Uber has partnered with NASA for flying taxis priced competitively with standard Uber journeys. The announcement was made by Uber on Wednesday. It also announced that Los Angeles will join two other previously revealed “UberAIR” pilot schemes in Dallas Fort-Worth, Texas, and Dubai.
The new partnership of Uber with NASA’s UTM (Unmanned Traffic Management) Project will support company’s goal of starting demonstration flights of uberAIR in the selected cities of Unites States by 2020.
As per the reports the company will be able to demonstrate first flights by 2020 and by 2023 company will start the project commercially.
The flights will be made both pilot based and pilot less in future. But initially flights will be run only with pilots.
The new initiative will really be very helpful in travel time reduction. For example a journey between Los Angeles airport and the Staples Center arena currently takes more than 80 minutes by car but, with new flying taxis, it will only take 27 minutes.
The vehicles will take off, land and recharge upon a network of ‘vertiports’ installed on top of parking garages, on existing helipads or on unused land around road interchanges.
Take off and landing will be different from helicopters and journeys will be priced competitively with a standard Uber trip.
