Flying Taxis Braced for Takeoff at Dubai Airshow

Archer Aviation displayed its Midnight electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) flying taxi is at the Dubai Airshow this week © Giuseppe CACACE / AFP
Archer Aviation displayed its Midnight electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) flying taxi is at the Dubai Airshow this week © Giuseppe CACACE / AFP
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Flying Taxis Braced for Takeoff at Dubai Airshow

Archer Aviation displayed its Midnight electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) flying taxi is at the Dubai Airshow this week © Giuseppe CACACE / AFP
Archer Aviation displayed its Midnight electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) flying taxi is at the Dubai Airshow this week © Giuseppe CACACE / AFP

Flying taxis have been a sci-fi fixture for decades, but one operator says they are finally close to reality, first in the United States and then the United Arab Emirates and India.

"What we used to think of as science fiction is now science fact," Billy Nolen, Archer Aviation's chief safety officer, told AFP at the Dubai Airshow on Wednesday.

"This is happening, it is real, and you will see this in the market in 2025."

Reports of futuristic aircraft ferrying passengers over cities -- and their car-choked roads -- have been cropping up for years, evoking images of 1960s cartoon "The Jetsons".

Yet regulatory approval from the US Federal Aviation Administration for Archer's Midnight, a four-passenger, electric-powered vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, is expected as soon as 2025.

That will trigger "almost concurrent" certification in the UAE, said Nikhil Goel, chief commercial officer at Archer, whose major backers include Mubadala, an Emirati sovereign wealth fund.

UAE flights are expected to start in 2026 on two initial routes: from Dubai airport to the upmarket Palm development, and Abu Dhabi airport to the city-center Corniche.

"We expect the demand to be more than we can even handle. The pricing will be relatively premium at the outset," said Goel.

"But then over time, we'll deploy hundreds of aircraft in the UAE (which) will also lower the price considerably."

At the same time, flights will launch in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, Goel said, calling India "a really, really big market for us".

Test flights for Archer's Midnight are currently taking place in California, and rival firm Joby has performed its first experimental journeys in New York.

The Midnight has a dozen propellers -- independently wired and powered, to minimize the risk of a "catastrophic" failure -- and a wing, allowing it to glide in the event that it can no longer stay aloft.

It will be able to fully recharge in the six or seven minutes that it takes to switch passengers between trips, and has a current maximum range of about 160 kilometres (100 miles) at about 240 kilometres per hour (150 mph).

Flying the aircraft is straightforward, said Goel, who insisted that a 12-year-old in a simulator could learn it in 20 minutes.

Flights will be booked as ride shares, and will initially cost about $4-5 per passenger mile before dropping to half that in about two or three years, Goel added.

With flying taxis plying existing helicopter routes -- and theoretically safer, cheaper and more environmentally friendly than helicopters -- there is significant room to scale up, the company says.

"We have designed this business case to operate in urban environments, say from the airport to city centre," said Golen, the chief safety officer.

"It's fully zero-emissions, fully sustainable, it is eco-friendly, it has about 100 times less noise signature than a conventional helicopter.



A Rare Plant Emits a Stink of Death When it Blooms. Thousands in Australia Queued to Get Close to It

People view an endangered plant known as the “corpse flower” for its putrid stink, which is about to bloom at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Sydney, Australia, Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
People view an endangered plant known as the “corpse flower” for its putrid stink, which is about to bloom at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Sydney, Australia, Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
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A Rare Plant Emits a Stink of Death When it Blooms. Thousands in Australia Queued to Get Close to It

People view an endangered plant known as the “corpse flower” for its putrid stink, which is about to bloom at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Sydney, Australia, Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
People view an endangered plant known as the “corpse flower” for its putrid stink, which is about to bloom at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Sydney, Australia, Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

The rare unfurling of an endangered plant that emits the smell of decaying flesh drew hundreds of devoted fans to a greenhouse in Sydney on Thursday where they lined up to experience a momentous bloom -– and a fragrance evoking gym socks and rotting garbage.
Tall, pointed and smelly, the corpse flower is scientifically known as amorphophallus titanum — or bunga bangkai in Indonesia, where the plants are found in the Sumatran rainforest, The Associated Press said.
But to fans of this specimen, she’s Putricia -- a portmanteau of “putrid” and “Patricia” eagerly adopted by her followers who, naturally, call themselves Putricians. For a week, she has graced a stately and gothic display in front of a purple curtain and wreathed in mist from a humidifier at the Royal Sydney Botanic Garden.
Her rise to fame since has been rapid, with more than 13,000 admirers filing past for a moment in her increasingly pungent presence. No corpse flower has bloomed at the garden for 15 years.
A slow bloomer The plant only flowers every 7-10 years in the wild.
“The fact that they open very rarely, so they flower rarely, is obviously something that puts them at a little bit of a disadvantage in the wild,” said garden spokesperson Sophie Daniel, who designed Putricia's kooky and funereal display. “When they open, they have to hope that another flower is open nearby, because they can’t self-pollinate.”
There are thought to be only 300 of the plants in the wild and fewer than 1,000 worldwide — including those in cultivation. Among them is Putricia, which arrived at the garden seven years ago.
When her flower was spotted in December she was just 25 centimeters (10 inches) high. By Thursday, she was 1.6 meters (5 feet 3 inches) tall -– and her flower spike was slowly opening like a pleated skirt around a majestic central tuber, the yellow-green outer curling to reveal a burgundy center.
Putricia-mania builds As excitement grew in Sydney about the moment of her bloom, garden staff erected crowd barriers, giving the Victorian greenhouse the air of a rock concert. Fans trod a red carpet to view Putricia from behind velvet ropes in a display inspired by Queen Victoria’s funeral, the Rocky Horror Picture Show and the oeuvre of the late director David Lynch.
Inside, fans took selfies and leaned in for a sniff — an increasingly perilous prospect as Putricia's odor developed. One young woman raised her hands and bowed as though in worship. On social media, garden staff performed a viral dance to Chappell Roan’s summer hit HOT TO GO! against a backdrop of the stately plant.
It was difficult to say why the regal, mysterious and stinky flower had attracted such a following -– but perhaps the answer lay in the “reverence” viewers felt in the presence of “such an amazing living being,” Daniel said.
A swift rise to online fame Along with her real-life visitors, Putricia’s online fandom has been rapid, global and deeply strange -– if much less smelly. A 24/7 live stream established by the botanic garden drew close to a million views in less than a week and a shared language of memes and inside jokes sprang up.
Frequently deployed acronyms included WWTF, or we watch the flower, WDNRP -- we do not rush Putricia – and BBTB, or blessed be the bloom. “Putricia is a metaphor for my life,” wrote one poster, who did not elaborate.
Commenters on social media made plans to hurry to the garden as the plant opened. In just 24 hours, Putricia’s bloom -– and her stench -– would be gone.
As she unfurled, Putricia would heat to 37 degrees Celsius (100 F) to better spread her scent, Daniel said, attracting flies and carrion beetles to burrow inside and lay eggs. Then, work will begin to hand-pollinate the plant in efforts to ensure the species' diversity and survival.
But first, thousands of Putricians will attempt to get as close as they can to their hero of a week.
“We did have a few conversations early on about whether or not we should have vomit bags in the room," said Daniel, adding that garden staff ultimately decided against it. “I haven’t heard of anyone actually being harmed."