Paris’s Air Taxi Stations Could Be Ready Before the Taxis Are

Alongside the tarmac at the Pontoise Aerodrome on the outskirts of Paris stands a sleekly modern building the size of a coffee shop with floor-to-ceiling windows. This is the Re.Invent Air Mobility test bed: Europe’s first flying-taxi airport, or vertiport. To mark its inauguration in November, a shiny white electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft with an armature of 18 whizzing rotors lifted up, flew around under the guidance of its test pilot and then touched down again. With a little luck, a network of sites like this will anchor the world’s first commercial flying-taxi service, shuttling passengers between Paris’s international airports and the venues of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games.

Or maybe a lot of luck. The Volocopter Volocity 2X flown at the ceremony in November is certified to fly only on an experimental basis. The entire vertiport plan relies on the aircraft achieving full certification, which would make it the first eVTOL to be certified to carry passengers anywhere in the world. “It’s on the ambitious side of what is possible,” says Duncan Walker, co-founder and chief executive officer of Skyports, the UK-based company that’s developing the project with Groupe ADP, the operator of Paris’s international airports.