Note: This is the editor's letter in BCA's Q3 issue.
Prior to the Paris Air Show, advanced air mobility (AAM) had created a bit of a Superman curiosity: “is it a bird, is it a plane…?”
Just as Superman flies into a scene and makes a big entrance and impact, AAM did the same at the air show—but AAM also demonstrated that it’s not fiction, for anyone who had doubts.
Full-scale mockups and mature prototypes filled Hall 5. Show attendees flooded the area to sit in AAM vehicle cabins and take selfies in front of the futuristic-looking designs.
Archer’s Midnight eVTOL and Volocopter’s VoloCity eVTOL flanked the Paris Air Mobility stage, where three days of comprehensive conference content—covering technology, airspace, regulations and certification, workforce training, operations at the 2024 Paris Olympics and more—was produced by the Paris Air Show organizer and Aviation Week Network. It also clearly showed that AAM vehicles are not intended to replace helicopters, but instead offer a more sustainable travel option in urban and regional areas.
There isn’t space here to fill you in on the entire event, but in case you still have doubts about AAM, let me try to highlight some of the momentum that is building in this sector.
EHang is in the final steps of certifying its autonomous two-seat EH216S vehicle with the Civil Aviation Administration of China and most likely this will be the first AAM vehicle to achieve certification.
To see other hardware and updates from the Paris Air Show, check out this gallery.
In addition, several AAM CEOs spoke at Paris Air Mobility. Here’s some of what they had to say.
From an operations standpoint, Volocopter hopes to certify its two-seat VoloCity next year in time for commercial flights at the Paris Summer Olympics. Dirk Hoke, Volocopter CEO, said tests of a conforming aircraft will start in July. Flight testing has been continuing over the last five years and “We’re at the last mile,” he said. Can he guarantee full operations at the Olympics? “No,” but “we’re working like hell.” (Here’s a video of VoloCity flying at the airshow: _)
Paris airports operator Groupe ADP, the French aviation authority DGAC, Skyports, Volocopter and Parisian hospital system AP-HP have established the ecosystem—including routes, airspace integration and infrastructure needed--to support AAM at the Olympics. They selected five routes, four of which use existing vertiports while a fifth will involve landing on a barge on the Seine river.
While part of AAM’s appeal is that unlike helicopters, it can carry people more sustainably from points A to B and doesn’t rely on existing landing areas, the Paris Olympics ecosystem is largely using existing infrastructure and helicopter routes to show how AAM can integrate into current airspace activity. It will be limited to VFR operations for the Olympics, said Thierry Allain, DGAC’s innovation program manager.
From a price standpoint, several manufacturers stated that the fare for an urban AAM flight should be similar to the cost of a car rideshare, such as for Lyft or Uber.
An AP-HP hospital emergency doctor, Matthieu Heidet, says the Paris group is also evaluating how to use AAM to deliver emergency care within the service area. “Each minute [in transit] means 10% less survivability,” so an eight-minute delay equates to an 80% chance of losing the patient, he said.
Next year, AP-HP will start demonstration flights to test the feasibility of flying doctors to accident scenes, flying passengers to hospitals and transporting organs. Traffic congestion reduces survivability, especially for cardiac-arrest cases, and “AAM could reduce [response time by] at least 1.5 minutes” compared to ambulances, said Heidet.
There are “major inequalities of access to urgent care” within the Paris region he said, so providing emergency care to people who are farther away from hospitals more quickly increases the reach of emergency medical services and reduces inequalities of access to hospital care.
As our AAM features states, 2024 will be a big year for AAM. Next year and in 2025, expect several vehicles to be certified and start operating.
In related AAM and sustainability news, Daher crossed over to the AAM space at the air show when it announced that it is collaborating with French startup Ascendance Flight Technologies on a hybrid-electric propulsion system. Ascendance is developing the ATEA eVTOL and its Sterna hybrid-electric propulsion system. The partnership will explore hybrid-electric propulsion system architecture, modeling, integration and testing on CS23-category Daher aircraft.
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