Flying cars have long captured the imagination of science fiction writers, and in recent years a number of tech startups have rushed to make the dream a reality. After a long period of research and development, more bullish voices in the industry say the launch of air taxi services is imminent – but significant technical, regulatory and financial hurdles could still prevent their take off.
The American companies Joby Aviation and Archer have both announced planning to launch air taxi services in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), later this year, which will mark a major milestone in the technology’s winding road to commercialization.
However, despite the enduring appeal of this new form of urban mobility and efforts by aviation authorities to lay the regulatory groundwork, experts say they are not yet ready for prime time. Concerns about safety, question marks about the financial viability of air taxi services, and the challenges of setting up the infrastructure and operational capacity to support an entirely new transportation network mean we may still be waiting at least a decade for an airborne alternative to Uber.
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“We think full-scale services are more of a thing in the middle of the next decade, not anytime soon,” Sergio Cecuttafounder and partner at SMG Consulting, which covers the advanced air mobility sector, told LiveScience.
Despite lofty ambitions, plans to roll out flying taxis have so far lapsed. For example, there were plans to introduce flying taxis in time for the Paris Olympics in 2024 – but they were scrapped due to delays in relation to the certification of the vehicles’ engines. About the same time, Archer make plans to introduce flying taxis ahead of the upcoming FIFA World Cup, for air travel in LA. This now seems unlikely, with the company now targeting the 2028 Olympics in LA for the introduction of new passenger transport services.
In recent weeks, however, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has announced the final phase of its advanced air mobility program it will evaluate air taxi performance in eight separate projects over the summer in 26 states. Does that mean we can expect flying taxis to the skies this year?
Certification challenges
The promise of electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft will create a quieter, cleaner and more efficient alternative to helicopters. While designs vary between companies, they typically rely on distributed electric propulsion (DEP) — spreading multiple electric motors and propellers across the airframe to create something that looks more like a drone than a conventional rotorcraft.
Some eVTOLs, such as those made by the German company Volocopter and the Chinese company EHang, have propellers attached in a vertical position. But other companies like Joby and Archer are experimenting with propellers that can shift from a vertical to a horizontal position, allowing them to combine vertical takeoff with more efficient forward flight.
Because they are powered by batteries, they can be both greener and quieter than conventional aircraft. In theory, at least, the increased efficiency and simplicity of electric motors could also make eVTOL cheaper to build and operate, according to NASA. Followers say this could make it possible to operate large numbers of these aircraft in urban areas at a cost that many more would be able to afford.
But getting a new class of aircraft off the ground is not easy. While eVTOL companies have completed hundreds of hours of test flights, starting commercial operations will require them to go through onerous certification processes with aviation authorities. These include bodies such as the FAA, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).
Although the specifications vary from country to country, this will likely involve about 1,000 hours of test flights overseen by regulators to ensure they can safely fly the types of missions the developers envision, Cecutta said. Given that even the most advanced eVTOL developers have managed only a few hundred hours of test flights, normally in several different aircraft designs, he says certification is still some way off.
“There’s not enough time on this planet for them to do that in a year,” Cecutta said. “We think certification, even for the most advanced of the pack, is a 2027 thing. And for some other companies, it could be a 2028 or 2029 milestone.”
Early pilots are launched – but technical challenges remain
Regulators in the UAE have committed to tracking approvals for eVTOLs, but Cecutta suspects this will not be full certification in the traditional sense. Normally, certification allows a plane to fly anywhere in various conditions, but he says the UAE’s General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) is expected to issue an airworthiness certificate that allows flights only on very limited routes that avoid flying over densely populated areas, such as from Dubai airport to the Palm Jumeirah resort island.
While this may provide companies with early operational experience, aviation analyst is Bill Sweetmanprincipal at Valkyrie Strategic Solutions, says it’s unlikely to accelerate the technology’s wider rollout. Leading aviation authorities usually have agreements where certifications are mutually recognized between countries. However, because the UAE has never certified an aircraft before, this is unlikely to happen here.
Companies in the US have another opportunity to get services up and running before full certification. In September 2025, the FAA introduced eVTOL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP) which will allow uncertified aircraft to operate in controlled environments in a series of pilots designed to test out various use cases for the technology, including air taxi services.
But Cecutta stresses that this is unlikely to accelerate the widespread adoption of the technology. The program is designed to help companies gain operational experience so they can launch commercial services more quickly after certification, but it will not speed up the certification process itself.
However, there can also be significant speed bumps in the attempt to prove the airworthiness of these vehicles. Richard Brownan aerodynamics consultant at Sophrodyne Aerospace in Scotland, says there are technical complexities to eVTOL operations that many in the industry have been reluctant to fully address.
A major concern involves what happens when these multi-rotor aircraft interact with the ground. Research Brown conducted for the CAA has revealed that the downwash from eVTOL rotors can create highly concentrated air currents that travel significant distances above the ground with surprising strength. This can damage surrounding infrastructure or even send people flying unexpectedly.
Brown suggests that eVTOL carrier modeling focuses on average airflows and fails to capture these dynamics. But the phenomenon can limit where these planes can safely operate and what kind of infrastructure they need.
Even more worrisome, he says, is the risk of a vortex ring condition, a dangerous aerodynamic condition that can cause rotors to suddenly lose thrust. This is already a major safety issue for helicopters, which experience vortex ring state accidents every year, he adds, but eVTOL designs with multiple interacting rotors may be even more susceptible to these effects.
Facing hard economic truths
Even if startups overcome the technical hurdles, significant questions about financial viability remain. Although eVTOLs are likely to be cheaper to operate than conventional aircraft — because electric propulsion is inherently more efficient and less prone to failure — they are likely to be significantly more expensive to purchase for the foreseeable future, Cecutta said.
Costs will come down as companies scale up production, and plans to enable autonomous flight could remove the significant costs of training and hiring pilots, he adds. But this will take time, and Cecutta estimates it could be a decade before eVTOL services become a transportation option for middle-class passengers, rather than just the ultra-rich.
Sweetman is more skeptical about whether eVTOL operations will ever achieve the scale required to significantly reduce costs – with the cost per vehicle falling with many more vehicles produced. He questions whether urban airspace can safely accommodate the hundreds or thousands of planes required to make the financial case stack up.
And long-term operating costs can be significantly higher than many have suggested. Unlike electric cars, which draw power relatively evenly, eVTOLs subject the batteries to very high discharge rates during takeoff and landing.
“You knock the hell out of the battery,” Sweetman said. He points to regulatory filings by US eVTOL developer Beta Technologies that indicated they had to replace the aircraft’s batteries every year, a cost that “alone is enough to destroy the economy.”
In the short term, cargo operations and emergency medical services may prove to be a more viable application area for eVTOL aircraft than air taxi services, according to Cecutta. These applications do not require flying over dense populations and face fewer public acceptance barriers than large-scale urban transportation networks. Many eVTOL companies are also branching out into defense applications, he adds, where they can tap the deeper pockets of military customers.
These applications could provide economic breathing room for eVTOL manufacturers to continue development of their technology, Cecutta said. Despite wild predictions that flying taxi services could start this year, for flying taxis to really take off in a meaningful way, the industry still faces years of work ahead, with no guarantee that all the pieces will eventually come together.
