Opinion: Your Air Uber driver will arrive in 6 years… maybe

“We want the Gold Coast to be at the cutting edge of technology, and my discussions about transport opportunities with Skyports on my previous trips to Singapore and Dubai are now coming into fruition,” the Gold Coast mayor effused in a press release. “Having seen the Skyports operations in Dubai firsthand, I can tell you that air taxis are the future of transport. It’s no longer science fiction, it is reality, and I want the Gold Coast to be at the forefront of this transport revolution.

“I would like to see the Skyports landing pads built as soon as possible so we can have everything ready for the 2032 Brisbane Olympic and Paralympic Games. Partnering with global leaders like Skyports will ensure that our Olympic legacy isn’t just stadiums and sporting fields, but also transport improvements for the future.”

We’ve been seeing rumblings about AAM for a few years now, with Archerfield Airport and Airservices in 2024 shaking hands with Boeing subsidiary Wisk to nut out how automated air taxis might be integrated into Australia’s airspace before the Brisbane Games, while CASA that same year tipped the first commercial AAM operations, including passenger transport in urban areas, to be up and running between 2027 and 2029.

Indeed, Rotortech itself had a lot of buzz for the technology, with a whole AAM Summit program devoted to exploring the sector, including panels on airspace integration, regulatory roadmaps, charging infrastructure, and (of course) potential AI integration. To have an entire summit dedicated to AAM would seem to indicate the sector is taking it seriously – but to badly mix some mangled metaphors, before we jump aboard the hype train, are we at risk of putting the electric cart before the flying horse?

It’s worth noting that we’ve had lofty predictions, if you’ll pardon the pun, about air taxis before – and from CASA, no less, whose spokesman told the ABC in 2018 that Australia could have air taxis up and running through companies like Uber within the next five years (so, 2023, for those keeping score). This was met with scepticism at the time by Jason Middleton of the UNSW School of Aviation, who noted a slew of obstacles to the idea, including landing pad locations, safety concerns, weather issues, and regulatory questions.

“There’s a big difference between a helicopter-style charter service and a fully operational fleet of flying taxis – whether they’re automated or piloted by humans. Five years is very optimistic,” he (correctly, as it transpired) noted in The Conversation. “It’s likely that any system will be strongly limited in number. Flying taxis will therefore likely be very expensive to operate to cover developmental and operational costs. In my view, the combination of safety, operational, commercial and regulatory constraints renders the practicality of air taxis highly improbable for the next few decades.”

And yet – it also seems hard to deny that the sector has taken great strides in the past few years. Witness Australian companies like AMSL Aero, whose Vertiia eVTOL has been conducting untethered flights and picking up customers in the passenger transport and aeromedical industries, or look overseas to New York City, where Skyports is converting helipads to vertiports and Joby Aviation is testing air taxis between JFK Airport and downtown Manhattan.

Granted, there are still hurdles to come in areas like battery life and the integration of autonomous systems into eVTOLs – we haven’t exactly figured out how to make “full self-driving” work as well as it needs to on the ground rather than the air, and the FAA over in the States is still leery of letting the things fly themselves – but as Oklahoma Aerospace Institute for Research and Education’s Jamey Jacob noted in The Conversation in 2024, those gaps are closing.

“The successful integration of electric air taxis into urban and rural environments hinges on their ability to offer safe, reliable and cost-effective transportation,” he said. “As these vehicles overcome the industry’s many hurdles, and regulations evolve to support their operation in the years ahead, I believe we could witness a profound transformation in air mobility. The skies offer a new layer of connectivity, reshaping cities and how we navigate them.”

So, Giuseppe, watch this space – and maybe think about getting yourself a pilot’s licence before the Olympics, just in case you want to get in on the ground floor of whatever new app we’ll have to install by then.