Attending the paper presentation of Urban Air Mobility (UAM) at #INCOSEIS really caused concern regarding how external factors, systems, and aviation regulations were completely unaddressed when these things are extremely important to traveling passengers and to the environment. I found it to be quite disturbing how it was completely dismissed as if it didn't matter. Well, it completely matters on all fronts of passenger safety and safeguarding our national airspace (NAS). As Congress and companies such as Joby Aviation and Archer Aviation are working on utilizing sustainable alternative fuels (SAF) to help reduce GHG emissions into our environment, this was also completely dismissed or not evaluated or analyzed against the overall UAM ecosystem and external systems affecting it. They vaguely touched on using vertiports, but overall completely failed to go into the reasons why vertiports have not been implemented yet or even why FAA continues to evaluate regional airports as 1 method of using eVTOL or VTOL air taxis. They did not even mention how it provides another method of transportation for travelers given the pressing issue where in about 9-12 years, there will be a serious worldwide shortage of pilots available to fly commercial aircraft. There is also the problem of maintenance of eVTOLs and VTOLs, storage of eVTOLs and VTOLs, segregating the NAS, not interfering with commercial airspace, etc. If you are going to apply systems engineering rigor and analysis to such a complex problem, you really need to take a more holistic view externally as well as regulatory given the huge ramifications for passenger safety and the safety of NAS.
Aviation CEO/Chairman/Board Director. Advisor on aviation, mobility, tourism. Organisational restructuring/transformation. Strategic & Operational Renewal. Airline startup & scale up. Partnerships & investment.
4moExcellent forum for an exceptional concept. Congratulations on the impressive progrees so far. Keep up the good work and spread the word.