A new partnership between HCA Airport in Odense and Copenhagen Helicopter will be the first in Denmark to build an infrastructure for electrically powered flying taxis to transport people between the country's largest cities. The first flying taxi is due to arrive on Funen before the summer holidays, with the aim of establishing a landing pad on the roof of Odense Railway Station Centre.
A fleet of carbon-neutral flying taxis will in future transport passengers between Odense, Copenhagen and other Danish and European cities and metropolises.
It may sound like science fiction, but cities like Los Angeles, Munich and Seoul are already laying the foundations for a whole new layer of green infrastructure called AAM. Advanced Air Mobility, and in Denmark, HCA Airport in Odense and the company Copenhagen Helicopter are now taking the first steps together towards moving flying taxis - also known as eVTOL, electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft - into Danish airspace.
The aim is to be able to showcase a flying taxi at HCA Airport before the summer, and in the slightly longer term the ambition is to establish one or more landing sites, so-called vertipads or vertiports - the first at the top of Odense Banegård Centre.
"I imagine that in a few years you will be able to take the light railway to Odense railway station and from there take a flying taxi to Copenhagen or one of the other major Danish cities. Now is the time to start building a completely new infrastructure based initially on manned, flying taxis that fly on green electricity and contribute to the government's ambition of 100 % green domestic transport by 2030," says Kim Kenlev, Chairman of the Board of HCA Airport.
Kim Kenlev sees great potential in a landing site in Odense.
"I see no reason why, in the long term, it will not also be possible to fly to cities such as Gothenburg, Hamburg or Berlin. Advanced Air Mobility is high on the agenda everywhere, and these cities are within reach of these flying taxis."
Attracting foreign players
Initially, the partnership aims to attract foreign AAM operators to HCA Airport, which already houses an internationally recognised drone test centre, UAS Denmark Test Center.
This can be in the form of testing and demonstration activities or, in the long term, service and maintenance.
"Advanced Air Mobility is based on a new revolution in aviation that says goodbye to fossil fuels in favour of electrification and biofuels - in the same way as we know it from the transition from traditional cars to hybrid and electric cars and later self-driving cars. This offers completely new opportunities to transport the population on a daily basis via airspace while reducing greenhouse gas emissions, reducing noise levels and much more," says CEO of Copenhagen Helicopter, Martin Andersen.
Copenhagen Helicopter offers, among other things, taxi flights with traditional helicopters, which the company says is a growth area.
According to Martin Andersen, Copenhagen Helicopter's own calculations, based on national and international reports, show that the AAM area has huge potential and could, among other things, move 84,000 passengers daily and remove 120,000 tonnes of CO2 annually from Danish roads by 2035.
A disruption of domestic transport
Odense Municipality shares the ambition to have more sustainable modes of transport and to set its ambitions high in order to be first with new technologies:
"This could very well be the beginning of what in the future will be a completely new way of transporting both ourselves and also goods. We can see that other countries and cities are very far ahead, and Denmark and Odense must of course also be involved. The flying taxis of the future can fly on green electricity produced by Danish offshore wind turbines, and at the same time they can help move traffic off the roads," says Peter Rahbæk Juel, Mayor of Odense Municipality.
He calls the ambition for Odense to be at the forefront of development a natural extension of the city's long-standing strong position in areas such as robotics and drone technology:
"The Funen robotics adventure began with some talented engineers from the University of Southern Denmark and a city that dared to think big and invest. In the same way, I also see this as the first tentative steps towards a new business adventure that will hopefully generate jobs, contribute to the green transition and create a whole new way of transporting people," says Peter Rahbæk Juel.
BACKGROUND: A RAPIDLY DEVELOPING AREA
As mentioned above, countries such as Korea and Germany are relatively advanced in creating the framework for flying taxis to take to the skies - initially with a pilot on board.
In Seoul, the ambition is for flying drones to be flying over the megacity as early as 2025, and in Germany, an Airbus-led partnership involving Deutsche Bahn, Munich Airport and Telekom, among others, is working to make flying taxis between German cities a reality. A total of €86 million - equivalent to DKK 645 million - has been earmarked for the next three years.
And in the US, in early 2022, Boeing invested just over DKK 3 billion in Silicon Valley company Wisk Aero, which is working on developing a self-flying propeller aeroplane.
Photo credit: Sebastian Thomas Bay