While much of the talk about advanced air mobility (AAM) centers on technology development, certification criteria and air taxi business plans, lack of public knowledge about the sector presents a serious challenge to the widespread adoption of eVTOLs, according to a NASA official.
A particular obstacle is public officials in local communities not understanding AAM — development of which will require extensive planning from local governments.
Local officials have primarily “dealt with ground transportation most of their lives,” Nancy Mendonca, NASA’s deputy director of mission integration within the agency’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, said Oct. 5.
Speaking at the 2022 Vertical Aviation Safety Team (VAST) conference in Hurst, Texas, Mendonca said airport authorities are generally managed in a “siloed” manner in which local land use planners have little role. Local officials are “not really aware of the terminology” of aviation, let alone AAM, she added.
There is a broader awareness problem with the general public. NASA conducted a survey of 1,500 residents in Ohio and Los Angeles and found that 75% of respondents had no knowledge of AAM. So, before asking further questions, surveyors needed to provide a basic explanation of AAM.
“You can imagine it’s really hard to engage the public and have a conversation when you’re also trying to teach them what it is,” Mendonca said.
About 20% of survey respondents said they would never fly in an eVTOL. While others said they may use the emerging technology, most said they’d like a vertiport to be located no more than 20 miles (32 kilometers) from their home — but also no closer than 10 mi (16 km). Prospective air taxi passengers fear congestion and noise from vertiports located close to or in their neighborhoods.
The U.S. government “can’t regulate whether people accept AAM or not,” said Mendonca, adding NASA and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration can only provide information to the public and local authorities.
She said as local planners learn about AAM, aviation officials and regulators will need to become more familiar with city and rural planning.
“From our side, we’re going to start learning about ground transportation terminology,” Mendonca explained, noting that AAM will be part of a “multimodal integrated transportation system.”
She added: “So, I think it’s on the aviation authorities to start to learn about ground transportation. What resources do [ground transportation planners] have? What processes do they use? What can we leverage? What can we team up with them to do?”
