CommercialFAA Approves Flight Testing of Amazon's New Fully Electric Delivery Drone Amazon plans to launch Prime Air delivery in the next few months, using a new electrically powered vertical-takeoff-and-landing drone design unveiled Wednesday. The company’s latest fully-electric drone design features six shrouded rotors…
CommercialWhy Automation Shouldn't Push Pilots Out of Air Taxis As it tries to take to the skies, the urban air mobility industry is at a crossroads. The ultimate goal is unmanned operations, freeing up more seats for paying passengers and eliminating…
CommercialIndustry Must Prove UAM Is Safe for Public Adoption Urban air mobility won't be widely accepted as part of the public's everyday life — something industry is counting on — unless a sterling safety record is a given. Two crashes grounded…
CommercialWhat Uber Is Looking For in a Cost-Effective Urban Transport Vehicle Despite Uber's notoriously ambitious schedule, Director of Aviation Engineering Mark Moore says the company does not need any miracles to get its urban air mobility (UAM) business off the ground — just…
CommercialCity Airbus eVTOL Prototype Makes First Flight in Germany City Airbus, the namesake company’s unmanned, ducted-fan-driven urban air taxi prototype, made its first flight May 3 in Donauwörth, Germany. Airbus Helicopters did not make a formal announcement of the milestone, but…
CommercialGE's AiRXOS Takes on UTM through the Cloud To support the burgeoning urban air mobility (UAM) market, GE subsidiary AiRXOS has unveiled a platform for viewing and managing air mobility data and, running on it, a network ecosystem and a…
UnmannedShould Air Taxis Be Unmanned from the Jump? For urban air mobility to succeed — at scale — the industry will need to answer a question: What will it do about pilots? Ultimately, many entrants to the air taxi game want autonomy…
CommercialHoneywell to Handle Navigation for Volocopter eVTOL Honeywell and Volocopter will jointly test and develop navigation and automated landing systems for Volocopter's electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, the two companies announced April 8. The solutions will build…
CommercialJetcopter VTOL to be Revealed at AERO 2019 A full-scale mock-up of the Jetcopter vertical-takeoff-and-landing concept vehicle will be shown for the first time at April's AERO 2019 show in Friedrichshafen, Germany. The startup air taxi's claim to fame is its…
CommercialSikorsky Wants to Make Air Taxis as Safe, Reliable as Elevators In Sikorsky's vision of future urban air mobility, people ride helicopters above the din and congestion of modern cities with the same security and piece of mind they have when riding an…