United Airlines' World-Changing Venture May Be Here in 2 Years

What once seemed like a fantastic luxury might be a bit more obtainable.

The daughter of Sofia Coppola recently went viral for a TikTok in which she made vodka pasta sauce and casually revealed that she was grounded for trying to use her dad’s credit card to charter a helicopter to see a friend. 

Plenty of jokes about the life of the wealthy and privileged abounded. After all, charting a helicopter to travel is something the obscenely wealthy (and generally just obscene) characters from “Succession” do. 

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But Air Travel Could Become More Mainstream

But in the next few years, even people who don’t have Logan Roy levels of money might be able to charter their own helicopters, or at least the next best thing. 

So called “air taxes,” that are basically a combination of a drone and a mini-helicopter have been in the works for several years, as companies ranging from Joby  (JOBY) - Get Free Report, an “Electrical Aerial Ridesharing” and Archer have been recruiting top talent from Silicon Valley to get working prototypes in order.

If all goes well, it looks like air taxis might start hitting the market by 2025, as Archer and United Airlines  (UAL) - Get Free Report have announced plans to launch the first air taxi route in Chicago.

So far, the plan is for Archer's electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle, dubbed an eVTOL, to travel between O'Hare International Airport (ORD) and downtown Vertiport Chicago. 

The trip is expected to take 10 minutes. Archer's Midnight aircraft can carry up to four United customers at a time, at speeds of 150 miles per hour. A fare should cost $100, which is roughly the cost of an Uber Black trip from the same distance. 

"Both Archer and United are committed to decarbonizing air travel and leveraging innovative technologies to deliver on the promise of the electrification of the aviation industry," said Michael Leskinen, President of United Airlines Ventures. "Once operational, we’re excited to offer our customers a more sustainable, convenient and cost-effective mode of transportation during their commutes to the airport." 

Are More Air Taxis On The Way?

United has indicated that Chicago was chosen because it’s the company’s headquarters, as well as a center for business, innovation and investment. 

Once the airport to downtown route is established, United intends to build out "branch" routes to surrounding communities in the greater Chicago area, notes Fox Business. 

One can only assume that if all goes well in Chicago, the service will expand to other major cities. JOBY and Archer have faced a fair amount of obstacles in their path to bring air travel to the masses, as the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has been extremely slow and deliberate in its actions in the wake of the botched certification of the fatal Boeing 737 Max aircraft crashes in 2018 and 2019, which were tied to automatic control system issues.  

There’s been outstanding technology issues to be worked out, including the development of an air traffic framework that will manage multiple small aircraft in crowded skies over big cities. But once everything has been figured out, Morgan Stanley has estimated that the urban air mobility market could be worth as much as $1.5 trillion by 2040.