4 ms·

The VTOL only matters if it’s cheap. Most of the airports in the US are lightly used because general aviation is expensive, not because people are thinking “I w

The VTOL only matters if it’s cheap. Most of the airports in the US are lightly used because general aviation is expensive, not because people are thinking “I would buy/charter a plane, but driving 20min to the local airfield is just not convenient enough”. Typical general aviation aircraft (which this seems comparable to) need <1/4 mile runway (e.g. a Cessna 172 is less than 1000ft) which in the US means ~20k available airports. My point being, the reason those airports are lightly used is driven by cost not that they inconvenient.

rgmerk 4y ago
In any decent sized metro area inconvenience is a big deal. My family had a weekend at a popular vacation spot about 80 miles from where we live (about 2 miles from the downtown area of Melbourne, Australia). The drive takes roughly two hours door to door. We’re in a suburb that happens to be on the right side of the city to be close to the GA airport, but it would be a 20 minute drive to the airport, say a 30-minute flight, and another 20 minute drive from the destination airport to our accommodation. If you could do the transitions between car-plane-car in less than 20 minutes total I’d be very surprised; net result, you’re saving maybe 30 minutes on the trip. If you could put VTOL ports within 10 minutes walk of each destination (say 500 metres) you could cut the trip down to less than an hour. To be fair, the amount of luggage you’d have to carry/push in this scenario might well still tip the balance in favour of the car for the holiday trip, but there are plenty of other scenarios where similar trips are made without the need to carry a mass of luggage where the VTOL is a massive win.
- balderdash 4y ago
  Fair points, but it think my point is this Cost to drive (.50/mile) = $40x2 (round trip)= $80 @4hrs General aviation 20min+45min (Cessna 172) + 20min= 1hr 25min x2 is 2hr 50 min (let’s call it 3hr) 1.5 hrs flying time @$300hr (let’s exclude cost of ground transport) means $450. So $270 to save an hour If vtol saves another 2.5hrs for $270 and has the same cost profile, Than that’s great, you’re still spending >$100hr on time savings (and this optimistic, because I think most uses cases have lower ratio of airport travel time to flight time, you would then need to value your time at >$285k a year (pre tax @30% and 2000 hrs a year), which is not that huge a group of people
  - rgmerk 4y ago
    Yep, agreed - though I suspect it's a rather larger group than those who currently charter helicopters for transport.

rgmerk 4y ago

In any decent sized metro area inconvenience is a big deal. My family had a weekend at a popular vacation spot about 80 miles from where we live (about 2 miles from the downtown area of Melbourne, Australia). The drive takes roughly two hours door to door. We’re in a suburb that happens to be on the right side of the city to be close to the GA airport, but it would be a 20 minute drive to the airport, say a 30-minute flight, and another 20 minute drive from the destination airport to our accommodation. If you could do the transitions between car-plane-car in less than 20 minutes total I’d be very surprised; net result, you’re saving maybe 30 minutes on the trip. If you could put VTOL ports within 10 minutes walk of each destination (say 500 metres) you could cut the trip down to less than an hour. To be fair, the amount of luggage you’d have to carry/push in this scenario might well still tip the balance in favour of the car for the holiday trip, but there are plenty of other scenarios where similar trips are made without the need to carry a mass of luggage where the VTOL is a massive win.

balderdash 4y ago
Fair points, but it think my point is this Cost to drive (.50/mile) = $40x2 (round trip)= $80 @4hrs General aviation 20min+45min (Cessna 172) + 20min= 1hr 25min x2 is 2hr 50 min (let’s call it 3hr) 1.5 hrs flying time @$300hr (let’s exclude cost of ground transport) means $450. So $270 to save an hour If vtol saves another 2.5hrs for $270 and has the same cost profile, Than that’s great, you’re still spending >$100hr on time savings (and this optimistic, because I think most uses cases have lower ratio of airport travel time to flight time, you would then need to value your time at >$285k a year (pre tax @30% and 2000 hrs a year), which is not that huge a group of people
- rgmerk 4y ago
  Yep, agreed - though I suspect it's a rather larger group than those who currently charter helicopters for transport.