A Fare to Fly About

Until quite recently, flying was considered as a mode of transport for the elite. In recent years, after the increase in demand, even though airfares have gone down, it is still pretty expensive. With all the deal about expensive air travel, the sharing taxi giant Uber aims to introduce flying cars as a part of their fleet of taxis.

The only difference is that, they aim to make it cheaper than your regular car travel. The world is on the brink of a flying automobile revolution, and to make things better, Uber has already developed all the required technologies and sanctions. Dubai has been selected as their test city, and test runs are expected to start as early as the next 3 years.

The company’s new “on demand air transportation” system will basically be flying cars. These vertical take-off and landing aircrafts (VTOLs) will pick up the customer and drop them off at their required destination just as a regular Uber. Uber’s Product Director for its Elevate flying taxi program Nikhil Goel says, “Until we get to the point where flying to work is cheaper than owning a car, it doesn’t become a true replacement solution for everybody. My goal is ultimately to make sure that it is cheaper than car ownership.” He added that Uber is aiming for the service to be common in the next ten years and that Elevate will work in a way similar to Uber Pool.

“In order to make the commute affordable, the vehicle is going to have to be full, so you’ll almost always have four passengers.” added Goel.

As per the decided mechanisms, the passengers would meet at a pod and the VTOL would then fly to the pod which is nearest to their destination. According to the reports, the company aims at rolling out around 1200 VTOLs by the next 10 years.

Uber, however is not the only company climbing the same ladder.  Flying giant Airbus aims at starting flying taxi services to whereas automobile manufacturers Toyota and Honda too have developed prototype flying vehicles.