Plug and Fly

Forget the Ford Focus and bin Aunt Bridie’s bus pass. It might sound like something from a science fiction movie but the age of the flying car, and airborne delivery truck, is almost here.
In September 1962 George Jetson and his family first whizzed into every living room in the USA courtesy of colour TV, and almost 70 years on the vision of the future that the cartoon’s producers presented is almost a reality, according to industry experts.
When it comes to flying AI might be more than just AOK, it could be the answer to many of our problems.

“Look at the last ten years with unmanned aircraft which is developing at a rapid rate, so much so that a drone was flown on Mars recently,” says Colm O’Donnell, CEO of UspaceAero in Co Meath.
O’Donnell knows about aircraft innovation. He flew Ryanair’s first aeroplane before moving to captain commercial jets and train pilots for British Airways, and now works as a consultant in operating beyond visual line of flight (BVLOS) vehicles like drones.

“When you’re looking at unmanned air mobility and carrying passengers, it’s going to start in the big cities in the world. It’s already being planned in London, Dubai, Paris, and in Singapore…we’re going to see that pretty soon.”

Typically such e-vehicles will initially have a maximum range of 90-100 miles, and due to the technology used be easier to fly than helicopters which are noisy, expensive, very tricky to fly, and have a bad effect on our environment.

Louise Jupp of Terreco Aviation from South Africa, who has lectured widely on the issue and is the author of a bestselling series of books on piloting drones, agrees. During a recent visit to Ireland she told RTE News that flying taxis are no longer the stuff of science fiction.

“In terms of the reality of it, it is happening,” she said, adding that pilotless drones are already proving a huge boost to industries like farming, medicine and surveying by carrying cargo and taking video footage in areas that are difficult to reach by other methods of transport.

“Farmers are saving time, saving money, and reducing the resources they’re using,” she explains.
This technology has been in use in Irish agriculture for quite some time with, for example, a YouTube video from Carlow farming brothers Declan and Paul Brennan herding sheep using a €1,500 Yuneec Q500 4K Typhoon Quadcopter still drawing comments almost 10 years on.

For Amazon the future is already here.

The online retailer is ahead of the game with its MK30 drone, a vehicle able to carry packages with a similar weight to a bag of sugar (about 5 lbs/2.2 kg) several miles, and they plan for the service to be offered to customers in Arizona, USA later this year.

Admittedly there’s a big difference between ordering a last-minute Amazon gift for your pal Phil beyond in Phoenix and dropping Bridie to Bingo without furore above rushhour traffic in Inchicore, but whatever about the debate in D8 in Dubai the Roads & Transport Authority will soon launch the world’s first city-wide electric flying urban taxi service in conjunction with the Apple-owned Joby Aviation. Skyports Infrastructure will run the “vertiports” which allow such e-vehicles to take off, hover and land from a pad the size of a couple of car park spaces, like helicopters.

Joby’s prototype electric vertical take-off and landing – known as eVTOL  for short – aircraft have already flown 30,000 miles. The company has partnered with giant Delta to ensure that Air Apple will ferry their passengers to and from the Big Apple’s JFK airport in piloted taxis after successful trial runs in 2023, but some rivals realise that dispensing with pilots altogether is the real goal.

Enter Boeing-owned Wisk Aero. The California-based company aims to have four-passenger drone air taxis available by 2030, thanks to cutting-edge batteries squeezing as much power as possible between recharges, without even needing AI, and the vehicles will be piloted from terra firma.
“It will be safer, it will also allow us to scale,” explains Gary Gysin, Wisk Aero CEO on YouTube.
“A big target for us is $3.00 per passenger mile.”

Carmakers are also keen to get involved. Hyundai’s Supernal S-A2 is set to debut within four years, and will be able to curise at 15,000 feet, with a range of about 80 km/50 miles at today’s battery technology.
Whatever of NYC and Dubai, will we see this airborne e-evolution extend to Dubin, though? The answer is yes, but it’s likely that our near neighbours in the UK, with their far larger population, will have flights first.

Whitehall has already published Future of Flying, a plan which suggests eVTOL trips could begin in 2026, and pilotless journeys following within four years. Organisations as diverse as the UK police, who already use drones to search for suspects, monitor crime and crowd-control, medical suppliers, and companies charged with inspecting offshore oil rigs have taken part in trials overseen by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to test flying at BVLOS.

Vertical Aerospace, an eVTOL operator based in Bristol, is leading the charge. They hope to get approval from regulators within two years, with commercial flights starting in 2027.
Initially these will be aimed at wealthy travellers moving between UK airports, but their Chief Commercial Officer Michael Cervenka, former head of new technology at Rolls Royce, agrees with Wisk Aero that their popularity will eventually lead to hiring these vehicles being no dearer than booking a taxi.

“A lot of the initial use cases will be first and business class passengers connecting with flights. But actually that’s how you enable the market to grow,” he declares.
Much work has already been done in this area near Shannon Airport, where A-techSYN manufactures drones small enough to fit into a Transit van, and works with the Irish Navy and other parties to develop the technology to a point where these innovative vehicles could be used to fly human organs to hospitals for transplantation at a few minutes’ notice, and for little cost.

Shannon is also home to the Future Mobility Campus (FMCI) where engineers are liaising with Ireland’s Department of Transport to develop landing pads for the high-tech machinery.

“The partnership is working towards launching an operational vertiport at Shannon’s FMCI campus thereby encouraging participation and investment in Ireland’s Innovative Air Mobility (IAM) industry,” a department spokesperson told RTE News.

“The long-term goal is the establishment of Ireland’s first air taxi service. The Department is supportive of the work being carried out at the FMCI campus.”

Ian Kiely, CEO of Drone Space Ltd, has conducted a study in cooperation with the European Space Agency (ESA) into an air corridor linking Dún Laoghaire and Howth in Dublin (about 25 km/15 miles by car) and he believes the technology will soon be used to ferry passengers, as well as products.

“So we are now working on solutions that would geofence using a satellite invisible barrier to keep the drone in the A to B zone. Then you’d be able to do A to B, A to C, D to X, so it is about when you want to start connecting them on a larger scale.”

The benefit? The time saved for commuters, the low cost, and of course the lack of impact on our environment.
“In real terms you could connect Dún Laoghaire to Howth and it would only take six minutes to cross and you could remove a significant amount of traffic from the road,”  Kiely concludes.