Italian and French airports want to offer air taxis

Urban Blue will also work with air taxi startup Volocopter.

© Raslan Rahman

Rome – The airports of Italian cities such as Rome, Venice and Bologna as well as the French Riviera have teamed up to create a company to build and manage air taxi infrastructures. The infrastructure, called Vertiports, aims to use battery-powered aircraft that can take off and land vertically to provide travelers with a new way to bypass traffic and move between cities.

Urban Blue is the name of the company that will operate the air taxis. She said she wanted to win over more industrial, technical and financial partners for the gradual expansion of the project in Italy, France and elsewhere. Urban Blue will also work with German air taxi startup Volocopter and is backed by the investment fund EDF Invest, a shareholder in Aeroports de la Cote d’Azur. It said Vertiport’s operations in Rome, Venice and the French port city of Nice are scheduled to start in 2024. No details were provided on project financing.

Marco Troncon, CEO of Aeroporti di Roma, operator of Rome’s airports and part of the Atlantia infrastructure group, said Urban Blue has developed an “ambitious but realistic timeline” for Rome to be among the first cities in Europe to use air taxis. On Wednesday, Volocopter presented one of its battery-powered aircraft at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport. (what or what)