Paris: "flying cabs" should be flying over the capital for the 2024 Olympic Games

Published by Graziella de Sortiraparis, Rizhlaine de Sortiraparis, Manon de Sortiraparis · Published on June 17th, 2022 at 03:51 p.m.
A cab flying over the rooftops of Paris? Since 2021, RATP, ADP and Choose Paris Region have confirmed the presence in the near future of these autonomous cabs in the skies over the capital, normally by the 2024 Olympic Games.

Towards a revolution in Parisian public transport ? On January 18, 2021, RATP, Aéroports de Paris (ADP) and Choose Paris Region unveiled the names of the 31 players selected to "develop an urban air mobility sector based on vertical take-off vehicles". These flying cabs should be available to tourists and residents of Ile-de-France by the 2024 Olympic Games.

Several industrial manufacturers and aeronautical players, including Airbus, Safran, the Chinese company Ehang, another Slovenian company called Pipistrel, and the German company Volocopter, are taking part in this autonomous cab project. And it's at Pontoise airport, 35 km north-west of Paris, that all the flights will originate. "We're going to create Europe's first vertiport here", declared ADP Group CEO Augustin de Romanet.

New machines that run on electricity, or even hydrogen: tomorrow's helicopters are bound to be"clean", i.e."decarbonized" from fossil fuels, like the German company Volocopter's Volocity, which bears a striking resemblance to a miniature helicopter. According to BFMTV, it houses a large touch screen, and all you have to do is enter a destination and you'll be whisked off at 80 km/h, at an altitude of 200-300 meters.

What exactly does it involve? Quite simply, a "flying cab" system, a cross between a bus, a helicopter and a drone. "Autonomous flight is no longer science fiction," explains Guillaume Faury, Executive Chairman of Airbus. He continues: "Today,we have the technical building blocks, but we need to harmonize them in order to integrate them into the daily lives of users, without jeopardizing our priority of safety".

In terms of accessibility, RATP and its partners are aiming for the general public, with a marketed offer planned for 2030. The idea would already be to relieve congestion on the roads for tourists coming to Paris fromCharles de Gaulle airport for the 2024 Olympics. These shuttles could accommodate"four to six passengers" at a cost of "twice the price of a VTC" , i.e. around one hundred euros.

Two initial experimental lines would operate between theIssy-les-Moulineaux heliport and Saint-Cyr (Yvelines), and betweenRoissy airport and Paris. But are we ready to climb aboard? A study by Carvea Consulting and Opinea in 2020 showed that 43% of French people questioned said they were ready to climb aboard these machines.

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