Sky Uber? Air taxis could be here soon

Taking an air taxi to the airport may become as simple as ordering a ride share today. In our first episode in our summer series Tech Camp, we explore how a futuristic vehicle that transforms from helicopter to propeller plane is already taking flight in New York and San Francisco. This new kind of commuting might be here sooner than you think: A law just went into effect to build infrastructure for them in places like airports. Short Wave host Regina Barber speaks with the startup Joby and Georgia Tech aerospace experts about the safety, the science and what an actual ride would look like from app to air. Plus, we get into the history of the air taxis of the past and why those airlines no longer exist. Interested in more tech episodes? Email us your question at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave http://plus.npr.org/shortwave. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:16Regina Barber?

  You're listening to Short Wave from NPR.

• 0:21Regina Barber?

  Welcome back, Short Wavers. It's your science besties, Emily Kwong. And Regina Barber. And this summer, we have a brand new series for you. Tech Camp. That's right. Every Monday, check this feed for a new episode about the technological frontier, tracking down the breakthroughs, experiments, and innovations that could change everything. And we're starting with a vehicle that's been promised to us for decades. This is where I thought technology was headed since the days of the Jetsons.

• 0:49Regina Barber?

  Flying cars.

• 0:54Regina Barber?

  But this was a fantasy of the 60s. Like, flying cars are not real. Em, I'm gonna blow your mind. As long ago as 1953, you could order a flying taxi in New York City.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  New York Airways introduces a new dimension of passenger comfort and convenience in helicopter travel.

• 1:11Regina Barber?

  OK, so these weren't technically flying cars. They were helicopters. But these air taxis in New York would take passengers to the airport from maybe the roof of an office building in Manhattan. And this would cost about $7 in the mid 60s, which is a little over $70 today.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  Taxis are comfortable, too, but not as dependable as a scheduled airline that flies over obstacles and delivers passengers by helicopter from Newark Airport to Idlewild in 12 minutes' flying time.

• 1:46Regina Barber?

  And Em, we might be on the cusp of air taxis making a comeback. In Florida, a law just went into effect to build infrastructures for them in places like airports. Get out of here. Are you serious? What do you mean? Like, you're-

• 2:02Speaker 00

  Saying that I could order an air taxi to my house to take me to a major airport.

• 2:07Regina Barber?

  So that's the idea. I met Lee Witcher, an engineer at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, and I met him outside of an airplane hangar where they're trying to make flying taxis a reality.

• 2:18Speaker 03

  The legend is that this hangar used to belong to Ludacris.

• 2:21Regina Barber?

  And the prototype he showed me is for a pilotless flying taxi.

• 2:25Speaker 00

  A flying taxi that flies on its own?

• 2:27Regina Barber?

  Yes. This is a project called Raven, and it's a joint project with Georgia Tech and NASA.

• 2:32Speaker 03

  So over at our hangar in Fulton County Airport, we have a test rig for the Raven project. It will be a roughly 1,300-pound electric vertical takeoff aircraft.

• 2:45Regina Barber?

  If you're going to be replacing some cars and maybe people going through the subway, you need to operate in densely populated areas where you just can't build giant runways. And that means you need to take off vertically. But helicopters are loud and expensive, and they require a lot of power to keep them moving around. So that's why we needed something new. And now a few companies say they're close to finally figuring out the science to overcome most of those barriers.

• 3:13Speaker 00

  Today on Tech Camp: Flying Taxis. How a new generation of air taxis could revolutionize transportation.

• 3:20Regina Barber?

  And how soon you could be riding in one.

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  You're listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

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• 4:58Emily Kwong?

  Okay Gina, so there were air taxis in New York in the 1950s and 60s.

• 5:03Regina Barber?

  And 70s, yep.

• 5:04Emily Kwong?

  Wild, but they were basically helicopters.

• 5:07Regina Barber?

  Uh huh.

• 5:07Emily Kwong?

  Helicopters, of course, are still used for some personal travel today, especially among the wealthy.

• 5:12Regina Barber?

  Right, but even back then, the thinking was that air taxis would just be like another form of commercial air travel. In 1951, the Civil Aeronautics Board, a government agency, proposed a new class of air carrier: air taxis that linked airline points with communities lacking airline service.

• 5:29Emily Kwong?

  Hmm.

• 5:30Regina Barber?

  I mean, the customers in the 1960s and 70s for these air taxis were mostly rich people and businessmen, and during that time, business was good. Like, customers took helicopters, usually short trips to the airport, and it costs about the same that an Uber ride to the airport costs now.

• 5:46Emily Kwong?

  Hmm. So what happened to all these air taxi companies?

• 5:50Regina Barber?

  They don't exist anymore, and this is because of a complex blend of financial and regulatory reasons, including a recession in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

• 5:59Emily Kwong?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:59Regina Barber?

  Plus, in the 1960s, LA Airways suffered some crashes. And an aerospace engineer I talked to, Marilyn Smith, says that mistrust hit a peak in 1977. That is when tragedy struck a New York Airways flight.

• 6:14Speaker 05

  There was an accident on top of the Pan Am building. And parts of the helicopter fell to the street and some people were injured and killed. And so that was the end of that.

• 6:26Regina Barber?

  So Marilyn is the director of the Vertical Lift Research Center of Excellence at Georgia Tech. And she says that the vehicles Georgia Tech students are working on are different from that old era of air taxis.

• 6:37Emily Kwong?

  No more helicopters.

• 6:38Regina Barber?

  No more helicopters.

• 6:39Emily Kwong?

  Okay, what are they making?

• 6:40Regina Barber?

  They're technically called vertical flight vehicles and many companies brand them as air taxis.

• 6:45Emily Kwong?

  Okay, okay.

• 6:45Regina Barber?

  They're a combination of helicopter and airplane. And they're really ushered in by new science with a focus on safety and sustainability. For one, no more fuel. Most of the air taxis in development are electric. But building an aircraft that's light enough to take off, but sturdy enough to be safe and house an electric battery and luggage, it's difficult. So some private companies are leading the way in this kind of research to build this new class of vehicles.

• 7:12Emily Kwong?

  Yeah, that makes sense. It's like very startup-y.

• 7:14Regina Barber?

  Yes.

• 7:15Emily Kwong?

  What's happening right now. So what kinds of startups are out there?

• 7:17Regina Barber?

  Yeah, so there's a few. In the US, there's Beta, a company based in Vermont, and two companies based in California, Archer and Joby. And Joby has partnered with Uber to try to get air taxis running for the public. They've already test flown with pilots in New York and San Francisco. And get this, M. Joby and Uber, they claim that these air taxi flights will start in Dubai this year, 2026.

• 7:41Emily Kwong?

  Wild.

• 7:42Regina Barber?

  I just want to show you a short video of Joby's test flight, just so you can see what these things look like.

• 7:47Emily Kwong?

  It looks like a drone, but massive.

• 7:51Regina Barber?

  Yeah.

• 7:51Emily Kwong?

  With multiple propellers and it fits a lot of people. It looks a little like the Star Trek Enterprise.

• 7:56Regina Barber?

  I mean, I wish. I think it looks just like a Cessna with a lot of propellers. But I had the same thought. It is very drone-like.

• 8:03Emily Kwong?

  Yeah.

• 8:04Regina Barber?

  So I asked the president of operations at Joby, Bonnie Simmy, if these aircrafts are just giant drones.

• 8:10Speaker 06

  No, not at all. It's no more a drone than a helicopter is a drone, or a small airplane is a drone. I mean, you see aircraft of our size at every municipal airport out there. And nobody confuses those with drones.

• 8:25Emily Kwong?

  Heard, not a drone. Yeah. Apologies from this. Mere citizen, non aviation expert over here. So what makes these Joby vertical takeoff aircraft so different?

• 8:36Regina Barber?

  Right, so it kind of looks like a drone because it has these propellers that are like pointing up when the aircraft takes off and lands. But these propellers, they rotate 90 degrees while the aircraft is in flight.

• 8:49Emily Kwong?

  Like the propellers that are on top then move forward?

• 8:53Regina Barber?

  Yeah, like a small propeller plane.

• 8:55Emily Kwong?

  So it's like a transformer?

• 8:56Regina Barber?

  It is, yeah. So basically it transforms from a helicopter to a propeller plane, right? And this is important because then it can take advantage of physics.

• 9:07Speaker 06

  There's so much more power required to keep you in the air for lift. But if you can transition forward onto a wing, now the wing is producing lift that keeps you in the air and you'd use less batteries.

• 9:18Regina Barber?

  Morphing into a plane, using the wings for lift saves a ton of energy it would need if the vehicle like stayed in this helicopter mode the whole time.

• 9:26Emily Kwong?

  Yeah.

• 9:27Regina Barber?

  Plus, the aircraft is quieter in this mode because propellers are doing less work. The noise pollution is a concern, right? So companies are working to minimize that.

• 9:37Emily Kwong?

  Very creative science for sure, innovative. I'm seeing six propellers. I know they rotate forward. Is six propellers, though, safe? Is it too many?

• 9:50Regina Barber?

  It's all about redundancy, Em. So if one fails, the others will compensate. Here's Bonnie again from Joby.

• 9:56Speaker 06

  If an entire propulsion unit fails, then an opposing one will power down. The other four will power up. And the pilot actually doesn't even notice that they lost one of the propulsion units other than, you know, they'll be, they'll see a flashing light, of course, but the passengers won't feel it.

• 10:11Emily Kwong?

  Redundancies are always good, especially with air travel. I'm wondering, though, what does the FAA have to say about all of this? The Federal Aviation Administration? Because they're ultimately in charge of regulating what is allowed in American airspace.

• 10:24Regina Barber?

  Yeah, that's the big question for the whole industry. And to do any travel in airspace in the US, you need certification with the FAA, which Joby and other startups are seeking right now.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  So the regulatory question has been a challenge. The FAA were kind of... Ambushed, I think, with this industry. They've really caught up and they're very proactive and very open-minded.

• 10:45Regina Barber?

  That's Lee Witcher again from Georgia Tech. We heard from him earlier. So, Em, in January 2026, the FAA announced a new office to oversee the integration of air taxis and other vehicles like drones into the airspace.

• 10:58Speaker 03

  Not just drones, but flying taxis into the airspace with all of the current aviation that goes on and also how to integrate vertiports.

• 11:09Regina Barber?

  So, a vertiport, that word that he just said,

• 11:11Emily Kwong?

  Yeah.

• 11:11Regina Barber?

  are basically just these like pads that these air taxis are going to land and take off from.

• 11:18Emily Kwong?

  Like in the Avengers, like in Stark Tower.

• 11:21Regina Barber?

  Yeah, in the city, right? This has already happened in LA. So, some existing skyscrapers have helipads, right?

• 11:27Emily Kwong?

  Uh huh.

• 11:27Regina Barber?

  So, if those can be modified.

• 11:29Emily Kwong?

  For air taxis.

• 11:30Regina Barber?

  For air taxis, then it's like pretty cool, right? It's easy to have this infrastructure, easier. And in other places, they're building new, shorter buildings with big, wide, flat roofs for air taxis to land on. Joby is currently working with partners all around the world to either modify these other helipads that exist or build these small buildings.

• 11:50Emily Kwong?

  This whole enterprise is much more expansive than I imagined.

• 11:53Regina Barber?

  Yeah.

• 11:54Emily Kwong?

  Can you describe what a commercial ride would look like, Gina? This is Tech Camp. Take us to the future. You and I are going to order a Sky Uber. How does it work?

• 12:03Regina Barber?

  Right, so let's say you're in East LA at my grandma's house.

• 12:06Emily Kwong?

  Or my uncle's house in Pasadena.

• 12:08Regina Barber?

  Right, and you need to get to LAX.

• 12:09Emily Kwong?

  Yeah.

• 12:09Speaker 06

  So, you open up your Uber app and, you know, you've got Uber X and Uber XL and Uber Pet. And now, there'll be Uber Air.

• 12:18Emily Kwong?

  Uber Air.

• 12:19Regina Barber?

  Yeah, so the app will tell you, hey, there's a vertiport that's only 15 minutes away if you want to take an air taxi. So, you select that and while the car is on its way to get you, it tells the system, get the aircraft ready.

• 12:33Speaker 06

  So the Uber then brings you to the to the vertiport. You walk in through the door. We already know who you are because you're already part of the system. And then you walk right onto the aircraft. So the whole thing seamless. You don't have to think about it.

• 12:45Regina Barber?

  There are no TSA lines here, but it's a rideshare.

• 12:48Emily Kwong?

  I have so many questions about the safety of this. But but again, in this like futurist scenario, the pilot just takes you where you need to go.

• 12:55Regina Barber?

  Yeah. And then eventually they'll be self-driving.

• 12:58Emily Kwong?

  No pilot?

• 13:00Regina Barber?

  No pilots. So the Georgia Tech project I mentioned earlier, that's a project to develop autonomous aircraft. Although those are going to face a lot more hurdles in the regulation process. The people I spoke to told me that that's at least a few years off.

• 13:15Emily Kwong?

  Yeah, I should hope so. Human beings are very precious cargo. I am thinking about how there is a lot of congestion already in US airspace with so many planes up in the air. There have been, there's been an increase in midair collisions over some airports. Do we really need air taxis?

• 13:33Regina Barber?

  Yeah, these are all good questions. Airspace, infrastructure. What's interesting is I brought up this issue of congestion and the question of whether it would be more worth it to invest this type of money into public transit or or building more, you know, railways.

• 13:51Emily Kwong?

  Right, high-speed trains, subway lines, metro centers, et cetera.

• 13:55Regina Barber?

  Yeah, so the experts I talked to for the story, they view this, you know, the air taxis as a complement to existing public transit. And this can be done in large part by modifying and scaling existing helipads rather than investing in major infrastructure projects. This would be in places where they think the initial audience for these air taxis are people who are taking Ubers and other rideshares instead of public transit. To this end, the FAA sent me guidance. They've worked up for how to modify and scale existing helipads. I think what remains to be seen is just the demand this will get from regular folks, from people like you and me.

• 14:32Emily Kwong?

  Yeah.

• 14:32Regina Barber?

  So, Em, I totally hear you. And like, most people don't even know these companies exist.

• 14:38Emily Kwong?

  I didn't know this was a thing until you brought it up.

• 14:40Regina Barber?

  Right, right. But the facts are, they're building the infrastructure now. And that's maybe the most important point, is that air taxis are coming.

• 14:49Emily Kwong?

  Gina Barber, thank you for awakening us to the fact that we are already living in the era of the Jetsons.

• 14:54Regina Barber?

  We are.

• 14:54Emily Kwong?

  And just maybe need to open our eyes to it.

• 14:57Regina Barber?

  Would you order an Uber Air with me?

• 14:58Emily Kwong?

  Absolutely not. I would wave hi to you from the ground.

• 15:01Regina Barber?

  All right.

• 15:02Emily Kwong?

  For more science stories just like these, follow Short Wave on the NPR app or wherever else you are listening from. Also, if you know a friend who is obsessed with the idea of flying cars and maybe wants to take a ride with Gina while I wave to you both from the ground, please share this episode with them. Make their day.

• 15:21Emily Kwong?

  This episode was produced by Hannah Chin and Rachel Carlson. It was edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts.

• 15:29Regina Barber?

  Jimmy Keely was the audio engineer.

• 15:31Emily Kwong?

  I'm Regina Barber.

• 15:32Regina Barber?

  I'm Emily Kwong. Thank you for listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

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