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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

#71

Post by pdelbarba »

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?

For an owner operator, an R22 and maybe an R44 would be able to do SF to Lake Tahoe for well under $250. For a charter service you could probably get a commercial operator to do it for maybe around ~$500 and there are definitely some inefficiencies you could remove there. Lilium is on crack if they actually think $250 is going to be the all in cost for a private flight though. You don't just spin up a new air frame and 135 operation and make money at those numbers...unless you pull an Uber on steroids and open the VC floodgates...

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

#72

Post by Arelius »

mangecoeur wrote: post #51

Can an American please explain how a 3h41 minute car journey to Tahoe turns into an 8h49(!) train journey? Are your trains pulled by horses or something?

Yeah, so so the drive from Emeryville to Roseville is about 2 hrs via train or car, the car generally being a bit faster, the vast majority of the difference in time takes place from Roseville to Truckee, where the modern Freeway has had significant earthworks to provide a drive that can take place in about an hour, wheras the train takes a much older route that is both longer and ends up having a max speed much closer to 30 mph.

Additionally Amtrak doesn't have right-of-way on those rails, so delays due to freight trains are super common on that section of track.

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

#73

Post by aidenn0 »

mangecoeur wrote: post #51

Can an American please explain how a 3h41 minute car journey to Tahoe turns into an 8h49(!) train journey? Are your trains pulled by horses or something?

Much of California is single-track[1] and the freight trains have right-of-way, meaning you spend a decent amount of time sitting on a siding track waiting for a mile-long freight train to go by.

1: As in a single track for both directions, meaning there are limited places where a north-bound and south-bound train can pass each other.

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

#74

Post by Arelius »

hackcasual wrote: post #61
mangecoeur wrote: post #51

Can an American please explain how a 3h41 minute car journey to Tahoe turns into an 8h49(!) train journey? Are your trains pulled by horses or something?

It's not really a train journey, it's mostly by bus.

The California Zephyr does in fact make the daily trip from Emeryville through Truckee, and on to Reno and beyond.

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

#75

Post by looping__lui »

mattigames wrote: post #55
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…

Well, they should just use some of that VC money into pocketing (AKA lobbying) politicians to relax rules for these specific kind of airplanes, it has worked pretty well for the health industry in the US.

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 experience and KNOW how to get planes certified - and yet they essentially “re-use older certifications”...

Fun times when they get told they need two ballistic parachutes or they need at least 30 min safety backup for hover flight (e.g., each Cessna pilot has to make sure he has 30+min fuel reserve). Your engineers will commit suicide when you surprise them with “oh there was this ask...”

And then the weather - I mean, seriously, there are super strict rules about visual minimas for flights in the US and Europe. If you go instrument rated things get even more complex and bureaucratic. Not to mention that instrument flight is PROHIBITED in Germany below 2000+ft in uncontrolled airspace...

Ah, and I want to see that flying electric lawn-mower make his way across the Alps with 50kts headwind, freezing temperatures at cruising altitude. Pilots landing in Innsbruck need special training for “Foehn” Approaches and when the heavy winds roll over the city and airport you can hear the pilots pushing full throttle in final to counter the 2000+ft/min downwash.

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

#76

Post by pcl »

mangecoeur wrote: post #51

Can an American please explain how a 3h41 minute car journey to Tahoe turns into an 8h49(!) train journey? Are your trains pulled by horses or something?

The rail tracks in much of the western states are owned by the freight industry, and Amtrak leases time on them. As a result, the tracks and schedules are freight-oriented, not passenger-oriented.

This means the tracks are not graded for high-speed relative lightweight passenger rolling stock. Also, the passenger trains need to fit into the schedules dictated by the freight traffic.

Which is really a shame. The track from SF through Lake Tahoe runs just past Sugar Bowl and into Truckee, and is about 180 miles. A ski train would be really easy.

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

#77

Post by qppo »

tschwimmer wrote: post #16

To me this marketing just looks like a slightly less expensive helicopter. It's great that we can travel to our ski trips or vacations a bit faster but it's not going impact the mobility needs of 95% of people. Why isn't anyone working on improving commutes through dense cityscapes? It's obviously a much harder problem but it's also a more important one.

> Why isn't anyone working on improving commutes through dense cityscapes?

Uber, Lyft, Musk's Boring Company, and all their variants... there are tons of people working on improving commutes.

But IMO there isn't a technical problem to solve. It's social and political. We shouldn't be asking about improving commuting, but reducing its necessity and distance.

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

#78

Post by baybal2 »

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.

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

#79

Post by GekkePrutser »

chris_va wrote: post #66

Most people do not have the years to devote to becoming a good pilot, much less get a new category cert, so I find that these sorts of prototypes have a very limited audience. "Or maybe you want to escape to Lake Tahoe for a long weekend? That would be less than an hour on a Lilium Jet" ... ah, mountain flying with batteries, what could possibly go wrong. Also, I find the lack of a vertical stabilizer this plane to b…

And a ballistic parachute is not super safe in mountainous areas where the ground is not flat. With the typical ballistic parachute there is zero control on where you land. And even in the best circumstances the landing is pretty rough, it's more like a last resort.

However engine failure can also occur on fuel-powered aircraft. And at least this thing has a whole lot of engines so it could afford the failure of a few. The batteries could be subdivided in sections.

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

#80

Post by TylerE »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #67
mangecoeur wrote: post #51

Can an American please explain how a 3h41 minute car journey to Tahoe turns into an 8h49(!) train journey? Are your trains pulled by horses or something?

This discrepancy is much higher from the other destinations they mention, so I would imagine there is either no station nearby the lake so you have to take another mode for the last leg, or you have to get some complicated multiple-train route with long layovers :)

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.

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