We’re flying into a whole new world
Aircraft, big and small, are changing views with flight as tech advances
Just before Christmas, the city of Los Angeles sued the Federal Aviation Administration. “The FAA has put an endless caravan of lowflying planes over homes, schools and parks,” David Ryu, a Los Angeles city councilman, told reporters when the suit was filed.
While criticizing the effect, few would have found fault with the FAA’s intent, which was to allow airlines at many airports around the country to cut fuel consumption and carbon emissions.
But by flying in more concise airways at these airports, neighborhoods once out of the flight paths suddenly were exposed to jet noise.
Several other communities have challenged the FAA’s program.
That promising technology should unleash widespread dismay is a lesson for an industry advancing on many fronts. Drone deliveries have been widely publicized, while the effort to bring back supersonic air travel may be less known. And the futuristic scenario in which pilotless air taxis fly across cities still seems fantastical.
But real-world models of these concepts already are being tested, and they stand to significantly alter the public’s relationship with flight. As the sight and sound of aircraft become more integrated into everyday life, will unanticipated consequences set off civic outrage, such as those new air traffic patterns in Los Angeles?
“There’s excitement about those developments and thorny policy discussions,” said Melinda Pagliarello, senior director of environmental affairs for the industry group Airports Council International-North America. “Aside from the Jetsons-like ‘look at the cool technology,’ there are policy discussions that have to be had.”
Supersonic transport
Supersonic transport is not new — the Concorde flew from 1976 until 2003 — so some predictions can be made. If SSTs are to work this time, a better business model and access to more travelers are needed, according to Blake Scholl, founder and chief executive of Boom Supersonic.
“It’s going to be affordable to anyone who can fly business class today, so think $5,000 round-trip, New York to London,” Scholl told the podcast “Should This Exist,” speaking about the 55-seat Overture supersonic transport Boom is working on.
Supersonic transports could eat into the airline industry’s effort to reduce its footprint because the planes consume more fuel per passenger than existing airliners. A spokesman for Boom said 1,000 to 2,000 Overture airliners could be flying within the first 10 years of service.
“Over their lifetimes, 2,000 commercial SSTs would emit carbon dioxide equal to one-fifth of the entire carbon budget of international aviation,” said Dan Rutherford, author of a study on the environmental effects of these aircraft for the International Council on Clean Transportation.
“This would make even more challenging the industry’s goal of halving CO2 emissions,” Rutherford’s report said.
Reviving these planes during a time of rising discontent with the unbridled growth of air travel has already prompted pushback.
“Bringing back supersonic transport made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up,” said Greg Lindsay, director of applied research at the urbanfocused nonprofit NewCities and a co-author of “Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next.”
“It’s a distillation of the promise of air travel that we can be like gods and travel the earth and be everywhere at once,” he added. “But why do you need to straddle the Earth in a single day?”
Drone deliveries
Forty-five countries either allow or soon will allow drone deliveries, according to a survey by the industry website Unmanned
Airspace. But the technology is far more advanced than the systems needed to control the airspace.
Despite an impression that soon everyone will be receiving purchases via drone, the present technology is more suited for business-to-business applications, deliveries in hardto-access locations and when speed is a priority, said Michael Zahra, president and chief executive of Drone Delivery Canada.
“In South Texas and South Louisiana, there are 3,000 oil rigs off the coast. They have to get parts and supplies from shore to rig and from oil rig to oil rig,” Zahra said. A drone is “cheaper than a helicopter and more reliable than Bob in his boat.”
Because most drones are battery operated, they will have a lower carbon footprint than other transportation modes, though the benefits will be weighed against the support required: conventionally powered warehouses, drone ports and charging stations.
Urban air mobility
Generally speaking, urban air mobility vehicles are grown-up drones that can carry people.
EHang, a Chinese company, already is testing a pilotless aircraft that can carry two passengers. It has an arrangement to begin flights in the city of Guangzhou. Uber Elevate wants to begin flights in 2023 in two cities in the United States as well as in Melbourne, Australia.
“Twenty years from now, there should be several hundred thousand” of these aircraft according to Fred Reid, global head of transportation for Airbnb, and the former president of a company developing urban air mobility vehicles. “This is very much a case of when and not if.”
Assuming he’s right, aviation will be a more noticeable part of daily life. Sky ports will be needed to connect transportation hubs to one another in cities and to link them to outlying communities.
Eric Allison, head of
Uber Elevate, said his company was committed to working with communities on the selection of sky ports, though the sites would still have to make logistical sense.
“To get off the ground we have to be intelligent and deliberate about how we pick the sky ports,” Allison said, “connecting buses and public transit and cars to make more mobility and give people options.”
Critics say it’s ironic that Uber is promoting the benefits of air transport over traffic-jammed streets considering the role that ride-hailing services have played in creating terrestrial congestion. The San Francisco County Transportation Authority says shared rides were responsible for a 50 percent increase in traffic between 2010 and 2016.
Progress in urban air mobility in the U.S. will be slower. Aircraft have to be certified and airspace redefined. Air traffic systems and urban sky ports need to be approved and built.
Those who have experience with new aviation technologies say that delays offer a chance to keep people informed and to anticipate problems. Even so, there will be mistakes.