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.



Giant Coral Colony Discovered in Red Sea

This natural wonder could become a key highlight for tourists at AMAALA. Photo: RSG
This natural wonder could become a key highlight for tourists at AMAALA. Photo: RSG
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Giant Coral Colony Discovered in Red Sea

This natural wonder could become a key highlight for tourists at AMAALA. Photo: RSG
This natural wonder could become a key highlight for tourists at AMAALA. Photo: RSG

Red Sea Global (RSG) has announced the significant discovery of a giant coral colony in the Red Sea (of the Pavona species) within the waters of AMAALA on the northwestern coast of Saudi Arabia.

Rivalling the size of the current world record holder—a 32-by-34-meter colony found in the Pacific—this remarkable new find is the largest coral colony of this type documented in the Red Sea to date.

According to a statement issued by the RSG on Sunday, this natural wonder could become a key highlight for tourists at AMAALA on diving excursions, offering a unique and unforgettable experience.

Access would be permitted in line with RSG’s responsible tourism ethos, minimizing any potential impact while allowing visitors to witness the breathtaking beauty of the Red Sea’s underwater world.

“The discovery of a coral of such extraordinary dimensions demonstrates the ecological significance as well as the pristine beauty of the Red Sea,” said RSG’s Head of Environmental Protection and Regeneration Ahmed Alansari.

“At RSG, we believe it is critically important to protect our coral reefs. In particular, these giants represent a time capsule of information, providing the ideal tools for tracing past oceanographic transformations that can help us model responses to future environmental changes,” he stated.

“Understanding how this coral has survived for so long will be crucial for protecting other reefs in the Red Sea and potentially all over the world, for generations to come,” he added.

According to the statement, determining the age of these giant corals with minimal impact is challenging due to the invasive nature of accurate dating techniques and the absence of published growth rates for this particular species of coral in the Red Sea. However, estimations have been made based on the coral’s size, growth rates of this species found in the Pacific, and results from photogrammetry efforts. Using these tools, the coral cluster is estimated to be between 400 and 800 years old.

Upcoming studies by researchers from RSG and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) will help pinpoint the coral’s age more accurately and provide insights into the environmental conditions in which it has thrived.

Coral in the Red Sea is known for its particular resilience, adapting genetically to naturally warmer waters and higher salinity levels. This colony will be subject to ongoing monitoring and research to understand what makes these giants so resilient to multiple stressors over long time periods and to help inform conservation efforts for other reefs in the Red Sea and around the world.
The two RSG scientists who discovered the giant coral colony, Rhonda Suka and Sylvia Jagerroos, are now leading its mapping and documentation.
Suka said: “Finding such an invaluable specimen was a truly mind-boggling experience. This colony’s resilience gives us hope for the continued success of corals in the Red Sea, particularly in the face of increasing environmental and anthropogenic stress.”

“A coral this massive is incredibly rare. Mapping these giants is an important part of conserving them, something the ‘Map the Giants’ project is doing on a global scale by identifying and documenting these vital giant coral structures, which it classes as anything larger than five meters. This is the second colony RSG has submitted to the project in the last few months,” said Jagerroos.

The statement disclosed that AMAALA is set to welcome its first guests later this year with the ambitious goal of becoming the world’s most comprehensive health and wellness destination. Launching with more than 1,400 hotel rooms across eight luxury resorts, it will welcome some of the most renowned wellness operators globally, offering a wide array of programs tailored to diverse lifestyles and well-being needs.
This follows RSG’s other destination, The Red Sea, which began welcoming guests in 2023 and now has five hotels open.