Sounding Off: Urban air mobility may not hit travel at a massive scale

Scott Davidson

"The disruptive potential of UAM is such that no travel company can afford to wait before thinking through the implications."

Quote from Scott Davidson, managing director at Accenture's travel industry group, in an article on PhocusWire this week about urban air mobility.

 

Each Friday, PhocusWire dissects and debates an industry trend or new development covered by PhocusWire that week.

Urban air mobility, as we're now supposed to call the application of vertical takeoff and landing vehicles to regular passenger transportation, is in that spot where only the foolhardy will make a prediction.

That's not to say that Scott Davidson of Accenture, writing in an excellent opinion piece this week, is not to be trusted with his forecast for the emergence of UAMs.

There is no doubt that UAM is likely to become a fixture in the world of travel and transportation to some degree in the medium to long term.

The extent of that growth is highly questionable, however, not least how it will also impact on existing forms of transportation.

One of the most obvious examples of how a new form of transportation turned another on its head comes in the example of Eurostar, the London to Paris high-speed rail service.

Following its launch in 1994, a once busy air route between the French and U.K. capitals was turned on its head as travelers opted for the convenience of a city center to city center route, passenger space and avoiding the hassles of airports.

Even the emergence of low-cost carriers at around the same time did nothing to put the route back into the mainstream.

But this shift was genuine scale - thousands of air passengers every day could fill the dozen of so 900-person trains on the same route.

UAM is a different proposition in that regard. Plus there is no detail yet as to how city, urban area and short-haul airspaces will be managed by controllers.

It seems that, at least at this stage, there will not be thousands of UAM-type vehicles cross-crossing the skies.

This is not to say that airlines, public transportation services and other types of travel brands should ignore the inevitable rise of UAM - on the contrary, in fact.

They should consider how to operate alongside it, utilizing its potential, partnering with providers of services to benefit customers.

UAM will replace some services that currently operate in the air or on rails but it perhaps seems that the impact will be at a different, lower scale than some of the disruption seen in transportation elsewhere.