Comment by Ekaros
10 hours ago
Seems awfully tiny for any real total capacity. Should scale it up to size of say large railway car size so dozens if not hundreds of people at one time. This would also cut down cost and allow wider range of population that is no limited from use to use it.
What you are describing seems outside the scope of this particular aircraft model.These are meant to land on existing helipads in NYC. From the article, the business model is to cut down 1-2 hour commutes to and from the JFK airport to seven-minute flights. Never mind the helipad space, just boarding hundreds of passengers and their luggage would cut severely into that time saving.
But it is fundamental issue. Unless you have extremely large number of helipads. The throughput is limited to capacity of landing, deboarding, boarding and lift off. Is the 7 minutes from lift off to landing or just travel time in air? How long does boarding and deboarding take, especially with luggage? Can this system reach more than low dozens passenger per hour by pad?
That doesn't matter as much when each passenger is happy to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege.
24 pax/hr * $1000/pax * 12 hr/day = $288,000/day in revenue
I say the same about ground taxis - buses are much more efficient
Or perhaps take that large railway car, put a few together, and run then on or through the ground direct from the airport to a few downtown locations every couple of minutes. The efficiency per person would be ridiculously high (20,000 an hour), and I suspect the individual end-to-end speed would be faster than by air
15 minutes for JFK to West 34th Street is just 14 miles. That doesn't include any boarding/off boarding process, which are far faster in a train than anything, including in a taxi.
That's about the distance from Heathrow to Paddington which also takes 15 minutes.