Italian, French airports create company for flying taxi infrastructure

Aeroporto Guglielmo Marconi di Bologna SpA

26/10/2021 11:06

ROME, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Airports in the Italian cities of
Rome, Venice and Bologna and on the French Riviera have teamed
up to create a company to build and manage infrastructures for
flying taxis, the companies said in a statement on Tuesday.  
    The infrastructure, also known as vertiports, will be used
to deploy battery-powered aircraft that can take off and land
vertically, offering a new way for travellers to beat traffic
and hop between cities.
    Atlantia's  ATL.MI  Aeroporti di Roma, Aeroporto di Venezia,
Aeroporto Guglielmo Marconi di Bologna  ADB.MI  and France's
Aeroports de la Cote d’Azur said their company, called Urban
Blue, will be open to other industrial, technology and financial
partners for the gradual expansion of the project in Italy,
France and elsewhere.
    Urban City will also partner with German flying taxi startup
Volocopter and will be supported by investment fund EDF Invest,
a shareholder of Aeroports de la Cote d’Azur, they said.
    The start of the vertiport operations in Rome, Venice and
the French coastal city of Nice is planned by 2024, they said,
but gave no financial details of the project. 
    Marco Troncone, the CEO of Aeroporti di Roma, a unit of
infrastructure group Atlantia, said Urban Blue was working with
a "challenging but possible timeline, to allow Rome to be among
the first cities in Europe to activate this type of connection".
    On Wednesday, a Volocopter, a battery-powered passenger
aircraft, will be presented at Rome's Fiumicino airport. 
    The Italian capital is seen as the third most suitable city
for the development of what is known as urban air mobility (UAM)
in Europe, a study by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency
showed.

 (Reporting by Francesco Zecchini; editing by Agnieszka Flak,
Robert Birsel)
 ((Francesco.Zecchini@thomsonreuters.com;))