o­my for a new tech­nol­o­gy like this to emerge. There are many who now believe we are head­ing towards a world eco­nom­ic reces­sion. Sure­ly, hav­ing a healthy econ­o­my great­ly assists a new indus­try to evolve?

I would argue the state of the econ­o­my is entire­ly irrel­e­vant, where a reces­sion will have no detri­men­tal effect. For many coun­tries UAM is now a strate­gic polit­i­cal indus­try. If you look at the pri­ma­ry forces behind it, they are the most pow­er­ful on Earth. Whether it is the Chi­nese Gov­ern­ment; the U.S Depart­ment of Defence; Sil­i­con Val­ley or even Europe, UAM has become a strate­gic pri­or­i­ty. We are at the point of no return, where many bil­lions of dol­lars have been already invest­ed, when still no eVTOLs are ful­ly cer­ti­fied or some have not even been built. The nec­es­sary mon­ey need­ed will be found.

Are you sug­gest­ing what’s finan­cial­ly dri­ving the indus­try is more the mil­i­tary side than the com­mer­cial?

I would sug­gest it is a race for strate­gic suprema­cy.

Who is win­ning this race? 

The Chi­nese, hands down. They are already fly­ing com­mer­cial autonomous sight-see­ing flights. You can buy tick­ets online. 

You are refer­ring to EHang?  

Absolute­ly. The Chi­nese are way ahead of every­one else and win­ning the glob­al race, although this only works in Chi­na. For can you import EHang tech­nol­o­gy to the States or Europe? No, you can’t. Not yet, any­way. 

Dur­ing my inter­view with Sky­ports, Dami­an Kys­ley, he is 100 per­cent con­fi­dent there’ll be fly­ing taxi demon­stra­tions over the Paris skies. Which eVTOL com­pa­nies, in your view, will be involved?

Volo­copter, def­i­nite­ly, will be the main one as the com­pa­ny is Euro­pean-based. I am not sure about Joby, although they are an obvi­ous con­tender. 

What is required to make the eVTOL demon­stra­tions over Paris suc­cess­ful?

The tri­als at Cer­gy-Pon­toise Air­port are the absolute key. The French have real­ly got this right. A time­line has been set out. What needs to be done; what chal­lenges must be over­come. The pri­ma­ry cri­te­ria being: Can we fly safe­ly over Paris; can we design a route; and can we meet all the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ments? Once the French put their mind to things, any­thing is pos­si­ble. 

Tri­als at Cer­gy-Pon­toise Air­port “Are the Absolute Key” (Pic: Skyports/Sita)

There will be a need for ver­ti­ports along­side eVTOL flight paths. Where should they be locat­ed and how long could these routes be?

The ver­ti­ports need to be locat­ed close to Olympic sites as well as in the Paris city cen­tre. The present heli­ports can be adapt­ed and flight paths cre­at­ed around the estab­lished low fly­ing heli­copter routes. The pro­ce­dures are already in place. You adapt as much as you can. You then tri­al, test and tri­al again. 

Ide­al­ly, you choose a heli­port or con­struct a ver­ti­port close to the Riv­er Seine and fly over this for as long as you can. You want as lit­tle of the route as pos­si­ble over peo­ple and build­ings. 

How do you think the pub­lic will react to see­ing eVTOLs fly­ing in the Paris skies?

A major­i­ty of the pub­lic polls are over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive. The indus­try ticks all the box­es. For exam­ple, it is envi­ron­men­tal­ly respon­si­ble; safe­ty, weird­ly, is not so much a prob­lem, giv­en all the work car­ried out by pre­vi­ous avi­a­tion safe­ty agen­cies. The pub­lic believe that if a craft is fly­ing it has to be safe. What they don’t want to see is a new mode of trans­port only used by wealthy peo­ple. For this to work, eVTOLs must be acces­si­ble, afford­able and inclu­sive to all. If achieved the indus­try will attract wide­spread pop­u­lar sup­port.

What about upset­ting the econ­o­my. If eVTOLs do car­ry out com­mer­cial flights dur­ing the Olympics, there are the Paris taxi dri­vers to con­sid­er. They won’t be hap­py.

Unlike oth­er peo­ple, I don’t believe eVTOLs will become a glob­al form of trans­porta­tion. Cer­tain­ly, not in the next 20 to 30 years. I can’t see eVTOLs phys­i­cal­ly tak­ing cars off the road. 

I am sur­prised you say this. Look­ing at the Joby finan­cials for pas­sen­ger cost per mile, the com­pa­ny is say­ing USD3 a mile; cheap­er than road taxis and over a city cen­tre less expen­sive than most oth­er forms of trans­port.

The issue is air­space capac­i­ty. For exam­ple, you can’t have hold­ing pat­terns in the sky over an urban envi­ron­ment. You are lim­it­ed to the num­ber of take-offs and land­ings. And because an eVTOL can’t keep cir­cling until a craft takes off below, that severe­ly lim­its the flight capac­i­ty.

Are you sug­gest­ing it can only be a mode of trans­port for the elites?

If it is, the indus­try will not suc­ceed. To repeat, eVTOLs won’t reduce con­ges­tion on the roads as there sim­ply won’t be enough dai­ly flights.

It is more like­ly, peo­ple may use their own per­son­al eVTOLs. That could make a dif­fer­ence. We will even­tu­al­ly see air taxis grow­ing in size at the same time as per­son­al trans­ports becom­ing avail­able which will not require pub­lic ver­ti­ports. The key chal­lenge will be air­space capac­i­ty. You can­not hov­er over an area. I appre­ci­ate this may be a con­tro­ver­sial view­point.

It is 2030, the indus­try is begin­ning to take-off, how many eVTOLs can you see fly­ing over Lon­don on a dai­ly basis, for exam­ple?

Not many, but come 2035, we may see air taxis fly­ing peo­ple out to Heathrow Air­port, or tak­ing them to par­tic­u­lar events. Per­haps, by then, we could see hun­dreds of flights a day. 

“Present Paris Heli­ports can be Adapt­ed to Ver­ti­ports” (Pic:123RF)

One view is there will be a strong link between air­ports and eVTOLs. Peo­ple will depart from an aero­plane, then walk a short dis­tance to a ver­ti­port, before an eVTOL flies them to a local des­ti­na­tion. 

Again, only via cer­tain des­ig­nat­ed routes. These will be risk assess­ment ones. You can’t fly the craft over peo­ple day and night. There will be clear and con­cise lim­its. 

Going back to Paris where, at least, there’ll be eVTOL demon­stra­tions. What will the indus­try gain from this?

Oth­er cities around the world will look at Paris and say, “We want this!” 

So they seek the kudos?

Exact­ly. It is the local politi­cians who decide on how their smart cities may devel­op in the future and for many, urban air mobil­i­ty plays an impor­tant role. This is a polit­i­cal deci­sion, not a pub­lic one. It is these politi­cians who will make or break the indus­try.

What else would you like to add to our con­ver­sa­tion?

It is the stuff that peo­ple have not thought about like the IT sys­tems break­ing down, not the craft falling out of the sky. You plan for the best, but out of the blue some­thing extra­or­di­nary hap­pens which you can’t risk assess. It is how you man­age these unplanned events, whether it is ter­ror­ist-based or an elec­tri­cal out­age, that will decide whether Paris is a suc­cess or not. 

Final­ly, if there are eVTOL flights arranged for the media, would you put your name down?

Absolute­ly. I would jump at the chance.