A few weeks ago, Bell Helicopters, in partnership with Uber, unveiled the Nexus, their answer to the future “air taxi” market that analysts are convinced is just around the corner. Mind you, that ignores the fact that air taxi services have been tried with helicopters for over fifty years in various forms, but this time it’s going to be different! We’re going to be living in that Jetsons’ future very soon.
Okay, maybe. I have my doubts, but if anything can convince me, the Nexus will.
First off, it’s kind of sexy, in a somewhat insectoid way, with the six ducted fans. Bell has a history of making good looking rotary aircraft which perform as good as they look.
Second, it’s piloted. Unlike a lot of the PAVE (Personal Air VEhicle) concepts that seem to assume we’re all going to jump into oversized, remotely-managed quadcopters which will all successfully get to their destinations successfully because the FAA is going to make some kind of big, sweeping changes to flight rules that will allow all sorts of autonomous operations, the Nexus looks like it has a very nice, modern cockpit and controls. It’s certainly not difficult to imagine an upper-class couple who live in an LA high-rise summoning one of these via the Uber app, then hopping in before the attractive (because everyone knows all pilots are good looking), 20-something pilot zips them to the helipad of their downtown destination.
Third, it’s Bell. Again, they know their helicopters and tilt-rotor designs. I trust them a lot more than some “personal mobility” Silicon Valley startup that things Agile processes, free cereal, open office floorplans are aerospace technology distruptors.
However, the whole air taxi landscape may end up running headlong into another issue: there’s a pilot shortage. Not “going to be if things progress along current paths” shortage, there’s a pilot shortage right now. The military can’t pay pilots enough to retain them, the airlines can’t recruit fast enough, and flight schools can’t train enough, assuming that their instructors haven’t already been poached by airlines.
Not to mention, we’ve tried this before. Helicopter airlines (while still successful in places like Rio) were a thing in the ’60s and ’70s in big American cities like New York and Los Angeles. The main reason we don’t have fleets of helicopters whisking people to their destinations in American metropolises anymore likely has to do with a rash of fatal crashes in the late ’70s. That’s the thing about public perception: an air taxi may be statistically much less likely to crash than some random Uber car driver, but it’s only going to take a couple of accidents for people to go “Nah, I think I’ll just stay on the ground.”
Unlike current ground transport options, where the barrier to becoming an Uber or Lyft driver is pretty slim, the barriers to becoming a pilot, much less a passenger pilot legally allowed to fly with passengers, are pretty significant. Uber’s going to have to crank up their pay scale significantly, the FAA is going to have to lower the qualification bar for commercial licenses, or some combination of both.
It’s going to be interesting to watch. I’m definitely encouraging my kids to look at aerospace careers. There’s going to be a whole lot of good paying job openings there in the next 10-20 years.