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'Flying taxis' prepare for takeoff for 2024 Paris Olympics

November 11, 2022 / 10:21 AM
Sharjah24 – AFP: Taking off from an airfield northwest of Paris, a "flying taxi" completed a test flight to great fanfare on Thursday, with project promotors hoping to make the mode of transport available during the 2024 Summer Olympic Games.
Five bases are planned to accommodate the electric aircraft across the Paris region. In addition to transporting passengers, they could be used for medical emergencies.

Commenting on this, Paul Stone, VoloCity pilot pointed out, "The VoloCity, the aircraft that you see behind me now, is a two-seat aircraft with 18 motors and 9 batteries and it's designed as an urban transport aircraft."

He continued, "The beauty of this is the digital flight control system is so clever, it takes away a thing called cross-coupling, so in a helicopter, when you move one control, three things happen, and it’s like patting your head and rubbing your tummy, it’s a coordination exercise. In this aircraft, they take away all that difficulty, and it’s very simple controls in each axis. "

Edward Arkwright, Executive Director of the Paris Aiports said, "A helicopter today is four times as noisy as an aircraft like this one, it's four times as expensive, the CO2 emissions are incomparable, so the benefit is phenomenal."

The Executive Director concluded, "The interest also lies in revealing new uses and the main use for this kind of aircraft in a developed and congested capital like Paris is emergency medical transport. We are now working with the AP-HP (Paris university hospital trust, eds.) to identify the main uses: the transport of grafts and blood, medical transport and then, once this aircraft has been adapted to accommodate a patient with a doctor, the transport of people."
 
November 11, 2022 / 10:21 AM

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