TAXIS TAKING OFF

Flying taxis could be in the air by the end of the year, according to Airbus chief Tom Enders. The aircraft maker’s Urban Air Mobility unit hopes to start testing helicopterlike taxis by late 2017, about three years sooner than ride-sharing app Uber expects to launch its own airborne cabs. Uber, which this year hired veteran NASA engineer Mark Moore as its “director of engineering for aviation”, hopes to get airborne by 2021.