Airbus-owned Voom brings its on-demand helicopter service to the US

I'm an LA resident and there's not many kinds of businesses I think should be categorically banned, but helicopter transit is one of them. It's a public nuisance. I will regularly need to interrupt phone conversations to let a helicopter pass over, which is sometimes impossible when they decide to hover (though this is usually police helicopters).

Not sure the target market is for this since it's between airports. The Palo Alto to SFO one doesn't really help you get into the city because much of the traffic you'd have to drive through is between SFO and downtown. I guess they couldn't get rights to land somewhere downtown (after a bit of research it actually looks like there are no active heliports in SF except one at UCSF in the Dogpatch. Color me unsurprised.) Maybe this is useful if you are really really rich and want to skip some traffic between South Bay and the airport, but doesn't make much sense to me.

The only thing that is moderately interesting to someone that's not a billionaire are the flights to Napa. At first I thought it was competing with some of the wine tasting buses that drive up and back but they only do 2 flights a week (Friday-Monday). That implies a weekend trip. I guess that make sense.

Overall, seems not super useful. I guess I am not the target demographic.

Off topic but you may find this interesting: https://www.jsx.com/destinations

I hope we see more of this type of alternative options...opt-out of TSA (until its so big it gets attention), P2P, nimble, small-scale.

> (though this is usually police helicopters)

I was astounded at the frequency, low altitude, and cacophony of police helicopter missions in Fresno when I spent about 6 weeks at @dmpayton's house. Like, WTF. It feels like they just want to remind you that they exist every couple hours.

They were frequently low enough to be deafening or painful to the ears. On several occasions, I was able to feel the ground effect.

One of them was so low (I estimate, based on my fairly humble amount of experience at drone flights, that it was around 80-100ft, perhaps briefly even lower than that) that it blew all of the leaves off of a tree (this was in November, when they had already turned). The next morning a bunch of neighborhood kids had a ball playing in the enormous pile of fresh crunchy leaves.

I'm confident that the number of helicopter missions in Fresno can be reduced by 95% with no noticeable impact on public safety.

Just had a look. I am taking the wife to Napa on Sat. for an event and thought this would rock (vs 2-3 of driving). They do SFO to Napa but not on Sat. Oh well.