Yet there are staggering hurdles, ranging from cost to safety, noise, public acceptance, regulations, space for vertiports, and questions about who would pay for and who would control the infrastructure for such transportation.
In metro Atlanta, discussion about the technology's future has already begun.
Georgia Tech this year created a Center for Urban and Regional Air Mobility to explore the development of aircraft for transportation in densely populated urban areas. Professors leading the effort held an urban air mobility workshop in Atlanta in January. Three months later, national industry publication Aviation Week held an urban air mobility conference at the Georgia World Congress Center.
"We're entering this era in large cities where we're facing intense gridlock and it's just getting worse," said Mark Moore, engineering director of Uber's urban air mobility unit Uber Elevate, at the Georgia Tech conference.
The Uber air service his company envisions could potentially cut peak commute times by more than 50 percent, according to Moore. Uber Elevate plans to eventually start demonstration flights of small electric aircraft in Dallas and Los Angeles and launch commercial service in 2023.
Georgia Tech professor Brian German, director of the new Center for Urban and Regional Air Mobility, said there are more than 100 electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing aircraft under development by different companies. These aircraft would not be as powerful as helicopters, but would cost much less to operate and maintain, and would be designed for short hops.
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