歡迎來到垂直升降機場 Welcome to the vertiport

A new type of air terminal opens for flying taxis

新型終端對空中計程車開放

Urban air-travel takes a step closer

城市航空旅行更近一步

Nov 16th 2022 | Pontoise-Cormeilles

AS THE MORNING mist slowly clears over Pontoise-Cormeilles, a regional airport 40km north-west of central Paris, it is time to check in at the vertiport. This is the name the aviation industry has adopted to describe a new type of air terminal. Vertiports will be used by eVTOLs, or flying taxis as they are sometimes called. As the name indicates, these aircraft take off and land vertically, like helicopters. But instead of being powered by jet turbines they rely on sets of electrically driven rotors, much like hovering drones.

随着晨霧在巴黎市中心西北 40 公裡處的蓬圖瓦茲-科梅耶地區機場上空慢慢散去，是時候在垂直升降機場辦理登機手續了。這是航空業用來描述新型航空終端的名稱。垂直升降機場将被eVTOL使用，或有時稱為飛行計程車。顧名思義，這些飛機像直升機一樣垂直起飛和降落。但是，它們不是由噴氣式渦輪機提供動力，而是依靠一組電動轉子，就像懸停的無人機一樣。

Pontoise-Cormeilles’ vertiport, which opened on November 10th, so far serves only as a prototype—for, being the first of its kind in Europe, it has no matching facility to act as a destination. But Groupe ADP, which manages Paris’s airports, including Pontoise-Cormeilles, hopes that will soon change. The Paris Olympics open in July 2024. By then the firm plans for at least two routes to be operating in the region, with a total of ten air taxis, each flying two or three trips an hour. These would link the Olympic Village with conventional airports and also with the Paris heliport at Issy-les-Moulineaux, on the southern side of the city near an emergency medical centre.

蓬圖瓦茲-科梅耶斯的垂直機場于 11 月 10 日開放，到目前為止，它隻是一個原型——因為作為歐洲第一個此類機場，它沒有比對的設施作為目的地。但管理巴黎機場（包括Pontoise-Cormeilles）的ADP集團希望這種情況很快就會改變。巴黎奧運會将于2024年7月開幕。到那時，該公司計劃在該地區營運至少兩條航線，總共有十輛空中計程車，每輛每小時飛行兩到三趟。這些将把奧運村與傳統機場以及伊西萊穆利諾的巴黎直升機場連接配接起來，直升機場位于伊西萊穆利諾的南側，附近有一個緊急醫療中心。

Quick exit

快速離開

The terminal building itself is compact—about as big as a medium-sized apartment. The idea is that, having bought a ticket using a mobile-phone app, a passenger can check in rapidly and paperlessly. A facial-recognition scan confirms identity and a floor sensor measures weight. This lets the craft, sitting on a pad just outside, calculate its load so that it knows how much power will be needed for the journey, and thus when its batteries will require topping up. There should be barely enough time to grab a cup of coffee before the less-than-20-minute hop downtown, avoiding the snarling rush-hour traffic below.

航站樓本身很緊湊，大約和中型較高價的電梯大廈一樣大。這個想法是，使用手機應用程式購買機票後，乘客可以快速無紙化辦理登機手續。面部識别掃描确認身份，地闆傳感器測量體重。這讓停放在墊子上的飛船計算其負載，以便知道旅程需要多少電力，進而知道何時需要補充電池。在不到20分鐘抵達市中心之前，應該沒有足夠的時間喝杯咖啡，避開了下面混亂的高峰時段交通。

If a passenger spends more than ten or 15 minutes in the terminal then something has gone wrong, says Duncan Walker, boss of Skyports, the British firm that built the facility. The eVTOL flying around outside it is made by Volocopter, a German company. Skyports has opened a similar vertiport in Marina, California, which is being used by Joby Aviation, an American outfit that is also developing a flying taxi, and is planning others in places that include London and Singapore.

如果乘客在航站樓停留超過10或15分鐘，那麼就出了問題，建造該設施的英國公司Skyports的老闆鄧肯沃克說。在它外面飛來飛去的eVTOL是由德國公司Volocopter制造的。Skyports在加利福尼亞州濱海開設了一個類似的垂直機場，該機場正在由Joby Aviation使用，Joby Aviation是一家美國公司，也在開發一種飛行計程車，并計劃在倫敦和新加坡等地建設其他機場。

In a dense urban environment, a vertiport needs to take up as little space as possible, which is why people will not be encouraged to linger. And there is another difference from either a conventional airport or a heliport: silence. As the eVTOL flies overhead it is strikingly quieter than a helicopter that landed near the main airport building a little earlier. “That’s your licence to operate in city centres,” says Mr Walker. Not only are flying taxis less noisy than helicopters, but if recharged from a renewable source of electricity they are greener and, being mechanically simpler, a lot cheaper to run.

在密集的城市環境中，垂直機場需要占用盡可能少的空間，這就是為什麼不會鼓勵人們流連忘返的原因。與傳統機場或直升機場還有另一個差別：安靜。當eVTOL飛過頭頂時，它比早些時候降落在機場主樓附近的直升機安靜得多。“這是你在市中心經營的許可證，”沃克先生說。飛行計程車不僅比直升機噪音小，而且如果從可再生電力來源充電，它們更環保，而且機械更簡單，運作成本低得多

Operating costs should fall even further, for eVTOLs are readily adaptable to autonomous flight. That frees up the pilot’s seat for an extra passenger. At first, however, regulators are expected to grant airworthiness certificates only to flying taxis with pilots on board. This will allow experience to be gained and the reliability of the craft to be tested before they are permitted to do without the pilot.

營運成本應該進一步下降，因為eVTOL很容易适應自主飛行。這為額外的乘客騰出了飛行員的座位。然而，監管機構預計首先隻會向載有飛行員的飛行計程車頒發适航證書。這将允許獲得經驗并測試飛行器的可靠性，然後再允許在沒有飛行員的情況下進行操作。

To get airborne quickly, most putative operators are therefore starting with piloted versions of their offerings. Volocopter appears to be in the lead. Its craft, VoloCity, has room for just a single passenger. Hot on its heels are Joby, which is flight-testing a five-seater, and AutoFlight, a company based in Shanghai, which is flying a four-seater. Airbus, Europe’s biggest aircraft-maker, is also developing a four-seat flying taxi that will, initially, be piloted.

是以，為了快速升空，大多數假定的營運商都從其産品的飛行員駕駛版本開始。Volocopter似乎處于領先地位。它的飛船VoloCity隻能容納一名乘客。緊随其後的是Joby，它正在對五座飛機進行飛行測試，而AutoFlight是一家總部位于上海的公司，正在飛行四座飛機。歐洲最大的飛機制造商空中客車公司也在開發一種四座飛行計程車，最初将由飛行員駕駛。

Two exceptions to the general rule are Boeing, America’s biggest aircraft-maker, which has teamed up with Wisk Aero, a Californian firm, to produce a four-seater, and a two-seater being tested by Ehang, another Chinese firm. Both of these projects aim for autonomy from the beginning.

一般規則的兩個例外是美國最大的飛機制造商波音公司，該公司與加利福尼亞公司Wisk Aero合作生産了四座飛機，以及另一家中國公司Ehang正在測試的雙座飛機。這兩個項目從一開始就以無人駕駛為目标。

Getting an airworthiness certificate is, however, only part of the process needed to begin commercial services. An airline-style operator’s licence is also needed. The idea is that the first vertiports will help with this by demonstrating that flights are reliable, safe and can be integrated into existing air-traffic-control systems.

然而，獲得适航證隻是開始商業服務所需過程的一部分。還需要航空公司類似的營運商執照。這個想法是，第一批垂直機場将通過證明航班可靠，安全并且可以內建到現有的空中交通管制系統中來幫助實作這一目标。

Prêt à transporter

準備運輸

In theory, eVTOLs should show a good level of safety, for they have high levels of what engineers call redundancy—that is, duplication of critical systems. This comes about principally from their multiple rotors, which allow a craft to continue flying if one or more of its motors fails. A rotor failure in a helicopter means the pilot has to make an emergency landing by gliding to the ground using a technique called autorotation. If one of the 18 rotors on a VoloCity failed it would, by contrast, hardly be noticed, says Paul Stone, Volocopter’s test pilot.

從理論上講，eVTOL應該表現出良好的安全水準，因為它們具有工程師所謂的備援水準，即關鍵系統的備份。這主要來自它們的多個旋翼，如果一個或多個電機發生故障，它們允許飛行器繼續飛行。直升機的旋翼故障意味着飛行員必須使用一種稱為自轉的技術滑翔到地面進行緊急着陸。相比之下，如果VoloCity上的18個旋翼中的一個發生故障，它幾乎不會被注意到，Volocopter的試飛員Paul Stone說。

Mr Stone, who has flown more than 200 types of aircraft, including vertical-take-off jets, also observes that the computerised flight controls on a VoloCity make it “much simpler to fly, and therefore easier to learn”. At first, the pilots will be people with backgrounds flying either fixed-wing aircraft or helicopters, who will be trained to handle eVTOLs, too. Eventually, though, he expects a separate eVTOL licence will be created, letting people learn to fly them from scratch. And even when autonomy arrives, piloting jobs will still be available. The plan is that qualified individuals sitting in control centres on the ground will monitor several flights each, as already happens with military drones, and will thus be available to take manual command in an emergency.

斯通先生駕駛過200多種類型的飛機，包括垂直起飛噴射機，他還觀察到VoloCity上的計算機化飛行控制使其“飛行更簡單，是以更容易學習”。首先，飛行員将是具有駕駛固定翼飛機或直升機背景的人，他們也将接受操作eVTOL的教育訓練。不過，他預計最終将建立一個單獨的eVTOL許可證，讓人們從頭開始學習飛行它們。即使自動飛行到來，人工駕駛工作仍将可用。該計劃是，地面控制中心的合格人員将監控每個航班的幾次飛行，就像軍用無人機已經發生的那樣，是以可以在緊急情況下進行手動指揮。

As technologies improve, eVTOLs’ capabilities will grow. Much of that progress will come from developments in battery technology for electric cars, says Dirk Hoke, who recently took over as Volocopter’s chief executive, having previously run Airbus’s defence and space division. A bigger, faster version of VoloCity, using a new type of battery, is already on the way, he adds. But he would not go into details. By the end of the decade, though, it is not only Paris’s notorious traffic that could be bypassed from above with the convenience of using a ride-hailing app, but the jammed roads of several other cities, too. ■

随着技術的進步，eVTOL的能力将會增長。其中大部分進展将來自電動汽車電池技術的發展，最近接任Volocopter首席執行官的Dirk Hoke說，此前他曾負責空中客車的國防和太空部門。他補充說，使用新型電池的更大，更快的VoloCity版本已經在路上。但他不會詳細說明。然而，到本世紀末，不僅巴黎惡名在外的城市交通可以通過使用乘車應用程式的便利從上面繞過，而且其他幾個城市堵塞的道路也能如此。■