United Airlines Reveals First eVTOL Passenger Route Starting In 2025 - Slashdot
source link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/03/24/2237212/united-airlines-reveals-first-evtol-passenger-route-starting-in-2025
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United Airlines Reveals First eVTOL Passenger Route Starting In 2025
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If Chicago works out, United plans to add other airport-to-city "trunk routes," with "branch" routes between different communities coming later. The Archer Midnight has a range of 100 miles (160 km) and a top speed of 150 mph (241 km/h). If approved by the FAA, the Chicago air shuttle would be the first commercial eVTOL service to begin operating in North America. Asked about the cost, an Archer spokesperson told the Chicago Sun-Times that the company hopes to make the service competitive with Uber Black, so it will be roughly $100 for the trip.
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The concept drawing looks a little like the military's replacement for the V-22 Osprey -- the Bell Helicopter's V-280 Valor.
It has rotatable drive blades that tilt forward to supply thrust for normal fixed-wing flight. With six motors supplying forward thrust, it should still have enough power to maintain lift even if one motor has problems.
If the cost is the same as a using a limo or ride share, I would love to get to the airport in just 10 minutes. The disadvantage to the limo service is I would still need to get to the Vertiport, but that might be easier than getting to O'Hare with traffic.
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One advantage I see, as a VTOL that should be a lot quieter than current a/c is you can operate from a relatively dense population location from a small field, and with a 100 mile range potentially fly to more airports than just the local one, as the article states. This opens up smaller airports to take passengers from major airports and allowing discount carriers to operate out of cheaper airports while still reaching a valuable demographic. The range will need to increase to make this viable, but in so
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The noise from aircraft that you hear is most fan/rotor/propeller noise, not the sound of the piston engine or power generating portion of a turbine.
This thing will be just as noisy as any helicopter, probably higher pitched but physics Trump the trendy 'its electric' hysteria.
Remember, a Tesla st highway speed sounds like every other modern car on the road, the ICE isn't the primary noise source as soon as you start moving.
As far as carbon production- where is its power coming from? Unless your putting a
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More along the lines of not using RJ’s and requiring less space while ideally having a larger capacity than a helicopter so it is economically viable; plus propellor design has done a lot to reduce noise. Looking at noise, a jet is about 40dB higher than a turboprop, which has turbine as well as propellor noise.
Aerodynamic noise is of course a component.
I never said it was better environmentally. Electricity comes from somewhere, not just a wall outlet.
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By concentrating the burning of <harmful things> into fewer places (each which burn more) then distributing the result safely as electricity, its possible to put more effort into making it as safe as possible at each location. It wouldn't be cost effective to equip each redneck monster truck with the best (and thus most cost-prohibitive) means to keep emissions to the minimum possible.
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US/FAA:
https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/a... [faa.gov].Years to certificate a supplementary type certificiate (STC), like taking a Boeing 737-8 and certificating a 737-9: 3-5 years. If, during that time, engine or battery technology changes are sufficient for redesign most of that 3-5 years starts over.
Years to certificate an entirely new aircraft 9+ years.
This eVTOL won't be flying passengers in 2025. They'll be extremely "fortunate" to have it available for UAL to start training on it in 2032, first fights 20
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Where did you ever get the idea that that ugly neologism "certificate" was a word? You should have used the simpler existing word, "certify." Go ahead, mod me down for being a language nazi, I don't care.
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Those are two different words and they mean different things. The FAA and other agencies use certificated meaning a certificate has been issued.
You're not a language Nazi, just an idiot who wants to tell other people to use the wrong words because of his personal self-importance.
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Before posting, I checked at dictionary.com, and found no results. If I had, I wouldn't have said anything.
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Bit of a shame as a vtol it's still slower than a helicopter which go around 200 mph whereas this is more like 150. But I suppose going slower is a tradeoff that is needed to get a useful range and payload from battery-powered flight.
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Bit of a shame as a vtol it's still slower than a helicopter which go around 200 mph...
Helicopters cruise at 160 knots (around 160MPH).
I'm a current FAA commercial rotorcraft pilot, and helicopters don't go 200mph (174 knots). The tiltrotors aren't helicopters, and the V-22 Osprey and V-280 demonstrate those faster speeds in fixed-wing prop-plane mode, not VTOL/SVTOL helicopter mode. SImilarly, experimental aircraft with a pusher motor like the X2 are a hybrid, but lack sufficient lift to cary a bunch of VIPs cross-town.
If you include military aircraft, here are the top 18 speed demons in the helicopter world https://engineerine.com/fastes... [engineerine.com]
You'll note that maximum speed on some exceeds 200MPH but only momentaritly. Cruise speed is 180MPH (156kts).Some science:
This is a result of two aerodynamic factors. One is disemmetry of lift, where the blade advancing into the wind generates much more lift than the retreating blade. This is usally compensated for in Russian and Chinese helicopters by coaxial counter-rotating main rotors. This works but results in more turbulence and less power at the main rotor because the rotors interfere with each other's airflow.The second factor is that going faster and faster, the outer edge of the leading blade approaches the speed of sound while the inner part is below that. Crossing that sound barrier mid-blade would likely lead to blade shatter. No test pilot has made such a flight. Sci-fi wise, Airworlf would "disengage its rotor" and use a rocket engine ("give me turbos, Dom") to blast from airspeed+rotor-edge-speed sonic+retreating-blade-edge-speed. It's sci fi, but during such an "event" the rotors would be "disengaged" meaning no lift, no thrust, and no controls. Fun show though.
There are other factors (the aircraft shape through the air, crabbing to reduce drag but lower efficience and speed, etc.) but disymmetry of lift is the hudle yet to be overcome.
NEVERTHELESS, what if this eVTOL thing DID go 200MPH or even 250MPH? What difference does it make on a 10 minute run --assuming instantaneous ground to max airspeed and the reverse on setdown -- 10 min @ 150MPH = 4Min. 10 min @ 200MPH = 3 Min. Time to board and put small carryon case, find seat, sit down, sorry no drink or lav service, seat belt briefing because airlines seat belt laws were created when seat belts in vehicles were a dealer option -- WELL ABOVE THE ENTIRE FLIGHT TIME.
The point of this futuristic wish eVTOL is to avoid exiting the sterile area, hailing a ride, getting through crosstown traffic, rescreening through security theater, and going to the gate. That's where the true time savings is. 3min or 4min for travel, nobody cares.
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Mod parent up
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Helicopters cruise at 160 knots (around 160MPH).
More like 184.12+ mph. 8 knots is roughly 9 mph.-
Yeah, one three typos in that early-morning writeup. MPH=KTS*1.15 roughly.
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"disymmetry of lift is the hudle yet to be overcome" -- The CarterCopter engineers figured this out and managed a claimed top speed of 500mph by using a autogyro design rather than a driven rotor design. They also claimed they could scale up to C-130 sizes. My favorite design characteristic of the CarterCopter was the uranium tipped rotor blades that stored enough energy for a landing/takeoff/landing with a dead engine. I really wish that company had succeeded.
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Not really. Gerogopters don't have disemmetry of lift to overcome. The CC wasn't a helicopter and was incapable of VTOL or hovering flight maneuvering. That makes it require a runway (or equivalent) so top-of-building to top-of-building cross-town shuttle is not an option.
I mean you could say "Jeep figured out how not to have disimmerty of lift" because they got rid of the pesky rotors and just put in 4WD drive wheels, but it doesn't contribute to how United will Jeep you over from one roof to another avo
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Because of the large inertial storage a CarterCopter could perform VTOL by either spinning up the gyro with an external drive or a clutch off the prop drive before take off. Just because the gyro is not powered during flight doesn't mean you can't cheat and pre-spin it. Getting a gyro to fly at 500 mph was a significant accomplishment and still involved a spinning rotor in flight which does have asymmetric lift issues.
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Only 10 minutes, but how long to recharge it for the return flight?
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It's an airport, dumdum. These flights will be one-way.
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The correct answer is:
"With a suitable charger? About as long as it takes to get the next set of passengers on board"
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Archer say they can recharge in 10 minutes, in between 20 mile trips, for day-round operation
With 350kW chargers you can put around 60kWh of charge in a pack in 10 minutes. That’s best case, but if you are charging in the 20-80% range it shouldn’t be too far off.
The 6 packs in the aircraft are 140kWh or so. A 10 min / 20 mile flight (out of a 100 mile range) might take around 60kWh of that, vertical flight being the more energy intensive part of the trip. So you could recharge for the next-
A 10 min / 20 mile flight (out of a 100 mile range) might take around 60kWh
I like the tech as much as any other aerophile, but this is the sadly amusing reality. I like how the marketers say "this will be sustainable, efficient transportation!"
The most effective way to be green is to reduce consumption, and requiring 60kW-hr to travel 20 miles is astonishingly inefficient; 20 miles in my car requires between 6-8kW-hr. Even if the road distance is 3x longer due to not being line-of-sight like the plane, thi
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I can tell you aren't rich. Rich people don't think that way.
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Now factor in the cost and energy and oil savings from reduction in road paving. With properly designed drone delivery networks and VTOL between distribution centers, if they can get the cost down enough, the use of large-scale trucking may very well decline considerably, which would mean that a lot of roads wouldn't get the abuse that they do now, and could go decades without having to be resurfaced — doubly so if high-speed rail takes off.
One of my regular commute trips is 42 miles and takes up to
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Less paving? I haven't seen much for new roads, mostly repaving roads when they deteriorate. Which, in the northeast, is due to the harsh winter conditions, plows and road salt, and tractor trailer trucks. Are these electric planes going to reduce any of those? Even if widely adopted, it'll only carry a fraction of daily commuters or travelers. They can only go from airport to airport. Still have to travel to the airport. I see it being a rich persons luxury, or something like the monorail that'll be a fad
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Obviously it won't reduce freeze-thaw damage, but over time, between this, drone delivery, rail, self-driving light trucks, and other technologies, there's a good chance that tractor trailer trucks will go away.
See also the last part of the comment you're replying to:
Where this would gain real traction is for people's daily commutes. Sadly, that works only if there are thousands of landing-pad-capable rooftops around the region.
So as I see it, the first step is to prove that the technology is realistical
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Swap battery packs.
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Modernise the train coonnections -- they're already there, and it won't take much more than 10 minutes and be a heck of a lot cheaper for the volume.
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Yep. Build a tunnel (or monorail, I don't know the topography) and EVERYBODY can get to the airport in 10 minutes, not just a few millionaires.
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Haven't you read 'Atlas Shrugged' ??
Here we go....:-)
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We already have an "el" train that runs directly to O'Hare Airport. It takes longer than 10 minutes, but last time I took it, it worked fine.
On a related note, I'm confused by this term "air taxi". I think of a "taxi" as something that picks you up at a place of your choosing and delivers you to another place of your choosing, What they're describing here is just a very short-hop flight from one airport to another. If you live in the northern part of Chicago (which is where most of the richer folk live
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This exactly. So now instead of driving or taking a taxi to the airport, you drive or take a taxi to the heliport. So not likely to be much difference in time overall. Just everything like it was, but with extra steps.
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On the flip side, if you work in a business that's close to there, you can leave your car at work for free, versus leaving it at the airport, so this might makes it a two-minute Uber from the office to the heliport and a posh flight, versus a half-hour Uber or drive from home or whatever.
I have no idea if that is actually a realistic scenario, mind you (I'm not from Chicago), but you do have to factor in where people work, availability of parking, etc.
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Modernise the train coonnections -- they're already there, and it won't take much more than 10 minutes and be a heck of a lot cheaper for the volume
Sorry, that sounds like communism!
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This won't start in 2025. The Archer Midnight won't even have got regulatory approval by then. Pure shambles
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Another happy grift is more like it.
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They are decarbonizing and leveraging. Failure is in the stars, say I.
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Is there a solid reason to believe these will be lower cost than conventional helicopters?
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will they land inside the secure zone at the airport, obviating a trip through the TSA lines ?
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I think that's the intent of offering such service!
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And I hope to have beautiful babies with Scarlett Johansson. Operating a helicopter service is expensive, and once there is an accident and this requires management by an air traffic control system, it will be even more expensive.
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There is currently a helicopter service running from Newark to New York City for $195. The $100 goal is not unrealistic if they can find some efficiencies.
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