The Vertical Flight Society hosted two sessions at the Helicopter Association International (HAI) Heli-Expo 2019 trade show held at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia.
On Monday, March 4, VFS Executive Director Mike Hirschberg, Executive Director of VFS presented on The Future of Vertical Flight. Slides are available and the video recording has been posted.
For many entrants in the race to develop electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, the speculative air taxi market is the prize at the end of the finish line — one that could someday yield orders for thousands of aircraft to ferry millions of passengers around congested cities. However, with numerous regulatory and social barriers standing in the way of that market — on top of the very real technological challenges associated with building and flying eVTOL aircraft — this type of on-demand urban air mobility (UAM) could take many years to come to fruition.
Austin, Texas-based LIFT Aircraft revealed itself on Dec. 11, 2018. The LIFT Hexa is an all-electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) single-passenger wingless multicopter aimed primarily at tourism and short distance travel. It completed its first manned test flight on Nov. 1, 2018.
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the world’s largest assembly of the latest and greatest consumer technology from around the world — from phones and TVs, to drones, cars and, yes, even electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft and a yacht — kicked off in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Jan. 8–11, 2019.
The sell-out 8th Biennial Autonomous VTOL Technical Meeting & 6th Annual Electric VTOL Symposium was a phenomenal success, with some 375 attendees. A series of articles in this issue of Vertiflite highlight the news and announcements from this event.
On Feb. 7, Eric Fanning, the President and CEO of Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) testified in a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing entitled, “The Cost of Doing Nothing: Why Investing in our Nation’s Infrastructure Cannot Wait.” In his remarks, Fanning spoke extensively of the potential of UAM.
What will urban air mobility (UAM) look like in the near future? How will electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft share airspace with helicopters, traditional airplanes, unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and other unknown proposed aircraft such as personal air vehicles and personal flying devices? These are some of the questions that Airbus’s Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) Blueprint tries to answer.
Volocopter GmbH and Fraport AG (the manager of Frankfurt Airport) are developing concepts for ground infrastructure and operations required for air taxi services at airports. This cooperation focuses on smooth passenger handling and efficient integration into existing transport infrastructure. In the future, Voloports could link existing urban transportation junctions with one another and provide connections to and from Frankfurt Airport.
GoFly announced on Feb. 6 that 40 teams were officially participating in Phase II (the building phase) of its GoFly Prize competition. On March 26, GoFly will announce the Phase II winners and award $50,000 USD to up to four winning teams.
In the five years since the Vertical Flight Society hosted its first “Transformative Vertical Flight Concepts Joint Workshop on Enabling New Flight Concepts through Novel Propulsion and Energy Architectures,” electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft have evolved from a wide-eyed futuristic concept into an emerging business within the global aerospace industry.
