Moving closer to personal air transportation
While air transport is currently widely used as a form of mass transport, it remains expensive, inaccessible and largely restricted to long-distance travel. In addition, piloting an aircraft remains a significant challenge when compared to driving a car. The EU funded a project called 'Personal plane: Assessment and validation of pioneering concepts for personal air transport systems' (PPLANE) to design and evaluate a PATS. The project brought together aviation players from academia, industry and research institutions to develop a feasible system based on current and future technologies. PPLANE researchers defined several PATS concepts, and then used selection criteria such as safety and security, automation and control, human factors and environmental concerns to choose the best of these. Conclusions and recommendations were collated to form a roadmap for PATS implementation. The system that was developed consisted of a fully-automated, electric light aircraft that could transport between 1 and 4 people up to a distance of 500 km. The vehicles could be remotely controlled by trained operators in the case of an emergency. It was recommended that the vehicles have the same safety requirements as current commercial aeroplanes. While this is merely a concept for now, the rate of automation and development of other technologies means that this approach will be feasible in the near future. The development of a coherent model and plan for implementation is an important step towards the realisation of a PATS service in the EU.
