Last May, the FAA released an airspace blueprint as guidance to potential changes to airspace and procedures in the accommodation of future eVTOL air taxis. A short accompanying video noted that air taxis would operate initially in the existing helicopter and heli-path structure, require onboard pilots actively flying the aircraft, and follow all applicable aviation regulations.
If this all sounds familiar, it is; it is similar to how air taxis, regulated by Part 135 of the Federal Aviation Regulations and including fixed-wing aircraft, have operated for decades.
In the discussion of the blueprint, which is available online, the agency failed to note the current existence of air taxi operations or their long-storied history in commercial aviation.
In federal records, the term “air taxi” dates to 1921 in an interesting mention in the Congressional Record. In August of that year, California Rep. Charles Curry introduced a bill to establish a federal Department of Aeronautics. His remarks extolled the virtue of aviation in both its civil and military capacities, including a list of common uses for the airplane with 34 separate categories such as sports, landscape gardening, commercial financial transactions, and fisheries. Under the category “Service—Special Dispatch,” he noted passenger-carrying, sightseeing, regular air taxi service, commercial routes between cities, and hotel service. (The hotel uses of aviation were apparently to transport guests to “golf links etc.”)
Air taxis could be found in the major media around the same time. The New York Times reported in June 1919 that North Shore Aerial Transportation Service had completed a nine-minute flight in Massachusetts from Swampscott to Boston. They planned continued flights throughout the summer.
A short article in the November 1921 issue of Popular Mechanics heralded what was believed to be the longest air taxi flight to date. Under a headline of “4,250-mile ‘Air-Taxi’ Trip Made Without Incident,” the magazine detailed a business flight that left Paris on August 25 and then proceeded to stop in fourteen cities across Europe before its return on September 15.
Reports of air taxi service in various parts of the U.S. continued in the ensuing decades, with Portland reporting in 1926 that Rankin Air Service carried 65 people to various locations in one day, charging each 25 cents per mile.
Elsewhere, an Ohio family en route to Miami, Florida in 1930 reported an air taxi trip throughout the Caribbean, and in 1938 air taxi service arrived in Chicago with a shuttle service from the lake shore to the airport, and a floatplane air taxi expected to open soon as well.
After observing the slow proliferation of these non-airline commercial activities for some time, in 1951 the federal government weighed in with specific regulations. As posted in the Federal Register in February of that year, the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) defined air taxis as air carriers that were not required to obtain a certificate of public convenience and necessity (due to non-scheduled service), and exclusively used aircraft of less than 12,500 pounds maximum takeoff weight. The exemption from the air carrier certificate requirement could be revoked by the CAB at any time.
Other than within the territory of Alaska, (which was governed by a separate set of regulations), there were several specific rules enacted to govern how air taxis could fly between two points, stressing that such operations could not constitute a “uniform pattern of normal consistency.” Air taxis were charters, but ambiguity remained in some differences between them and air carriers. Even after Part 135 was developed in 1964, gray areas persisted.
In 1972 the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) published a special study into air taxi safety and in the process delved into the extensive history of air taxi operations and regulations. While not a definitive history of air taxis in the U.S. (the study’s authors did not address air taxi proliferation in the 1920s and ‘30s), it is a significant document for the period.
It references the National Air Taxi Conference, which was formed in 1950 by air taxi operators focused on passenger traffic. The study also reports on the massive growth of the air taxi and commuter sector of the industry and notes the CAB’s establishment of the commuter air carrier category in 1969, which applied to those air taxis conducting five weekly round trips between two points and publishing flight schedules, or having a USPS contract to fly the mail.
The air taxi/small commuter split as it exists today came out of the development of that separate category in 1969.
So, from a historical and regulatory standpoint, the long development of the operations known as “air taxis” is easily documented. And yet, we cannot resist using the term for the latest iteration of nonscheduled, short-distance flight availability.
On July 18, The New York Times ran an article discussing the FAA’s anticipation of a competitive air taxi market by 2028. The reporter described eVTOL aircraft as those finally able to transport people from the “middle of cities” to airports or vacation destinations but noted they would likely face resistance from locals who might consider the smaller aircraft as hazardous or annoying.
The potential market for short-flight operators was estimated as much as “tens of billions of dollars.” The newspaper was presenting air taxis as brand-new technology and brand-new activity.
For all that, it sounds remarkably like how charter helicopters already operate, (right down to potential noise complaints). Yet again, the air taxi business was being introduced to the public.
How do we repeatedly suffer from collective amnesia concerning a significant portion of the aviation industry? The problem might lie in the endless appeal of the term “air taxi.” No matter how the aviation industry and regulators have defined short charter flights, the general public continues to chase the dream of fully automated aviation transport that will appear on demand right outside their homes and whisk them off to work or play.
How to accomplish this level of transport cheaply, safely, and within existing aviation infrastructure remains a key question mark in the fanciful air taxi vision. Yet that vision keeps capturing wide attention.
Popular Mechanics predicted in 2005 that within 20 years, there would be a fleet of 13,500 economical four-passenger microjets in small airports across the country offering air-taxi service at the price of an economy-class airline ticket. That didn’t happen.
At the end of the day, no matter how many articles are written touting air taxi operators as mysterious futuristic entities—the Los Angeles Times in 2022: “Look! Up in the Sky! It’s an air taxi. They’re coming to Los Angeles”; the Washington Post in 2019: “This company says its air taxis could be flying people across major cities by the mid-2020s”; and the Seattle Times last month: “Air taxis, hyped for years, may finally arrive by 2028”—nothing has changed where it matters, which is safety regulation with the FAA.
Whether or not it matters that air taxis have been flying for over 100 years isn’t up to the FAA. However, the term has fallen victim to a collision of futuristic dreams and modern marketing.
In 1972 the NTSB noted that the act of hiring an air taxi was so similar to the hiring of a taxicab that it had obtained the name through its “identification as ‘air taxi’ service.” The image in our heads of cheap, compact flying yellow taxi cabs is too alluring to apply to an ordinary old Cessna 206 or Airbus Helicopters Astar 350 B2. Air taxis will be the stuff of the Jetsons. Maybe, finally, this time it will really happen. And it will be affordable; we are sure of that too— otherwise, it wouldn’t be called a taxi.