Airbus Group’s tie-up with Uber to test-market extending ridehailing services to include helicopter flights has stumbled after local opposition prompted the speedy halt of a pilot project at the Sundance Film Festival, but further trials are planned this year.

Project Ponton to facilitate consumer access to helicopters by fielding a single smartphone app for booking cars and flights is the first venture to be announced by A3, the Silicon Valley technology and business innovation center established by Airbus Group in May 2015.
The first trial was a small-scale pilot with Uber and helicopter operator AirResources to provide an UberChopper service with Airbus Helicopters H125s at Sundance, in Park City, Utah. Airbus Group CEO Thomas Enders revealed the project at a technology conference in Germany on Jan. 18, but flights were halted almost as soon as they began.
“After the first day of operation, there was a bit of a kerfuffle with local government officials who scrambled to get the service shut down under pressure from a few wealthy landowners,” A3 CEO Paul Eremenko said. “They lost in court, but in the spirit of the festival and out of respect for the local community, we ceased operations early,” he said.
The goal of project Ponton—named after helicopter pioneer Gustave de Ponton d’Amécourt—is to facilitate seamless, on-demand access to helicopters, and ground transportation for the “first and last mile,” as part of a single smartphone app transaction. “We will see what we get out of it [at Sundance],” Enders told the Digital-Life-Design conference in Munich.