Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

I love innovation and stuff. Radical ideas.<p>But the aviation market is one of the most heavily regulated - bureaucracy beyond comprehension.<p>Did you ever wonder why Piper or Cessna airplanes look EXACTLY what they did 50 years ago? And why the engines used in these planes (e.g., Lycoming) are referred to as “Lycosaurus”!?<p>If you go for a sightseeing flight with a local aeroclub - you will find the pilot spending 30min pre-checking the aircraft, checking the weather, reading NOTAMS etc. Not to mention the potentially pretty intensive communication with ATC et al. required to make sure everybody stays safe.<p>Getting a pilot license is magnitudes more work than getting a drivers license, proficiency has to be continuously demonstrated, maintaining airworthiness of an airplane isn’t exactly cheap either and pretty heavily regulated.<p>And all that should be “automated”, certified and approved?<p>Not saying things can’t be automated - but no shit, the spark plugs in a Cessna are like 50$ each for that “aviation certificate”...<p>Even if there ARE rules and guidelines how to certify autonomous vehicles like that - like how does anybody imagine that a novel aerial vehicle like this actually IS CERTIFIED within a lifetime?<p>Pilots still walk around a multi-million $ fighter jet or aircraft equipped with the most sophisticated avionics because “a bird nest in the engine intake is hard to detect and difficult to resolve mid flight”.<p>Investing in one of the most heavily regulated, difficult to scale and extremely expensive to operate industries is brave... Even more so when this industry is low margin and “kept dying every couple of years”...

This to me is a true moonshot and venture-worthy idea. Some of these concepts may be technically or economically infeasible—it&#x27;s a major risk—but the pay-off for human wellbeing is phenomenal. I wish we celebrated more companies like these, but it seems like most of them are met with (well-earned) skepticism rather than genuine curiosity.<p>The world of atoms is harder than software, but it&#x27;s awaiting disruptions like these.

&gt; With a range of up to 300km (186 miles), we’ll be able to focus on connecting entire regions with high-speed transport, rather than trying to persuade you that we’re quicker than a crosstown journey on an underground train or bike.<p>As an air-taxi skeptic, I have to say I am refreshed to see a startup actually spend more than five minutes figuring out the market fitness problem. Focusing on bypassing geographic barriers seems to be a much better use case.<p>I am still pretty skeptical on the idea overall. Everyone drools over the travel times and not enough on the confounding factors. Getting to and from the taxi. Dealing with regulations. We can&#x27;t even make public transit in dense urban cores work - why would this much harder idea work?<p>I find it amusing that one of their examples of bypassing noise ordinance restrictions is to follow existing infrastructure routes. The irony seems lost on them.

This isn&#x27;t going to be certified and allowed for part 135 operations inside at least a decade. Boeing can&#x27;t keep their jets from crashing due to simple trim control software, what makes anyone think the FAA is going to go along with these flights over densely populated areas?<p>This feels a lot like when everyone was scrambling to start helicopter taxi services which promptly crashed and burned... Helicopters were a mature and well understood technology then, but the realities of operating in urban areas under a variety of weather conditions just doesn&#x27;t allow for these services to be A) safe or B) economical.

&gt; Or maybe you want to escape to Lake Tahoe for a long weekend? That would be less than an hour on a Lilium Jet, at a cost of around $250 at launch and less in the near future.<p>Therein lies the problem with public transportation in the US. What do you do after you get to Tahoe, Santa Cruz, or wherever? Most of these places are devoid of functional public transportation, and rental car companies have long lines and routinely screw people over and overbook.<p>And will the FAA allow you with your tent stakes, hiking poles, bear spray, and camping stove with fuel on the Lilium Jet? (What else are you supposed to do in Tahoe?)

I don’t quite see how you can spend only $10 million in capex and get 1 million passengers per year. With 4 passengers per flight that’s about 700 flights per day or about 1 flight per minute. That’s a lot compared to existing heliports that handle 50 or so flights per day. Even with a 15 minute turnaround time you will need parking space for at least 15 aircraft.

I wish they showed estimated prices for each of the routes.<p>If it&#x27;s $100&#x2F;flight I might use it once per month to get to Santa Cruz or Lake Tahoe.<p>If it&#x27;s $20&#x2F;flight I might consider LIVING in one of those places and commuting to work.<p>Edit: Oops, didn&#x27;t see that they did. Or maybe you want to escape to Lake Tahoe for a long weekend? That would be less than an hour on a Lilium Jet, at a cost of around $250 at launch<p>Ok, so this isn&#x27;t going to cause me to move.

Most people do not have the years to devote to becoming a good pilot, much less get a new category cert, so I find that these sorts of prototypes have a very limited audience.<p>&quot;Or maybe you want to escape to Lake Tahoe for a long weekend? That would be less than an hour on a Lilium Jet&quot; ... ah, mountain flying with batteries, what could possibly go wrong.<p>Also, I find the lack of a vertical stabilizer this plane to be an odd choice. It seems like they have a ballistic chute for backup when the power fails, but it might be hard to deploy that when you cannot do any spin recovery.

Looking at their proposed map and one of the destinations is the Yosemite Valley floor.<p>Not just no... fuck no. I absolutely do not want what is an already awesome place to be fucked up even more by someone installing an airport (vertical or not) in the middle of the valley floor.

If flying in this involves the all-cavity search like for all other passenger flights then forgetaboutit. I&#x27;ll take a train ride 3x as long just to avoid the hassle of the airport experience.

I work in aviation. Maintenance FAA regulation tracking. Aside from all the great points about safety some things to note A lot of people here seem to forget that for the miles and hours in flight versus the costs of AC&#x2F;upkeep are VERY different from that of a car.<p>You spend hours and hours in a car you buy. Most small AC have a TTAF of 300 hours or less. And they are YEARS old. Literally nothing is wrong with a carb engine. The planes get fairly good efficiency compared. People also seem to think that planes are being bought at sold in the volumes of cars. Most AC are fairly older. This is why innovations like avionics are up while airframe and engines are low.<p>I get it that it feels like there&#x27;s less innovation but I would gather to say there&#x27;s more. Especially when you get out of the turboprop market. It&#x27;s essentially the motorcycle industry versus the cars in the road.

This is bad because it doesn’t scale up the way mass transit does. Only a few people will be able to use it, and those will be the people with the most resources and power. As long as the people in charge can avoid the problems that the little people have, they don’t pay much attention to them. What we need is solidarity. We need systems that work for everyone, not one excellent system for the few and half-hearted make-do for the rest.

If you think building apartments in SF is hard, you should try getting a heliport approved! Their plan for SF based routes will be near impossible.<p>It took UCSF 5 years to get their helipad. They had to spend tens of thousands of dollars on noise studies.... <i>for exclusively emergency flights</i>

I love this idea. I don&#x27;t envy the work ahead of them at all though.<p>In my career I&#x27;ve worked in both mechanical and software engineering and IMO the mechanical engineering involved here is daunting. Caveat: when I was in that industry 3D printing was just around the corner and you could print a part per day and the machine cost $80k, so probably creating and testing prototypes is far more pleasant now.<p>This looks like a truly fun project to work on that&#x27;s full of frustration, waiting, scrapped parts, broken CAD models, regulatory bs, good regulations that save lives, tons of changes in direction, mercurial investors, endless naysayers, and all done while considering that chances of success are small. Honestly it looks fun as hell.

To me this marketing just looks like a slightly less expensive helicopter. It&#x27;s great that we can travel to our ski trips or vacations a bit faster but it&#x27;s not going impact the mobility needs of 95% of people. Why isn&#x27;t anyone working on improving commutes through dense cityscapes? It&#x27;s obviously a much harder problem but it&#x27;s also a more important one.

I would have thought any new transport technology would be heavily automated - from a brief look these require 1 pilot per 4 passengers.<p>Not that it would be easy, I&#x27;m just surprised something so ambitious doesn&#x27;t also include automation.<p>At first glance I would have thought automating a small plane would be easier than automating a car - for one thing there are fewer things to crash into.

This sounds like they found an entry way into the market. Having traveled in Switzerland, hopping on this between offices Geneva - Zurich would be a no brainer.<p>If anyone at lilium is reading. Please contact our firm. Would love to contribute to this moonshot and allocate some of ouwr UI&#x2F;UX firm’s resources to contribute and help simplify the software side of things. (See bio)

A kilogram of gasoline has over 5 times the energy density of a kilogram lithium-air battery. Fuel weight will control air travel range for the forseeable future.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Energy_density#Tables_of_energy_content" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Energy_density#Tables_of_energ...</a>

Switzerland is one of few countries where &quot;air taxi&quot; services turned to profit.<p>Hilly terrain makes it hard to make straight roads. Quite a lot of big cities don&#x27;t have direct road connections.<p>In a relatively flat USA, you don&#x27;t have a lot of similar spaces.

I feel these plans are ignoring a big component of why we don&#x27;t have tons of heliports in urban areas. Noise. Even with electric pushing enough air to move is going to make a fair amount.

Flying a single person or two, with VTOL? That&#x27;s an incredibly high expenditure of energy per person-meter traveled. Much higher than regular aviation, which itself requires a lot of energy.<p>Considering the prospects for decreasing availability of fossil fuel, and questions of climate impact, it seems to me that this is not sustainable on a mass scale, at all. I would guess this initiative will either become an alternative for the very-rich to using helicopters, or not get off the ground.<p>(... ok, that pun was a little underhanded, I admit.)

I can&#x27;t remember who said it or on which podcast, but they basically said that VTOL is the real game changer, not autonomous driving. Sure autonomous driving might be able to shave some time off of your commute, but you are still in a car and still driving on roads. VTOL is what really allows you to experience what the ultra wealthy with access to private jets and helicopters have experienced. Getting out of the city to a &#x27;vacation&#x27; spot in no time at all.

The last thing I expected was EDF (Electric Ducted Fan) propulsion on something described as a jet.

They are investing a billion dollar to develop a plane from scratch in order to launch a taxi service.<p>This strikes as quite an odd thing to do and my bet is that either one of the big guys (Airbus, Boeing, etc) will launch a competing aircraft and kill them, or they will be acquired. Even if they continue as an aircraft manufacturer I am doubtful about the mix with being a taxi company.<p>It also seems an awful lot of money to develop one small plane.

There&#x27;s one area where I&#x27;d love a shorter trip: travelling to the international airport.<p>I live in South East London and it can easily take over an hour to get to Heathrow, which really eats into a weekend if travelling for work. I&#x27;d love to be able to go to a more local vertigo, check my luggage and just have to clear international security at the main airport.

There&#x27;s a bunch of these companies getting more traction right now.<p>Joby Aviation, Kitty Hawk Aero, Wisk, Terrafugia, Opener, Lillium, probably more.<p>Its already been mentioned here how regulated this industry is, and they aren&#x27;t going to be able to pull the Uber model of asking for forgiveness instead of permission.<p>Guessing some consolidation is coming up.

Hate to be the naysayer, but last mile is going to be tricky. 10 mins from Palo Alto to SF sounds fantastic. But if it takes you 15 mins to get from home to the flight, and 15 mins from flight to wherever you need to be in SF, then the total of 40 mins doesn&#x27;t sound so great when you factor in the price.

Why Gyrocopter is not more popular today than ever is beyond me. It&#x27;s probably the most efficient and effective way to air travel for short distances.<p>The ultralight Gyrocopter can fly with unleaded 95 Octane and with strong wind of more than 40 knots (see circumnavigation of of Iceland) and its wonderful technology [1],[2].<p>[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=TmwEbjzLtDo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=TmwEbjzLtDo</a><p>[2]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=p8IB-5PbL9U" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=p8IB-5PbL9U</a>

I can’t see this taking off. If people truly wanted to travel between these places faster they’d already be doing it in Helicopters.

The thing that concerns me (and probably any regulatory body as well): a conventional helicopter can make a controlled landing without power. This plane will rely on a ballistic chute? So flying over urban areas at low altitudes, after a power failure it will just fall down wherever the wind takes it?

&gt; If we imagine for a moment that you work in an office in Palo Alto, you could now choose to live in Hayward (5 min flight, $25), downtown San Francisco (10 min flight, $50), or even San Rafael (15 min flight, $70).<p>This is a strange example to include in here – that&#x27;s a pretty expensive (one-way?) commute.

Here&#x27;s hoping they refine their proposed Bay Area network before launch... seems crazy to have a station in San Gregorio (vs. Halfmoon bay) and none in the Oakland&#x2F;Emeryville area nor in the area around SJC airport

SF to Palo Alto by car in 35m is ummm, optimistic. It’s usually more like 2h.

I&#x27;m curious if there will be a market for this--plenty of current production aircraft can work perfectly well as air taxis, but the service has only caught on in niche markets (island-hopping float planes, some helicopter services, arguably a lot of bush flying). Decreasing the cost by an order of magnitude might go some distance to open the market up--I can&#x27;t see this succeeding without a drastic advantage in operating costs over traditional aircraft (I think the jury&#x27;s still out on whether electric propulsion is a significant advantage here, and VTOL requirements are a big disadvantage).<p>The case for VTOL in particular becomes a lot less convincing when you&#x27;re primarily looking at the kind of regional travel Lilium mentions here--why not just electrify an existing FW aircraft and operate out of existing infrastructure (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.harbourair.com&#x2F;harbour-air-and-magnix-announce-successful-flight-of-worlds-first-commercial-electric-airplane&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.harbourair.com&#x2F;harbour-air-and-magnix-announce-s...</a>)? Small airports are pretty ubiquitous, and going through an FBO largely eliminates long waits for security and boarding (not to mention alleviating some of the last-mile transportation issues).<p>I can&#x27;t stress enough that nothing is simple about VTOL--even if this aircraft lacks complex hydraulic, fuel, and oil systems, any failure in the (electromechanical?) control actuation systems will likely prevent transition to&#x2F;from hovering flight. It looks like the control surfaces may be designed to have multiple, independent segments (hopefully with redundant actuators) to mitigate these kinds of failures (aside: it&#x27;s fascinating to see a GA aircraft designed to be dependent on TVC for basic stability and control), but a loss of even one of these segments might not allow a safe power margin for a vertical landing near max gross weight, and it doesn&#x27;t look like the wheels were designed at all with roll-on landings in mind.<p>All that said, I wish the engineers working on this thing the best. The current demonstrator is a great-looking machine, and it&#x27;d be awesome to see this kind of thing succeed.

I&#x27;ve read about &quot;Uber for jets&quot; or &quot;AirBnB for jets&quot; startups for a while, but most of them are out of business.<p>What&#x27;s the hardest thing for them? Regulation? Else?

VTOL seems like a difficult thing to get right, the military still has issues w the osprey although the design here is quite removed from that. wishing them the best.

It&#x27;s all well and good to talk about how great it would be to launch and land right from San Francisco, but they conveniently step around mentioning that it is currently explicitly illegal. The challenge isn&#x27;t to come up with a great idea, but rather to get San Francisco to change its laws.<p>There are helipads all over the city and none of them can be used with the specific exception of flight-for-life helicopters landing in Mission Bay.

Haven&#x27;t humanity learned that celebrating and running after their &#x27;abilities&#x27; is not a wise move?

What would make a &quot;flying car&quot; worthwhile for under 20km flights?

great solution for some with noise pollution increase for everyone.

Small planes and helicopters are so unstable that I wouldn&#x27;t enjoy riding this vehicle at all. High-speed train is so much more comfortable.<p>Most people taking the plane everyday hate it.<p>It&#x27;s a so-so idea.

Can an American please explain how a 3h41 minute car journey to Tahoe turns into an 8h49(!) train journey? Are your trains pulled by horses or something?