The ADP group, manager of Paris airports, said on Monday that it remained “fully mobilized” to make the project of experimenting with electric flying taxis a reality for the Paris Olympic Games this summer, despite negative opinions from politicians and experts. The ADP Group staff remains “fully mobilized, together with our partners, to make this innovation and decarbonization project possible for the airlines of the Ile-de-France,” the company indicated. For ADP, whose capital is largely controlled by the State, “without experimentation, it is difficult to answer legitimate questions related to the project whose usefulness we are convinced, especially in health matters.”
ADP, with its partners the German manufacturer Volocopter and the Ile-de-France region, wants to take advantage of the Olympic showcase to experimentally operate electric flying taxis on three lines: from Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle airport to Le Bourget airport, and from the Issy-les-Moulineaux heliport, on the one hand, towards the Saint-Cyr-l’Ecole airfield, near Versailles, and on the other, towards a barge on the Seine, near the Quai d’Austerlitz, in the southeast from Paris.
A recent unfavorable opinion following a public investigation
This project is pending the certification of the Volocopter aircraft by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), but also the green light from the French Ministry of Transport, which has so far supported the initiative. However, negative signals have multiplied in recent months, the last being an unfavorable opinion issued on February 2 at the end of a public investigation carried out in November and December 2023. The investigating commissioner, after listening to the interested parties and obtain 1,748 contributions from the public, he noted in particular that this experiment “has no a priori interest if it focuses on commercial flights corresponding to a mode of transport that, in the transport of Ile-de-France, cannot offer an alternative to the current modes nor help alleviate traffic congestion.
At the beginning of September, the environmental authority considered the impact study of the future Austerlitz experimental base, known as a “vertiport”, “incomplete”, which calls into question the noise and visual pollution. Within the framework of this environmental assessment, Parisian elected officials issued a negative (non-binding) opinion to the Paris Council on the Austerlitz Vertiport, denouncing in some cases an “absurd” project and an “ecological aberration.”
Source: BFM TV
