Air Taxis and the Promise of “Urban Air Mobility”

The future of aviation and on-demand mobility is arriving rapidly, with groundbreaking advances in technology and airspace integration happening every week.

More than 200 companies — including industry-leading names like Boeing, Airbus, Embraer and Bell alongside a number of startups — are racing to develop and certify hybrid and fully-electric aircraft that combine the ‘VTOL’ of helicopters with the forward-flight efficiency of airplanes to create vehicles that will efficiently move people around urban areas for a fraction of the cost of a helicopter today.

But many fundamental challenges and questions remain for the emerging urban air mobility market, as well as for other applications of the technology under development.

Here are just a few of the questions we’re exploring at Avionics International:

• Can regulators match the rapid pace of private industry?
• What infrastructure is necessary to launch a UAM ecosystem within a city?
• How will eVTOLs safely and certifiably operate autonomously?
• Will the public approve of multiple “air taxis” flying overhead at any given moment?
• Is there enough demand for on-demand air mobility to justify the massive investment taking place?

Check out some of our coverage below, and be sure to sign up for our free UAM newsletter, The Skyport, where we put the highlights in a nicely-formatted email once every two weeks.