Urban air mobility news

The urban air mobility stories keep stacking up in 2019. A few highlights and a few thoughts.

Commercial developments

There have been tons of urban air mobility announcements, partnerships, and demos in 2019. EHang, the Chinese drone maker, seems to be farthest along in eVTOL development, though many companies are working with regulators to bring about eVTOL services in the next five years. 

In April, representatives said EHang will start selling its two-passenger, autonomous eVTOL next year for about $350,000 to commercial operators. Ehang’s co-founder says its 2-passenger autonomous eVTOL is already completing routine flights in China for tourists between a hotel and local attractions.

Uber recently announced they’ll offer shared-ride helicopter service between Manhattan and JFK airport, starting in July. This week, Voom (Airbus) announced they will expand their helicopter ridesharing service to San Francisco. They’ve been operating in Sao Paulo and Mexico City already.

These helicopter rides are targeting popular urban routes (airport-to-airport, CBD-to-airport, etc.) for customers who are willing to pay to shorten a one-hour car ride to a ten-minute helicopter ride. Fees are typically $150 to $250 one-way. Both companies want to get a sense of demand, price, and frequency for eVTOL services.

[BS – July 9 update: Last week Xin Gou, a pilot, reported on Twitter that EHang had sold 18 of its 2-passenger eVTOL aircraft, 10 in China, 8 overseas. To my knowledge, these are the first sales of passenger eVTOL aircraft in the world.]

What’s the Plan?

This makes the development of airspace markets and unmanned traffic management (UTM) systems all the more urgent. What regulators must guard against is first-movers squatting on high-revenue aerial routes.

Airspace is nominally a common-pool resource, rationed via regulation and custom. That worked tolerably well for the Wright brother era and the jet age. Still, there are massive distortions and competitive problems because an oligopoly of first movers attained popular routes and airport terminals. The common-pool resource model for airspace also leaves regulators with few tools to ration access sensibly.

From my airspace policy paper:

For example, in 1968, nearly one-third of peak-time New York City air traffic—the busiest region in the United States—was general aviation (that is, small, personal) aircraft. To combat severe congestion, local authorities raised minimum landing fees by a mere $20 (1968 dollars) on sub 25-seat aircraft. General aviation traffic at peak times immediately fell by more than 30 percent, suggesting that a massive amount of pre-July 1968 air traffic in the region was low value. The share of aircraft delayed by 30 or more minutes fell from 17 percent to about 8 percent. Similarly, Logan Airport raised fees on small aircraft in the 1980s in order to lessen congestion. The scheme worked, and general aviation traffic fell by about one-third, though the fee hike was later overturned.

There’s a revolution in aviation policy occurring. The arrival of drones, eVTOL, and urban air mobility requires a totally different framework. It seems inevitable that a layer-cake or corridor approach to airspace management will develop, even though the FAA currently resists that. As with American frontier or radio spectrum: a demand shock to Ostromian common pool resource leads to enclosure and property rights.

Already, first movers and the government are collaborating on UTM and airspace policy. But regulators must resist letting collaboration today degrade into oligopoly tomorrow. This early collaboration on technology and norms is necessary but the regulators will be under immense pressure, inside and outside the agency, to have a single UTM provider, or a few hand-picked vendors. 

A single UTM system or a tightly-integrated system with a few private system operators would reproduce many of the problems with today’s air traffic management. It is very hard to update information-rich systems, especially air traffic control systems, the delayed, over-budget NextGen modernization shows. Today there are 16,000 FAA workers working on the NextGen project, which has been ongoing since 1983. UTM will be an even more information-rich system. An system-wide upgrade to UTM would make NextGen modernization look simple by comparison.

Further, once the urban air mobility market develops, the first movers (UTM and eVTOL operators) will resist newcomers and new UTM technologies in the future. Exclusive aerial corridors, as opposed to shared corridors planned for today by regulators, would allow competitive UTM systems with only basic interoperability requirements.

Quick Hits

NETT Council: In March, USDOT Secretary Chao announced the formation of the Non-Traditional and Emerging Transportation Technology Council. It sounds great, and one of the likely topics the Council will take up is urban air mobility.

ASI Aviation Report, “Taking Off”: The Adam Smith Institute (UK) this week published an excellent report from Matthew Lesh about improving competition and service in aviation. The UK often leads the world in deregulation and market-based management of government property (like AIP in spectrum policy), and ASI has been influential in aviation policy in particular. Report highlights:

1. Analysis of terminal competition policies for Heathrow (which is in the midst of a major expansion project)
2. Proposes additional slot auctions for takeoff and landing slots at UK airports
3. Endorses aerial corridor auctions for air taxis and eVTOL

Government study of airspace auctions: My proposal that the FAA auction aerial corridors for eVTOL caught the attention of the FAA’s Drone Advisory Committee and was included in a working group’s 2018 report about ways to finance drone and eVTOL regulation. Section 360 of the FAA Reauthorization Act, passed a few months after the working group report came out, then instructed the GAO to study ways of financing drone and eVTOL regulation. The law specifies that the GAO must study the six proposals in that working group report, including the auction of aerial corridors.

Lincoln Network Conference: I recently had the privilege of speaking at the Lincoln Network’s Reboot American Innovation conference. Jamie Boone (CTA) and I gave a fireside chat about the fast-moving urban air mobility sector. Matt Parlmer, founder of Ohlogen, was a great moderator. Video here.

eVTOL in North Carolina: The North Carolina state appropriations bill, which is nearing passage, allocates some funds to the Lt. Governor’s office to study eVTOLs, consult with experts, and convene an eVTOL summit in the next year. The Lt. Governor might also form a state advisory committee on eVTOL, a good, forward-looking policy for states given the rapid pace of progress in urban air mobility. To my knowledge, North Carolina is the first state to dedicate funding for study of this industry.

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