Helicopters in the urban air mobility ecosystem

This ASD paper looks at the importance of mobility in cities, and the need for seamless and integrated transport solutions to enhance the mobility of people and goods. The paper highlights the potential of air mobility solutions to provide an additional degree of freedom in terms of efficiency and effectiveness.

These air mobility solutions will also complement existing public air services by leveraging its point-to-point network, targeted mission time saving and planned vertiport network.

The paper also discusses the term “urban air mobility” which refers to the new potential that can be brought to urban mobility by air vehicles. However, the term is not defined in law and is used to mean different things by different stakeholders. The paper explains that the term “urban” can include different types of airborne operations, such as intra-city, peri-city, inter-city or urban-rural. The paper also highlights that discussions often treat “UAM” as being synonymous with passenger electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOL) operating from vertiports with air traffic management (ATM). The paper notes that helicopters can play a significant role in the UAM ecosystem, especially in emergency medical services, and the the industry should work towards integrating helicopters into the UAM ecosystem.