What A Three-Month Air-Taxi Service In LA Uncovered About The Future Of Safe Flight For All
Dr. Mark Groden, Founder and CEO at Skyryse.
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There’s plenty of discussion about the electric vehicle infrastructure, new public transportation systems and micro-mobility. Along with that, McKinsey analysts have found broad consumer interest in air taxis worldwide, with business travel and time savings being the strongest reasons people would move to the skies.
With growing commute times, Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, Orlando and Pittsburgh are preparing for urban air services. Investors poured $7 billion into air mobility companies last year, expecting the global air taxi market to be worth $2.32 billion by 2027. Much of the recent investment is funding fully autonomous eVTOLs, which won’t be commercially available until the end of this decade.
We could have mass air taxi service sooner and reap the advantages of air transport if we take a step back and look at utilizing existing airframes, automating some flight features, and making air taxis safer for pilots in all weather types. My company, Skyryse, operated the largest piloted air taxi service in the world to date—running 1,200 trips in three months around Los Angeles in 2019. Here’s what the operation uncovered about the future of safe flight for everyone via air taxi services.
What We Need To Take Off
1. Safety
Air taxi services can be launched with existing rotorcraft (vertical lift aircraft) and infrastructure, making it easier and safer to fly. To get to air taxis sooner, we need to start with helicopter safety, implementing systems to enable more people to fly and allowing helicopters to fly in all weather conditions.
First, we need to make flying smaller aircraft safer. The McKinsey report cited earlier shows over 60% of nearly 4,800 respondents said that safety was their top concern, with fully autonomous flight being of particular concern. Gate-to-gate commercial planes are the safest mode of transportation, and air taxis must be held to similar safety standards.
Newer advanced technology can improve safety. Just like collision sensors reduce vehicle accidents, automation can improve flight safety and make it easier for pilots to fly. Automation for basic yet critical operations can reduce pilot error and provide the freedom to do things that automation can’t.
2. All-Weather Operations
For air taxis to succeed, they must be able to fly safely in inclement weather and maintain visibility when flying through fog and clouds. According to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association’s (AOPA) latest safety report, weather is a leading contributor to fatal airplane accidents, especially among smaller aircraft. Inclement weather increases pilot error, which causes nearly 80% of aviation accidents. Fog and clouds were a factor in the tragic death of Kobe Bryant and his daughter, one of the most well-known incidents on record.
Rain, fog, snow and other weather often lead to canceled flights. Instrument flight rules (IFR) govern how pilots take off, navigate and land when the weather prevents them from having clear flight visibility. Otherwise, pilots use visual flight rules (VFR), under which the aircraft is expected to operate in clear visual meteorological conditions. Most VTOLs fly under VFR even when they have certified IFR programs. But what if more practical, intuitive and repeatable IFR solutions were available for rotorcraft and the larger VTOL community?
In our air taxi pilot in sunny Los Angeles, we still canceled 25% of flights due to poor weather. Imagine if Lyft rides failed to show up a quarter of the time. People would quickly find an alternate transportation method. For an air taxi service to be viable, it should be closer to 98% dispatch reliability. Customers need a dependable service to build their lifestyles around.
Technology can prevent accidents and groundings due to weather, and new human-machine interfaces are being developed in aviation to address this challenge. Adding sensors and automation into rotorcraft, similar to what’s available in commercial planes, and automated flight assistance can reduce accidents and remove the complexities of flying, making it safe to fly in all types of weather.
3. More Pilot Availability
Air taxi services don’t need to replace pilots; we need more experienced and licensed pilots.
Today, nearly 735,000 airplane pilots have active licenses in the U.S., and there are 500,000 inactive pilots. Of those with licenses, about 161,000 are private pilots. According to a 2010 AOPA study, an estimated 80% of students drop out each year before getting their pilot’s license. McKinsey analysts see the lack of trained pilots as a major hurdle to getting air taxi services off the ground.
And because of their complexity, only 3% of fixed-wing pilots can fly a rotorcraft today. An easy-to-use system across multiple airframes and models could shorten the training cycle and enable pilots to fly different aircraft without having to be trained specifically for each one. With the addition of automation, flying could be simpler and safer, freeing pilots from many complex manual operations and reducing the learning curve.
An FAA simplified vehicle operations (SVO) working group is looking at technology that automates many of the low-level tasks that pilots do so that pilots can focus on high-level decision-making, thereby improving safety. Simply put, advanced flight control systems are expected to make flying more reliable and accessible.
Conclusion
Today’s helicopters don’t require airports to overhaul their infrastructure, add vertiports or make further developments in air traffic management systems to accommodate travelers or keep the skies safe. According to our estimations, in Los Angeles alone, there are 23 underutilized municipal airports that can provide runways, mechanics, hangars, and fuel and more than 533 viable rooftops for helipads on top of city buildings. That number is multiplied in cities across the globe. The infrastructure exists; we just need more trained pilots and automated flight assistance.
There really is no need to wait for better electric batteries, new airframes or fully autonomous flight: We have the infrastructure today to make flight easier and safer for personal transportation or an air taxi service. We can get there sooner with existing aircraft, more pilots, automated features and commercial-level safety available to general aviation aircraft. With these technologies and resources, we can make flying safer and more accessible.
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