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This isn't going to be certified and allowed for part 135 operations inside at least a decade. Boeing can't keep their jets from crashing due to simple trim co

This isn't going to be certified and allowed for part 135 operations inside at least a decade. Boeing can't keep their jets from crashing due to simple trim control software, what makes anyone think the FAA is going to go along with these flights over densely populated areas? This feels a lot like when everyone was scrambling to start helicopter taxi services which promptly crashed and burned... Helicopters were a mature and well understood technology then, but the realities of operating in urban areas under a variety of weather conditions just doesn't allow for these services to be A) safe or B) economical.

CalChris 6y ago
Part 135 is FAA. Lilium is German/EU.
- pdelbarba 6y ago
  If they're operating in the US (given all the pictures of US cities) then they will absolutely be flying part 121 or 135.
- looping__lui 6y ago
  Trust me - Germans wish they had FAA because it is magnitudes more customer focused and actually “reasonable”. The German LBA is literally Prussian Bureaucracy stuck in the 19th century...
  - looping__lui 6y ago
    Ok - maybe those hating me for the comment: FAA validation for my German license took a day and I got a plastic card license after 6 weeks with a preliminary one right away. Changing ownership of a plane took me 6! weeks with the LBA. I guess that there are potentially 10+% of all planes in Germany operated with an American N-registration (owned by a trust) because the maintenance overhead and paperwork headache is so much lower. Imagine registering your German car with a German license plate in the US and setting up a German entity so you could pull that off - how big would the difference in pain have to be?
baxtr 6y ago
Maybe that’s exactly what someone said about cars in 1900. BTW: In 2019, 39k people died in car crashes, in the US alone.
- pdelbarba 6y ago
  You can throw around statistics but the reality is aircraft receive far more scrutiny. Nobody wants to sit helplessly as one of these things flies them into the side of a skyscraper or watch as one falls out of the sky onto them. Is that fair? Maybe? Is that reality? Yes. This isn't like the invention of cars. We have had all manner of airplanes for over 100 years and know how they work. This is like the NYC helicopter taxi boom in the late 70s and 80s where a number of fiery and high profile crashes put an end to the industry.
  - sacred_numbers 6y ago
    One big difference is that these EVTOL aircraft are small enough that they can use ballistic parachutes for an extra degree of safety. They usually also have more redundancy due to distributing thrust between many small electric motors. There has been a lot more research into autonomous drone flight than autonomous helicopter flight as well, which is crucial for safety and keeping costs low. I could be totally wrong, but I feel like battery, motor, flight control, and composite material technologies are finally good enough for EVTOLs to start making sense. Just like the tech boom of the late 90s there will be a lot of investment, most of which will be lost, but the survivors will have a big impact on society.
  - nouveaux 6y ago
    Maybe. To me, the cost is a bigger factor. If you can show helicopters have the same fatality rate, but has the same price of an Uber, I'm sure a ton of people would use it. It seems to me price is the larger barrier for most people when it comes to air travel.
    - bobthepanda 6y ago
      The problem is damage to others. Generally speaking, even if cars crash into buildings the building itself is not immediately unsafe; injured people and a broken storefront, but the building is not on fire or collapsing. Unless something has changed dramatically, planes crashing into buildings generally start fires, and generally cause concern about the structural integrity of said building in the immediate aftermath. As a result: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_New_York_City_plane_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_New_York_City_plane_crash > On October 11, 2006, a Cirrus SR20 aircraft crashed into the Belaire Apartments in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City, at about 2:42 p.m. EDT (18:42 UTC). The aircraft struck the north side of the building causing a fire in several apartments,[2][3] which was extinguished within two hours.[4] > Both people aboard the aircraft were killed in the accident: New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle[3] and his certificated flight instructor.[5][6] Twenty-one people were injured, including eleven firefighters. An apartment resident, Ilana Benhuri, who lived in the building with her husband, was hospitalized for a month with severe burns incurred when the post-impact fire engulfed her apartment.[7][8] > On October 13, 2006, two days after the crash, the FAA banned all fixed-winged aircraft from the East River corridor unless in contact with local air traffic control. The new rule, which took effect immediately, required all small aircraft (with the exception of helicopters and certain seaplanes) to seek the approval of and stay in contact with air traffic control while in the corridor. The FAA cited safety concerns, especially unpredictable winds from between buildings, as the reason for the change. Most car crashes do not result in 2 dead, 21 injured, and property damage to several residences.
hindsightbias 6y ago
Fly routes over freeways so they crash there. Society will learn to tolerate 4-6 deaths at a time, but not on the 737 scale.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  Lots of things are in fairly close proximity to highways, this is not really a solution. Crashing into the tower block next to a highway is still pretty bad. Lots of things in dense areas also are not necessarily on an easy route near a highway, so if that's the limitation you run into Concorde's old problem of "where can you actually fly this thing?"
  - trynewideas 6y ago
    I'm skeptical about the rest of it, but the article lightly covers using existing transport corridors (waterways, rail tracks, and to a lesser priority arterial roadways) as routes for these medium-range flights that explicitly avoid populated areas.
    - bobthepanda 6y ago
      My issue with this is that most transport corridors are 1. not very wide in the first place. Any air vehicle could cross the width of your standard rail line or highway or river in seconds. 2. Surrounded by intensive land uses, because the transportation corridor itself provides valuable access. So vehicles don't have to go very far off the right of way to crash into something valuable where lots of people are.
bfuclusion 6y ago
It depends on society's tolerance for death honestly. You're not going to be VTOLing a 737s worth of people so you're probably talking about the number of fatalities in a mid size SUV. People would care a lot less if the routes didn't take them over dense urban areas and the chance of one coming down on their head is super low.
- petre 6y ago
  It really depends on what it falls on or smashes into and if the VTOL has experienced lithium battery fire or not. If you use it to move between cities it could probably work just fine.

CalChris 6y ago

Part 135 is FAA. Lilium is German/EU.

pdelbarba 6y ago
If they're operating in the US (given all the pictures of US cities) then they will absolutely be flying part 121 or 135.
looping__lui 6y ago
Trust me - Germans wish they had FAA because it is magnitudes more customer focused and actually “reasonable”. The German LBA is literally Prussian Bureaucracy stuck in the 19th century...
- looping__lui 6y ago
  Ok - maybe those hating me for the comment: FAA validation for my German license took a day and I got a plastic card license after 6 weeks with a preliminary one right away. Changing ownership of a plane took me 6! weeks with the LBA. I guess that there are potentially 10+% of all planes in Germany operated with an American N-registration (owned by a trust) because the maintenance overhead and paperwork headache is so much lower. Imagine registering your German car with a German license plate in the US and setting up a German entity so you could pull that off - how big would the difference in pain have to be?

baxtr 6y ago

Maybe that’s exactly what someone said about cars in 1900. BTW: In 2019, 39k people died in car crashes, in the US alone.

pdelbarba 6y ago
You can throw around statistics but the reality is aircraft receive far more scrutiny. Nobody wants to sit helplessly as one of these things flies them into the side of a skyscraper or watch as one falls out of the sky onto them. Is that fair? Maybe? Is that reality? Yes. This isn't like the invention of cars. We have had all manner of airplanes for over 100 years and know how they work. This is like the NYC helicopter taxi boom in the late 70s and 80s where a number of fiery and high profile crashes put an end to the industry.
- sacred_numbers 6y ago
  One big difference is that these EVTOL aircraft are small enough that they can use ballistic parachutes for an extra degree of safety. They usually also have more redundancy due to distributing thrust between many small electric motors. There has been a lot more research into autonomous drone flight than autonomous helicopter flight as well, which is crucial for safety and keeping costs low. I could be totally wrong, but I feel like battery, motor, flight control, and composite material technologies are finally good enough for EVTOLs to start making sense. Just like the tech boom of the late 90s there will be a lot of investment, most of which will be lost, but the survivors will have a big impact on society.
- nouveaux 6y ago
  Maybe. To me, the cost is a bigger factor. If you can show helicopters have the same fatality rate, but has the same price of an Uber, I'm sure a ton of people would use it. It seems to me price is the larger barrier for most people when it comes to air travel.
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    The problem is damage to others. Generally speaking, even if cars crash into buildings the building itself is not immediately unsafe; injured people and a broken storefront, but the building is not on fire or collapsing. Unless something has changed dramatically, planes crashing into buildings generally start fires, and generally cause concern about the structural integrity of said building in the immediate aftermath. As a result: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_New_York_City_plane_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_New_York_City_plane_crash > On October 11, 2006, a Cirrus SR20 aircraft crashed into the Belaire Apartments in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City, at about 2:42 p.m. EDT (18:42 UTC). The aircraft struck the north side of the building causing a fire in several apartments,[2][3] which was extinguished within two hours.[4] > Both people aboard the aircraft were killed in the accident: New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle[3] and his certificated flight instructor.[5][6] Twenty-one people were injured, including eleven firefighters. An apartment resident, Ilana Benhuri, who lived in the building with her husband, was hospitalized for a month with severe burns incurred when the post-impact fire engulfed her apartment.[7][8] > On October 13, 2006, two days after the crash, the FAA banned all fixed-winged aircraft from the East River corridor unless in contact with local air traffic control. The new rule, which took effect immediately, required all small aircraft (with the exception of helicopters and certain seaplanes) to seek the approval of and stay in contact with air traffic control while in the corridor. The FAA cited safety concerns, especially unpredictable winds from between buildings, as the reason for the change. Most car crashes do not result in 2 dead, 21 injured, and property damage to several residences.

hindsightbias 6y ago

Fly routes over freeways so they crash there. Society will learn to tolerate 4-6 deaths at a time, but not on the 737 scale.

bobthepanda 6y ago
Lots of things are in fairly close proximity to highways, this is not really a solution. Crashing into the tower block next to a highway is still pretty bad. Lots of things in dense areas also are not necessarily on an easy route near a highway, so if that's the limitation you run into Concorde's old problem of "where can you actually fly this thing?"
- trynewideas 6y ago
  I'm skeptical about the rest of it, but the article lightly covers using existing transport corridors (waterways, rail tracks, and to a lesser priority arterial roadways) as routes for these medium-range flights that explicitly avoid populated areas.
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    My issue with this is that most transport corridors are 1. not very wide in the first place. Any air vehicle could cross the width of your standard rail line or highway or river in seconds. 2. Surrounded by intensive land uses, because the transportation corridor itself provides valuable access. So vehicles don't have to go very far off the right of way to crash into something valuable where lots of people are.

bfuclusion 6y ago

It depends on society's tolerance for death honestly. You're not going to be VTOLing a 737s worth of people so you're probably talking about the number of fatalities in a mid size SUV. People would care a lot less if the routes didn't take them over dense urban areas and the chance of one coming down on their head is super low.

petre 6y ago
It really depends on what it falls on or smashes into and if the VTOL has experienced lithium battery fire or not. If you use it to move between cities it could probably work just fine.