Flying taxis at Nice airport? Everything you need to know about "vertiports"

Flying taxis at Nice airport? Everything you need to know about “vertiports”

Volocopter

Project “Urban Blue” was launched this week.

The announcement reads like something out of a science fiction novel. By 2024, Nice airport, along with Rome, Venice and Bologna, will be able to host the world’s first “vertiports”. These infrastructures will accommodate electric vertical take-off aircraft (e-VTOL).

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Connecting the airport to the city by air

The aim of these new electric aircraft is to link airports to urban areas, by air. The intention is to put an end to road traffic jams around airports. The Urban Blue project involves studying, designing and building vertiports, and its designers have every intention of extending it to other geographical areas.

In addition to reducing traffic, there is the ecological dimension. This Urban Air Mobility development plan is part of the “zero CO2 emissions by 2030” commitment, a project that is part of the roadmap submitted to ACI Europe (Airports Council International).

Urban Air Mobility: a growth sector

To develop these e-VTOLs, the company will rely on the industrial partnership initiated in 2020 with Volocopter, the first company in the world to develop and operate e-VTOL aircraft for the transport of passengers and goods within urban areas. In addition, EDF Invest, a shareholder of Aéroports de la Côte d’Azur, will support Urban Blue as a leading international player in the innovative and sustainable mobility field.

“The development of Urban Air Mobility is part of our strategy to accelerate significantly in the fields of innovation and sustainability, and it allows us to further improve our infrastructure development and management expertise”, declared Marco Troncone, Managing Director of Rome Airport. The market value of this sector in Europe could be worth four billion dollars by 2030.