As a manufacturer of helicopters, Airbus knows what its commercial customers want: paying passengers. Rotorcraft are expensive to operate, but more passengers enable those fixed costs to be spread over more flights, allowing operators to reduce the price of flying by helicopter. But stimulating enough demand to make helicopter air service affordable and sustainable has proved problematic.
Enter A³, Airbus’s Silicon Valley outpost tasked with incubating disruptive ideas in aviation and aerospace. So far A³ has unveiled Project Vahana, to demonstrate a single-seat autonomous air taxi, and Project Transpose, to develop modular and reconfigurable interiors for commercial aircraft. Now it has revealed Voom, the first project that could emerge from A³ as a stand-alone company.
Credit: Voom

Begun as Project Ponton, Voom is an on-demand helicopter booking service. After a short pilot project conducted in Sao Paulo during the summer of 2016, Voom has launched a beta test in the major Brazilian city, which is famous for its traffic congestion, and plans to leave an “evergreen” service in place there as it expands to other cities around the world, says CEO Uma Subramanian.
Where previous “Uber for helicopters” startups have focused on offering a premium service—such as flights to the Hamptons on weekends—Voom’s vision is to democratize helicopter transportation by making it more accessible and affordable. By aggregating demand, the service hopes to increase helicopter utilization and enable operators to reduce pricing. The pilot trial indicated utilization can be increased by a factor of 4-5 over normal levels for most helicopter operators, says Subramanian.
Sao Paulo was selected, first for the pilot and now the launch, because helicopters are already an established way of getting around the gridlocked city. There are more than 400 helipads in the city, some 200 of them active; 700 helicopters; and a dedicated helicopter air traffic control system, Subramanian  says. Voom has access to “dozens” of Airbus H125 (pictured), Bell 206 and Robinson R44 light helicopters through exclusive contracts with 80% of Sao Paulo’s licensed air-taxi operators.
“The summer trial showed that demand for this service is real. People, particularly in places like Sao Paulo, have a need to get to places quickly,” she says. “So it is up to us to focus on affordability.” This is achieved by trying to maximize helicopter utilization and minimize deadhead trips. Voom’s software platform enables dynamic routing and pooling. “This is not a scheduled service, it is [FAA] Part 135, but this enables us to dynamically route to aggregate demand. If you have multiple people at multiple pads you will be routed in a way that picks up passengers.”
Riders use an app to request a time slot for a flight a minimum of 30 min. in advance. “You put in your route, and if there are other passengers going that way, we are able to aggregate the demand,” Subramanian says. Even if picking up or dropping off other passengers along the way requires the helicopter to detour to other helipads, a user is charged only for the flight he or she booked, and the service is still faster than ground transportation.
 
“In Sao Paulo, the shortest possible time to the airport is about 90 min. During rush hour it’s about 4 hr. By helicopter it’s 12 min. for a straight shot, and less than 20 min. if you stop and pick up another passenger,” says Subramanian. The pilot project was oversubscribed—“way more demand than we could handle,” she says. “It was an amazing experience and operationally complex.”
But Sao Paulo, with its traffic jams and helicopter infrastructure, is a relatively easy place to launch such a service. Rotorcraft are not so welcome in other places. The summer trial was conducted in partnership with Uber. The ride-hailing giant continues to offer its UberChopper premium helicopter service at special events, but has not escaped opposition from the locals.
With its different business model of affordable pricing, Subramanian sees another 10-20 cities worldwide where an intracity or urban air transport service could be viable. “But almost every city above a million people will have at least one helicopter route that runs from the airport to the city center. We think the market potential for those is quite significant.” And more passengers, Airbus hopes, means more helicopters.