I had the pleasure of attending the Paris Olympics over the last two weeks. It was incredible—I saw Canada take on Spain in beach volleyball in the iconic stadium set up at the Eiffel Tower. I glimpsed Tom Cruise at the women’s soccer final before his Top Gun-inspired acrobatics for the Los Angeles games during the closing ceremony. And there’s nothing like grabbing a croissant en route to a rowing or table tennis match.
The logistics for the whole event were masterful and well-executed. But I couldn’t help but notice one thing was missing: the promised air taxis chauffeuring attendees around Paris for the games.
More than two years ago I had sat down with Christian Bauer, the chief financial and commercial officer of air taxi startup Volocopter, and discussed Volocopter’s plans for launching commercial service. It was all supposed to happen in Paris last week. And French President Emmanuel Macron had championed the whole plan.
But there ended up being no splashy launch at the Olympics. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency still hasn’t granted the necessary commercial certification, so Volocopter had instead tried to move forward with non-commercial demonstration flights on the Seine, which could have still showcased the technology in an urban area. The French government had rallied around those plans, with a French air safety agency giving Volocopter a one-off permit to fly and the government approving a barge to be used on the Seine for Volocopter air taxis. But even the demonstration flights became contentious, with Paris City Hall taking legal action against the French government over the barge.
In the end, Volocopter settled for a crewed test flight at the Aerodrome of Saint-Cyr-l'École last week, then another test flight this past Sunday in Versailles—that flight was with no people on board, and before the park it took place in opened. It seemed a bit anticlimactic, but it’s not all that surprising. Volocopter’s walkback of its ambitious Paris plans is just the latest example of the uphill battle air taxi startups have been climbing for years as they try to put people in the sky in small electric aircraft. The regulations we have today were all written for airplanes. If you thought the regulation for drones was taking a long time, try putting people on board.
There’s a slew of companies in the queue, readying themselves for commercial operation in the meantime: Joby Aviation, Boeing subsidiary Wisk, Archer Aviation, and EHang, to name a few. Archer Aviation said two months ago it was designing an air taxi network in the San Francisco Bay Area. Joby Aviation last month completed a 523-mile hydrogen-powered flight.
Regulations abroad are a bit different. EHang, a Chinese autonomous air taxi company, has completed demo flights with passengers in Japan and the United Arab Emirates. But companies operating in Europe or the U.S. will have to wait a bit longer. While the EASA and FAA are both collaborating on air taxi-specific legislation, it could still be several years before these companies are able to reach any sort of scale. And, as for autonomy, David Solar, head of department for general aviation and vertical take-off and landing at EASA, told me via email that all of the initial certifications will still require a pilot on board, as the ability to fly with no pilot is “still far from being demonstrated, especially in failure conditions.” While there’s no timeline for air taxis going autonomous, his “best guess is not before 7 to 10 years, if not more.”
So if you’re anxious for autonomous helicopters buzzing people around the skies, it looks like you’ll be waiting long after Los Angeles hosts the Olympics to see it become reality.
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Jessica Mathews
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