Flying cabs won’t get airborne in Paris this year

The long-awaited project around electric flying cabs in Paris will not happen this year. The French Council of State annulled the ministerial decree authorizing the creation of an aircraft take-off and landing platform of 740 m² on the Seine in Paris.

French airport operator Aéroports de Paris (ADP), along with Volocopter, the German manufacturer of flying cabs, the project’s inspiration, remains hopeful that plans can be put into practice as soon as possible.

No Vertiport on the Seine

Volocopter and ADP originally planned to offer a flying cab service with passengers for the first time during the Olympics. The decision initially rested with the French civil aviation authority DGAC and EASA, the European Aviation Safety Agency.

Finally, shortly before the end of the Olympics, the promotors were granted permission to fly over Paris, but then the French Council of State threw a spanner in the works. For the service of flying cabs, Volocopter and ADP had planned five landing sites, so-called ‘Vertiports’, on three connecting and two tourist routes, one of which was on a pontoon in the Seine. But the city of Paris and several organizations had filed suit against it.

The French Council of State initially rejected two petitions against a temporary take-off and landing site for flying cabs in the city center. But Volocopter and ADP finally backed down as the Council of State annulled the ministerial decree authorizing the creation of an aircraft take-off and landing platform of 740 m² on the Seine in Paris. They put forward, in particular, the absence of prior consultation by the government of the Air Pollution Control Authority (Acnusa), although this was provided for by law.

Procedural point

ADP, which operates the Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle and Orly airports and is 50,6% owned by the state, is now going to dismantle the Vertiport on a barge that was moored at a quay in the Austerlitz district but is all but pulling the plug on the project.

Indeed, according to ADP, the Council of State’s decision is not based on the experiment’s purpose but on a procedural point because the legislative adviser equates the Volocopter with helicopters, while the French government considers this is not the case. The company, therefore, states that it will remain committed to “all new forms of carbon-free air mobility.”

Revolutionize air travel

Volocopter wants to revolutionize air travel. The Volocity model, an aircraft with a large ring of 18 rotors on the roof, will seat one other person in addition to the pilot. The flying cabs will fly at an altitude of less than 500 meters and thus cannot be heard from the street in an urban environment.

The aim is to address traffic congestion in cities and connect other forms of urban transportation. In addition to Paris, other cities on the list where Volocopter plans to launch include Rome and Osaka.

However, the French Ministry of Transport and ADP prefer to see the usefulness of the Volocopters primarily in the context of medical evacuations or organ transport rather than talking about ‘flying cabs’. The Paris town hall denounced the project as an ecological aberration for the ultra-rich with significant noise pollution.

As recently as late October, the United States created a regulatory basis for the commercial operation of such aircraft, and seat-ups competing with Volocopter have since raised hundreds of millions of dollars in funding.