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>large open areas free of obstructions. https://www.beaconhealthsystem.org/beacon-medical-transport/landing-zone-preparation-and-safety/ https://www.beaconheal

by RC_ITR 4y ago

>large open areas free of obstructions. https://www.beaconhealthsystem.org/beacon-medical-transport/landing-zone-preparation-and-safety/ https://www.beaconhealthsystem.org/beacon-medical-transport/... You need roughly a football field of clear flat land for human-piloted helicopters. In the US at least, that's nothing. It's comparable to one quarter of a clover-leaf offramp.

nradov 4y ago
It's not nothing. In the affluent areas where passengers would potentially be willing to pay for air taxi service there aren't many large vacant lots left. So not impossible, but it's hard to see how the economics would work. Medical transport helicopters have somewhat greater freedom to land in random places like roads and fields when necessary to pick up emergency patients. But that only works because police are on the ground to secure the area. And local residents don't complain about the noise from a single emergency flight. Those situations don't apply to air taxis.
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  >It's comparable to one quarter of a clover-leaf offramp. Again, maybe you aren't in America, but outside of SF and NYC, literally every major city is brimming with already loud highway interchanges/off-ramps. Just cap those and put the landing pad on top. Space is not the issue.
  - nradov 4y ago
    Building helipads on highway interchanges won't make air taxis viable. Passengers would still have to take a ground taxi to the final destination, thus eliminating any significant time savings on most routes. In order for air taxis to make economic sense they have to bring passengers directly to within a few blocks of the destination.
    - RC_ITR 4y ago
      Again, maybe you're not in the US, but here we chose to build those interchanges right downtown, Say what you will about America, but we built our environment to accommodate decentralized forms of transit, it's sort of our thing.

by RC_ITR 4y ago

nradov 4y ago

It's not nothing. In the affluent areas where passengers would potentially be willing to pay for air taxi service there aren't many large vacant lots left. So not impossible, but it's hard to see how the economics would work. Medical transport helicopters have somewhat greater freedom to land in random places like roads and fields when necessary to pick up emergency patients. But that only works because police are on the ground to secure the area. And local residents don't complain about the noise from a single emergency flight. Those situations don't apply to air taxis.

RC_ITR 4y ago
>It's comparable to one quarter of a clover-leaf offramp. Again, maybe you aren't in America, but outside of SF and NYC, literally every major city is brimming with already loud highway interchanges/off-ramps. Just cap those and put the landing pad on top. Space is not the issue.
- nradov 4y ago
  Building helipads on highway interchanges won't make air taxis viable. Passengers would still have to take a ground taxi to the final destination, thus eliminating any significant time savings on most routes. In order for air taxis to make economic sense they have to bring passengers directly to within a few blocks of the destination.
  - RC_ITR 4y ago
    Again, maybe you're not in the US, but here we chose to build those interchanges right downtown, Say what you will about America, but we built our environment to accommodate decentralized forms of transit, it's sort of our thing.