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Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

lilium.com

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Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#101

Post by bouchard »

wefarrell wrote: post #62
hristov wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you invent anti-gravity, VTOL will always be (i) very energy intensive, and (ii) and very disruptive to the surrounding environment. This is both in terms of noise and air turbulence. Self driving is something that may be solved and can become practical for popular use with current and near-term foreseeable technology. Everyday mass use VTOL is not. Sorry, the Jetsons lied to you.

Black hawks are quiet enough for specops teams to use them in urban raids like the Bin Laden one.

The rotorcraft used for the Bin Laden raid weren't standard Black hawks.

The modifications probably required huge trade-offs in cost/performance and might still not be quiet enough for daily use in urban/residential areas.

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#102

Post by toohotatopic »

baybal2 wrote: post #78

Switzerland is one of few countries where "air taxi" services turned to profit. Hilly terrain makes it hard to make straight roads. Quite a lot of big cities don't have direct road connections. In a relatively flat USA, you don't have a lot of similar spaces.

Hilly terrain with ice and snow. How do you get to work in a snow-storm? Possible in a car, but something else in an "air taxi".

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#103

Post by asdfadsfgfdda »

nlawalker wrote: post #34
pdelbarba wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely guarantee this will be anything but less expensive. You can get an R44 with better range and payload for a couple hundred thousand. This will be an electronic nightmare requiring extensive certification and maintenance efforts. Cessna can't even sell ridiculously old designs for reasonable prices due to certification overhead.

Yeah, what I'm not clear on is: what's the cost to fly from SF to Lake Tahoe in a helicopter? If it's a lot more than the $250 that Lilium is promising, what is it that makes Lilium cheaper? Is it just the up-front investment in scale and the route network?

A medium helicopter charter might be $1200/hour, SF to Tahoe is ~130 nm, so ~1.5 hours each way.

Of that $1200/hr, $150/hr is fuel, $50/hr is engine maintenance, and maybe $100/hr airframe maintenance. These scale linearly with time. For fixed costs, a new helicopter is ~$3 million, so figure $300k per year in depreciation, taxes, insurance, and finance costs. Add another $150k/year for pilot salary and training. If you find lots of customers and keep the helicopter busy, say 1000 hours a year, there's $450 an hour for fixed costs.

The real key to reducing costs is increasing utilization, this keeps the fixed costs reasonable. Batteries and motor will likely improve fuel+engine cost, but also hurt utilization because charging takes more time than refueling. A large network improves utilization. But building a network, with various types of demand (leisure on weekends, business commute during weekdays, cargo during off-peak periods?), is the real challenge.

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#104

Post by alexchamberlain »

There's one area where I'd love a shorter trip: travelling to the international airport.

I live in South East London and it can easily take over an hour to get to Heathrow, which really eats into a weekend if travelling for work. I'd love to be able to go to a more local vertigo, check my luggage and just have to clear international security at the main airport.

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#105

Post by kaybe »

dheera wrote: post #27
rvnx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the website underestimates one point. The air taxi is not on top of your house. You need to actually go from your house to the Lilium jet starting point (at least 30 minutes or more in these complex urban setups) and you need to be in advance for the take-off, eventual security checks and security briefing (like any plane). After air turbulences, then you are at the Lake Tahoe stuck in the middle of nowhere. Yo…

Also I don't know about Lilium but one of my biggest gripes about Amtrak and other train infrastructure in the US, besides the sheer slow speed, is the complete lack of basic human necessities at the endpoints of travel. You get off the train and get basically thrown into a dilipidated, desolate parking lot full of locked cars, next to a locked building with no food, often not even bathrooms, no rain shelter, no bus…

The point is, the food court and shops usually make the train companies money because they pay high rent. That only works when enough passengers come through, which I'd guess might be the problem in the US?

(eg in Japan, JR East makes 30-40% of its profits from the shops: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2010/12/30/business/jr-eas...)

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#106

Post by gibolt »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #85
looping__lui wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, they probably do that. But the point is: even if politicians DO push that and even if the rules and regulations are written down - doesn’t mean that they will be granted a certification. I mean, funnily enough, they don’t yet even KNOW what they will have to adhere to and achieve and start burning through 300MM USD in investor money... Boeing, Airbus, Cessna, Cirrus and Piper have dozens of years of experienc…

> e.g., each Cessna pilot has to make sure he has 30+min fuel reserve Well, this is pretty much standard practice! Edit: Ah I misunderstood your comment. So yes it is standard. However I could see this not applying to these guys, because with vertical landing capability they should be able to support field landings with really minimal risk.

VTOL and several other major capability differences really should change the certification process. Current certifications a designed around certain engineering constraints.

Nearly all existing planes operate with the same basic parts, thanks to the fuel. This dictates the possible drivetrains.

Reduced complexity can lead to drastic reconsideration.

While I don't expect change to be super fast, regulation tends to move faster than normal when major disruption starts showing up in practice (drones, self-driving vehicles, ...)

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#107

Post by Hovertruck »

> If we imagine for a moment that you work in an office in Palo Alto, you could now choose to live in Hayward (5 min flight, $25), downtown San Francisco (10 min flight, $50), or even San Rafael (15 min flight, $70).

This is a strange example to include in here – that's a pretty expensive (one-way?) commute.

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#108

Post by looping__lui »

looping__lui wrote: post #40

I love innovation and stuff. Radical ideas. But the aviation market is one of the most heavily regulated - bureaucracy beyond comprehension. Did you ever wonder why Piper or Cessna airplanes look EXACTLY what they did 50 years ago? And why the engines used in these planes (e.g., Lycoming) are referred to as “Lycosaurus”!? If you go for a sightseeing flight with a local aeroclub - you will find the pilot spending 30mi…

For those interested, a couple of professors were using physics n hard math on the Lilium claims: https://www.aerokurier.de/8/3/7/8/5/9/6/aerokurier_Konzeptbe...

(It is in German though).

A big German magazine did a rather intensive “how much sense does it make” story: https://www.aerokurier.de/elektroflug/flugtaxis-kein-markt-f...

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#109

Post by looping__lui »

Hovertruck wrote: post #107

> If we imagine for a moment that you work in an office in Palo Alto, you could now choose to live in Hayward (5 min flight, $25), downtown San Francisco (10 min flight, $50), or even San Rafael (15 min flight, $70). This is a strange example to include in here – that's a pretty expensive (one-way?) commute.

I guess they address the pressing problems of their investors? Like people with too much money to spend and a bit detached from reality? ;-)

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#110

Post by TylerE »

kaybe wrote: post #97
TylerE wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's wildly imaginative. But no. Train routes don't exist . Outside commuter routes long distance rail basically don't exist in the US, outside a few connectors between major cities. This is IT: https://trn.trains.com/~/media/files/pdf/map-of-the-month/tm... Keep in mind the scale here... see that small-looking gap between Flagstaff and Tucson? That's 400km... you could fit most European countries in there.

What's going on with the Sanford-Lorton connection?

That's the autotrain. Carries passengers AND the car. T

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_Train

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