DUBAI: Flying taxis have been a sci-fi fixture for decades, but one operator says they are finally close to reality, first in the United States and then the United Arab Emirates and India.

“What we used to think of as science fiction is now science fact,” Billy Nolen, Archer Aviation’s chief safety officer, said at the Dubai Airshow on Wednesday.

“This is happening, it is real, and you will see this in the market in 2025.” Reports of futuristic aircraft ferrying passengers over cities — and their car-choked roads — have been cropping up for years, evoking images of 1960s cartoon “The Jetsons”.

Yet regulatory approval from the US Federal Aviation Administration for Archer’s Midnight, a four-passenger, electric-powered vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, is expected as soon as 2025.

That will trigger “almost concurrent” certification in the UAE, said Nikhil Goel, chief commercial officer at Archer, whose major backers include Mubadala, an Emirati sovereign wealth fund.

UAE flights are expected to start in 2026 on two initial routes: from Dubai airport to the upmarket Palm development, and Abu Dhabi airport to the city-centre Corniche.

“We expect the demand to be more than we can even handle. The pricing will be relatively premium at the outset,” said Goel.

“But then over time, we’ll deploy hundreds of aircraft in the UAE (which) will also lower the price considerably.” At the same time, flights will launch in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, Goel said, calling India “a really, really big market for us”.

Test flights for Archer’s Midnight are currently taking place in California, and rival firm Joby has performed its first experimental journeys in New York.

Published in Dawn, November 16th, 2023