Lean green flying machines take wing in Paris, heralding transport revolution

LE BOURGET, France — Just a dot on the horizon at first, the bug-like and surprisingly quiet electric-powered craft buzzes over Paris and its traffic snarls, treating its passenger to privileged vistas of the Eiffel Tower and the city’s signature zinc-grey rooftops before landing him or her with a gentle downward hover. And thus, if all goes to plan, could a new page in aviation history be written.

After years of dreamy and not always credible talk of skies filled with flying, nonpolluting electric taxis, the aviation industry is preparing to deliver a future it says is just around the corner.

Lewis Joly, Associated Press

The Volocopter 2X, an electric vertical takeoff and landing multicopter, performs a demonstration flight Monday during the Paris Air Show in Le Bourget, north of Paris.

Capitalizing on its moment in the global spotlight, the Paris region is planning for a small fleet of electric flying taxis to operate when it hosts the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games next summer.

Unless aviation regulators in China beat Paris to the punch by greenlighting a pilotless taxi for two passengers under development there, the French capital’s prospective operator — Volocopter of Germany — could be the first to fly taxis commercially if European regulators give their OK.

Volocopter CEO Dirk Hoke, a former top executive at aerospace giant Airbus, has a VVIP in mind as his hoped-for first Parisian passenger — none other than French President Emmanuel Macron.

“That would be super amazing,” Hoke said, speaking at the recent Paris Air Show, where he and other developers of electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft — eVTOLs for short — competed with industry heavyweights for attention.

Michel Euler, Associated Press

The Archer midnight flying taxi is exhibited Wednesday at the Paris Air Show in Le Bourget, north of Paris.

“He believes in the innovation of urban air mobility,” Hoke said of Macron. “That would be a strong sign for Europe to see the president flying.”

With Macron aboard or not, those pioneering first flights would still be just small steps for the nascent industry that has giant leaps to make before flying taxis are muscling out competitors on the ground.

The limited power of battery technology restricts the range and number of paying passengers they can carry, so eVTOL hops are likely to be short and expensive at the outset.

While the vision of simply beating city traffic by zooming over it is enticing, it also is dependent on advances in airspace management.

Manufacturers of eVTOLs aim in the coming decade to unfurl fleets in cities and on more niche routes for luxury passengers, including the French Riviera. They need technological leaps so flying taxis don’t crash into each other and all the other things already congesting the skies.

Starting first on existing helicopter routes, “we’ll continue to scale up using AI, using machine-learning to make sure that our airspace can handle it,” said Billy Nolen of Archer Aviation Inc. It aims to start flying between downtown Manhattan and Newark’s Liberty Airport in 2025. That’s normally a 1-hour train or old-fashioned taxi ride that Archer says its sleek, electric 4-passenger prototype could cover in under 10 minutes.

Michel Euler, Associated Press

People talk Wednesday by the eHang autonomous aerial vehicle at the Paris Air Show in Le Bourget, north of Paris.

Nolen was formerly acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration, the U.S. regulator that during his time at the agency was already working with NASA on technology to safely separate flying taxis. Just as Paris is using its Olympic Games to test flying taxis, Nolen said the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics offer another target for the industry to aim for and show that it can fly passengers in growing numbers safely, cleanly and affordably.

“We’ll have hundreds, if not thousands, of eVTOLs by the time you get to 2028,” he said.