A strategic partnership between Airbus Helicopters and on-demand rotorcraft provider Fly Blade announced on 28 February in Las Vegas marks a new high in the rapid ascent of the urban air mobility market.
What only a year ago seemed a small niche in the VIP charter sector now represents a potentially transformative market category, driving growth in an otherwise stagnant helicopter industry and propelling the formation of a whole new class of small air transport vehicles: electric-powered, vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft.
According to the terms of the partnership, Airbus Helicopters will invest $10 million in Blade, a three-year-old New York-based start-up. In return, Blade will provide the manufacturer with operating data on the 22 core routes it has established in seven US states.
This represents a completely new service model in aviation. Blade’s customers technically charter a short flight between, say, Manhattan and New York’s JFK International airport, but are usually unaware of the specifics of the transaction. To charter that helicopter, Blade’s passengers open the Fly Blade application on their mobile phones, schedule the ride, and then proceed to one of Blade’s lounges by a heliport. Meanwhile, Blade assigns the pick-up to one of several existing helicopter charter operators in New York, handles all the travel documentation and security, and facilitates the transaction. This makes it more akin to Uber than previous charter services.
Different versions of the same model are proliferating around the world, including the Airbus Helicopters-sponsored Voom in São Paulo, Brazil, and the Dallas-based Airbus Rides service. In each case, the on-demand model exists to cater for passengers willing to pay a premium to avoid gridlocked roads.
The same model has inspired a billion-dollar surge of investment to develop new eVTOL vehicles, says Mike Hirschberg, executive director of the American Helicopter Society. Although public and regulatory acceptance of the market remain unproven, start-ups and major aircraft OEMs, including Bell, Boeing and Airbus – both its helicopter division and the broader group – are investing large sums in concepts designed to replace helicopters for urban air mobility missions with potentially cheaper and quieter eVTOL aircraft.
Airbus Helicopters' investment in Blade illustrates the company’s two-pronged approach to supporting the urban air mobility market. It is helping to seed demand for helicopter services today, with the H125 and H130 light-singles as preferred platforms.
The company's interest in the segment was trailed ahead of the Blade deal's announcement by outgoing Airbus Helicopters chief executive Guillaume Faury, who said that the company wants to "play a leading role in on-demand helicopter booking platforms".
Meanwhile, the Airbus group has funded at least three different projects to develop new eVTOL aircraft, including the Vahana and CityAirbus flying taxis. Those investments are moving forward even as Airbus Helicopters gathers data on the urban air mobility market through the operations of Voom, Airbus Rides, and now Blade.
“To find the right eVTOL, we need to understand what the demographics, what the requirements are going to be. Is it going to be flying four people for 10 minutes, or two people for 30 minutes?” says Chris Emerson, president of Airbus Helicopters Inc, the manufacturer's US arm. “We’re kind of at a crawling phase of understanding what this market is going to look like in the future.”
Illustrating the wide spectrum of opinions on the subject, Emerson’s new strategic partner, Blade chief executive Rob Wiesenthal, expresses his own view that helicopters will remain the platform of choice in the urban air mobility market for a long time to come.
Wiesenthal points to the slow, 15-year emergence of Tesla in the electric car market, whose annual output is still dwarfed by its automotive rivals.
“Right now, it’s not a light switch where all of a sudden the skies are dark with this kind of equipment,” Wiesenthal says. “But take what’s going on right now. Tesla has been around for 15 years and every 30 minutes you see one Tesla – and it’s $100,000. So it’s not going to be this immediate jump [to eVTOL].”
Some major aviation suppliers with electric- and gas-powered engine experience do remain dubious about the pace of eVTOL development. In a discussion with reporters at the Heli-Expo convention, a top executive for Safran Helicopter Engines took a cautious view, saying it will be two decades before battery technology is available for an eVTOL aircraft to carry a 100kg (220lb) payload beyond 30min.
“Taking off and coming back to the ground a few minutes later – you will see a lot of concepts like this in the coming weeks,” the Safran executive says. “But really the question is range and payload.”
Source: FlightGlobal.com
