Dan Lert, Paris’ deputy mayor in charge of the green transition, called VoloCity an “absurd gadget” that would “only benefit a few ultra-rich people.” His colleague David Belliard, deputy mayor in charge of mobility, echoed this sentiment. “It’s useless, it’s anti-environmental, it’s very expensive,” he said in July.
However, Volocopter defended its product as affordable. “We strongly believe that when we go into the hundreds and thousands of these vehicles, we can easily get to an equivalent seat price that’s only slightly higher than street taxis,” Hawke said in February.
Still, other flying taxi executives have acknowledged that getting to that point will take time, and that there will first be a period when these vehicles will cater to the wealthy. “Many of the initial use cases will be first and business class passengers connecting to flights,” Michael Chervenka, chief technology officer of UK-based flying taxi company Vertical Aerospace, said earlier this year.
By the end of July, it became clear that Volocopter’s plans for the Paris Olympics were being curtailed, although the company claimed that its immediate cash problems had been resolved. “This is a technological advance that can be beneficial,” insisted Transport Minister Patrice Vergriete, acknowledging that flying taxis may not be able to pick up passengers in time for the Olympics. Publicly, Volocopter was careful not to attribute the failure to public backlash, instead blaming an American supplier for “no [being] able to deliver what it has promised’, as well as its failure to obtain approval from the EU Aviation Safety Authority for commercial activity.
Lazarski does not consider the failure of flying taxis to be a victory. “It’s more of a relief,” she says. But the battle is not over for her. As vice president of UFCNA, the French union against airplane nuisance, Lazarsky is involved in a legal challenge against plans to operate a Seine River heliport for flying taxis to take off and land from central Paris. This launch pad has already secured permission from the government to operate until December. The race for the Olympics may be over, but the dream of flying taxis over Paris is not dead.
