About 1968, a heliport opened next to the Ferry Building in San Francisco. Eleven nonstop S-61s each weekday to SFO, scheduled 7 minutes; if you were connecting to a flight east the helicopter fare was $3.75.
Question is, once the novelty wore off, who would want to catch a helicopter at the Ferry Building instead of just driving to SFO? Did they think those office buildings were full of fedora-wearing executives who would love to stroll over, attache case in hand, ready to leave town in style? Guess you could probably check baggage at the heliport, which would be nice, but if you’ve got baggage, where are you bringing it from? If you’ve got a trunkload of baggage, wouldn’t you just as soon drive straight to the airport?
Same question about Los Angeles and New York, tho it’s true, an airport-to-airport helicopter in NY could be handy. Dunno if you could check your baggage thru, domestic flight at LGA to international out of JFK. Sounds adventurous.
Why not? There was no TSA in those days. Catching a helicopter was no different than catching a bus, just faster (and more expensive). There are plenty of hotels and office buildings in range of the Ferry Building today, which was likely true back in 1968 as well. If you were well-heeled enough, why wouldn’t you take a helicopter rather than a bus or taxi?
It may be this was an idea that was too far ahead of it’s time, but could work in the future. With different technology, that is.
In the northeast a helo-like service with futuristic scaled up drones would be great, if it could be made feasible. Driving from NYC to the Hamptons, or Long Island to the Catskills is a long, tedious drive. But in a helicopter or drone would be short and sweet. Let’s hope.
Story time…
I fly bizjets and my company once flew me and my first officer by helicopter to pick up an airplane. We were at Republic Airport on Long Island and scheduled to fly empty to Teterboro (just outside NYC) to pick up passengers for a trip to Florida. When we started up the jet’s avionics there was a problem and as we were troubleshooting I noticed one of our company’s turbine helicopters land nearby. Knowing we had another jet already at Teterboro I joked, “Hey, why don’t they just fly us over to get the other plane?”
Goddam, if that’s exactly what happened. We determined our primary jet was grounded, but the trip going on time was important enough to the company that they decided to eat the cost of the helo. To our amazement, we found ourselves quickly tossing our stuff in the helicopter, they started up and flew us to Teterboro, passing directly over LaGuardia Airport on the way. Fifteen minutes, and they even taxied right up to our airplane - it was really rock star stuff! The same drive would have taken perhaps two hours in traffic. So, helicopters for the win when traversing the NY airspace!
Afterwards, I teased some of my airline friends: “What, your crappy company doesn’t helicopter you to your aircraft?”
I think it is an unlikely future for a number of reasons but the convenience factor of being able to commute by air, avoiding traffic, even at helicopter speeds, is pretty appealing if it could be done in sufficient volume and an affordable price point. It is basically the dream of the ‘flying car’ except without the highly problematic elements of the volume of air traffic and constant overhead noise that would create.
Archer Aviation intends to offer air taxi service to Bay Area airports with an electric VTOL craft in the near future. They’ve made some concrete progress, and have a working vehicle, and a few other things. Last I checked they wanted to launch sometime this year, but that seems unlikely at this point.
The basic idea isn’t insane, given the amount of wealth here and the traffic situation. Whether they can make it work out in practice is a different question.
Wisk, Joby, Lilium (currently not being funded), Supernal, Beta, Textron eViation, volocopter, vertical aerospace, lift….
The eVtol space has plenty of players, no clear winners yet. It’s a tricky area of certification because most of the energy technology is novel and the proposed operations in cities pose risks that are different than traditional aviation.
Yeah, with traffic (basically any time between 6:30 am and 7:00 pm) you can count on a 4X or more penalty. If going into downtown from SFO I just take the BART because I’ll spend twice the time sitting in traffic even without getting a rental car and searching for parking (or paying more than the cost of a hotel room for it). A ten minute heli ride would be a bargain at $100.
I’m not sure the race has even properly started yet. Does anyone even have a type certificate yet? Feels like we won’t really have an idea about long-term success until at least two are flying normal, passenger routes with full certification. Then maybe we’ll have an idea about the various tradeoffs they made with regards to speed, passenger count, aircraft cost, etc.