What is Advanced Air Mobility?

And why you should care.

Mar 31, 2022

Howdy! It’s me again, coming to you live from Ohio. But what if I didn’t want to be in Ohio? What if I wanted to explore a new place? Thanks to modern technology, I have a whole host of options to use. Car, train, bus, plane, even horse would technically be a viable option. Each has its time and place as it greatly depends on how far you’re trying to go. For distances under a few hundred miles, most people would choose to drive or take the train. For longer distances, generally, people prefer planes. There are of course exceptions to these, where people with some extra cash will fly short distances and people who really enjoy road trips will drive long distances. The one advantage that flying does have is speed and clear skies. Airports themselves can absolutely be congested, but once you’re up in the air there’s not much traffic. It’s a whole different story on the ground. If you’re ~lucky~ enough to have started your career during COVID, you thankfully haven’t had to deal with traffic much, but from what I’ve heard, it’s a hassle. But what if you could avoid the traffic on your daily commute without having $5k burning a hole in your pocket to call a chopper? I present to you: Advanced Air Mobility.

Advanced Air Mobility, or AAM, also known as Urban Air Mobility (UAM), is essentially drone meets helicopter. They attempt to take the safety, control, and reliability of quad-copters and make them big enough to carry people. Today we’re going to talk about what actually differentiates them from helicopters, if helicopters still have a place in an AAM world, and why it may matter to you.

How do consumers view advanced air mobility? | McKinsey

Currently, there are dozens of real startups with real funding going after the ability to move through cities more efficiently. Each of these companies has its own design—its own way of achieving this goal—but they all tout the same benefits: cost, sustainability, noise, and reliability.

We’ll start with noise, and why these multi-rotor aircraft have an advantage over traditional helicopters. Helicopters have much longer rotors. Because of this, the noise they make is at a lower frequency. In the world of AAM, the rotors are much smaller, and therefore need to spin faster to generate the same amount of lift. Spinning faster means higher frequency noise. Higher pitch frequencies mean more energy but they dissipate more quickly in air. This means that up close, they tend to be more annoying, but once they get sufficiently far away, they’re much quieter than helicopters.

AAM can be more sustainable because they can pick from a greater number of power sources. Helicopters need a lot of power to spin that massive rotor. Currently, this power can really only come from traditional gas-burning engines. Batteries, for example, are much better at releasing consistent low energy over time, rather than short high-energy bursts. When you add additional rotors and make them smaller, each one needs significantly less power, and suddenly batteries become an option. Virtually all AAM companies are pursuing this route, using batteries or fuel cells instead of gas to cut down on in-flight emissions.

Cost is another huge factor. First of all, electricity is cheaper than gas. Also, electric motors weigh significantly less than gas motors, which saves power and decreases operating costs. Lastly, the highest stress and most commonly replaced components are those that rotate. AAM vehicles have smaller rotors, which cost much less than a helicopter blade. So, every time one needs to be replaced, you’re left with a much smaller bill. All this comes together to make travel for you and me much cheaper. Joby, a spinoff of a company created by Uber, is targeting a per-flight cost about that of an Uber-Black ($50-$150 total, depending on the trip). Alone, this is a pretty expensive way to avoid traffic, but with 3 or 4 friends that would comfortably fit inside, it becomes a much more manageable.

Lastly, but most importantly, safety. Smaller rotors mean lower energy parts that will do less damage if they break off. Additionally, more than one rotor adds robustness, with most companies claiming they can fly with one—or even two—rotors out. With additional rotors, also comes increased mobility and control. This allows them to navigate more easily in tight spaces, making them particularly attractive for city travel.

While there are significant benefits, as with any disruptive technology, there comes significant risk. The first is complexity. More spinning objects means more things that could break, so these companies will need to do significant testing before they can claim to be flight ready. Certification is also an issue. Because this is an entirely new architecture for flight, organizations like the FAA don’t have any experience certifying them. This means that the companies making the vehicles and the FAA will need to work together closely to ensure that the right requirements are being set to ensure safe operation. In addition to the technology itself, it needs to have infrastructure to operate within. Planes need airports, trains need rails and stations, and AAM vehicles need heliports. Because the goal is to use these for all sorts of routes, new areas to takeoff and land are required. Additionally, if these vehicles are electric, all of their stations will need to be equipped with pretty powerful chargers. Lastly, public opinion always remains a key factor. This can be the safest technology in the world, but it doesn’t matter unless people want to fly on it. AAM companies will need to focus on spreading awareness and showing the flying public that they’re safe before they’ll be used on a large scale.

Will this technology make it to market and cause the next revolution in aviation? Maybe. The technology itself already exists, the biggest challenges facing this start-up heavy industry is ensuring a market exists for the product when it comes online. Most of the major players in this space like Wisk, Joby, and Lilium are targeting entry into service by 2027, so we won’t have to wait too long to find out.

Thanks for reading this week’s edition of It’s Not Rocket Science! I hope you learned something new. As always, if there are any topics that you’d like to see explored please let me know in the comments!

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