Your minicab has landed

By Jonathan Duffy
BBC News Magazine

It sounds like a scene from the Jetsons or Buck Rogers but five-seater flying taxis are being touted as the next big thing in aviation - and there's already a "cab rank" near you.

With predictions of gridlock on the roads and talk of a congestion charge on the railways, hard-pressed travellers should perhaps be looking skywards for an answer to their woes.

Air taxis have more than a ring of science fiction about them but in the US the dream of zipping between towns in tiny jet-powered planes is fast becoming a reality. Operators such as Dayjet are gearing up to offer an air-taxi service for short business trips.

There's nothing new about companies hiring out private jets to shuttle around their most prized executives. But the expected arrival next year of a new class of plane - very light jets (VLJs) - is intended to make air travel as easy as jumping in a cab.

Nasa concept cockpit employs GPS and high-end technology

Seating between three and six passengers, the planes are smaller and lighter even than conventional corporate jets, making them cheaper to fly and able to land on short runways.

At the same time, advances in avionics - the electronic instruments used to fly an aircraft - and air traffic control technology, are opening up the vast network of small airfields which have neither control tower nor radar.

Better known for firing rockets into the cosmos, Nasa - America's National Aeronautics and Space Administration - has spent several years investigating technologies that would support a sky taxi service.

Prohibitive costs

Until now, air taxis have remained on the drawing board because of the prohibitive operating costs. Nasa's aim has been to try to get costs down to $2 per aircraft mile - still higher than the average $1 cost of a business class fare, but if an air taxi can save a roving executive time, that surplus cost quickly starts to disappear. And if two people fly, the figure immediately halves.

So while Nasa has been plugging away at robot air traffic control systems and advanced cockpit automation, which means just one pilot is needed at the controls, the plane makers have been working hard too.

Airfields round the UK

Leading the field is Eclipse Aviation, which numbers Microsoft chief Bill Gates among its investors. It has more than 2,000 orders for its five or six-seater Eclipse 500 jet, which is set to get government certification early in 2006, after some initial delays.

The twin-jet aluminium-bodied plane can fly for 1,000 miles at a cruising speed of more than 400mph. The standard spec, however, lacks a lavatory - although this is an optional extra.

Like others in the VLJ class it will fly just below the height of commercial airliners - high enough to avoid bad weather. But the price tag is most unlike a big passenger jet - just $1.3m per plane, a relatively reasonable sum in the industry.

Dayjet has already ordered 239 Eclipse 500s for its sky taxi service. Anyone will be able to book a plane on a per-seat basis. It can then pick up and drop off at a passenger's nearest convenient airfields.

Sitting in front of us is a huge infrastructure which is totally under-utilised Richard Blain

By using stripped-down airfields that are conveniently close by, air taxis would save 50% of time on an average journey, says Richard Blain of the Farnborough Aircraft Corporation, which is developing its own taxi plane in the UK.

And while all the talk so far has been about the US, where long distances are the issue, Mr Blain thinks ground congestion and the high price of travel in the UK, coupled with an existing network of local airstrips, means Britain is well placed to benefit from air taxis.

There are more than 200 "public use" airfields in Britain, many of them listed by the Civil Aviation Authority, and more than 150 private and military strips, many of which see little day-to-day activity.

"There are huge investments in transport infrastructure at the moment in road, rail and commercial airline activity, but sitting in front of us is a huge infrastructure which is totally under-utilised," says Mr Blain.

But the days when anyone can call up a cab company and request an early morning flight to Paris are still a "long way off", he says.

"I think corporations will operate their own small fleets of aircraft first. As that will grow over a period of years, then slowly you will start to build up a critical mass. Then, slowly, you will start to get an air taxi service."

And operators know that they will need to win over public prejudices over small planes, which are widely mistrusted and seen as dangerous by many travellers.

'Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads'

The UK is already struggling to meets its commitments on emissions of greenhouse gases, partly because of the growth of cheap air travel. Any boom in people travelling by VLJs will cause the authorities further headaches.

But a new air service to link the academic heartlands of Oxford and Cambridge ¿ four hours by road, three hours by rail, 20 minutes by air - is perhaps a foretaste of things to come.

Although the Alpha 1 Airways service will not initially use "very light jets", the patent zeal of its 18-year-old founder of the service, Martin Halstead, is an indication perhaps of how future generations will look to the skies for answers to tomorrow's transport conundrums.

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Add your comments on this story, using the form below.

Now all we have to wait for is the air congestion charge to go with it!
Andy, York

Surely if 6 people travel in a VLJ rather than using 6 cars, then emissions won't be so much of a problem?
Jason, Reading

The air taxis will add an extra choice - so far so good, but don't try to plug all of the holes with it! A decent rail link joining directly Cambridge and Oxford should certainly sort the problem of 3h journey. The distance is certainly not great enough to justify the time required to travel about 70 miles by modern train - just infrastructure is not up to it.
Chris, Cambridge

Climate change, pollution, global warming, carbon emissions... don't we already have enough to worry about without thousands of mini taxis cruising the skies and leaving behind their own noxious gases?
John McGarvey, Reading, UK

Sounds great, but waiting outside a club at 2am for a jet to turn up is going to be no fun, and how on earth are you supposed to flag an air taxi?!?
mark, Wolverhampton

This is a disgusting lack of thought for the environment. Short term convenience shouldn't outweigh the future of the world.
Daniel Tallentire, Durham, England

This sort of development should be prevented at all costs. The number of people that would benefit is tiny compared to those travelling by road/rail, so there would be no noticeable effect on congestion on the ground. And everyone would suffer from increases in noise, air pollution and greenhouses gases. This is a very bad idea !
Andy Barrett, London

Wonderful, what brilliant news for the environment. How could life exist without these new planes? Why couldn't all the money spent on developing these things be used to instead to develop something not fossil fuel dependent so as not to accelerate our voyage to extinction and that we incidentally might actually be able to use in 50 years when oil runs out.
Deen, Sevilla

What a great idea. How about taking it another step further and making the air-taxis have VTOL capability? (VTOL is vertical takeoff and landing). They could then be used without a runway in the same fashion a helicopter does. Imagine having them lifting off from the tops of skyscrapers (ideal for city commuters), also being used as a fast air-ambulances as well.
Mike, London, UK

This idea isn't as outrageous as it sounds. Gyroplanes (a forerunner of helicopters that are much cheaper to fly) would work quite well as short-hop taxis, and have the advantage of short take-off and landing and are fairly easy to fly, too. Since the government at present levies no tax or duty on aircraft fuel at present, a service like this could indeed get off the ground, as a means of commuting in and out of cities, providing much-needed congestion relief for the road and rail networks.
Dan H., Manchester, UK

Surely this misses the point of the environment!?!? We are meant to be using other, CLEANER ways of travelling, not catching one of the single worst contributors of CO2, which are becoming more and more common! People will soon rebel if they cant travel anywhere, when will the government step in and do something about it?
Keith Smith, Bury, England

Oh blimey. I guess a peaceful afternoon in the garden is a thing of the past then? Low-flying aircraft filling the skies? One day, the most precious commodity on earth will not be gold or oil but silence.
Rob, London, UK

I like the idea but have reservations about air traffic implications. UK airspace is already crowded, with air traffic controllers doing sterling work. Additional middle airspace a/c can only make the situation worse.
Douglas Moore, Prestwick

Great idea. If, like me, you have to travel to work in various remote parts of the country the only way to travel is by car - train travel is not really an option unless you're travelling between major conurbations with direct services. this service will probably be more economic and probably better for the environment - 5 cars on a roundabout trip as opposed to 1 tiny fuel efficient aircraft direct as they say a win-win situation.
tim, aberdeen UK

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