Flight booking platform Helipass is positioning itself as a key enabler for commercial eVTOL aircraft operations, with plans to transition from a current business model based entirely on rotorcraft. The France-based company is in talks with its network of around 120 helicopter operators, serving some 650 destinations worldwide, to encourage them to transition to new electric aircraft.
Last month, Helipass reached an agreement with Eve Urban Air Mobility Solutions to market up to 100,000 flight hours annually in the Embraer subsidiary’s four-passenger Electrical Vertical Aircraft. However, the deal is not exclusive. The company intends to include multiple other eVTOL types in its platform, and it has approached manufacturers including Volocopter, Joby, and Lilium.
Helipass president Frederic Aguettant views sightseeing flights as an early market for eVTOL passenger operations. He pointed to popular locations like Hawaii, the Grand Canyon, and New York City, where there is strong demand, but where he feels noise and safety concerns will make the new technology more appealing than helicopters.
Aguettant sees the volume of eVTOL usage stacking up quickly. “When [the industry] is flying around 6 million helicopter tours, each for an average of 20 minutes and with 4 or 5 passengers, you can see what’s happening in the market, and this equates to 500,000 hours,” he explained. According to him, New York, Hawaii, and the Grand Canyon each currently generate between 500,000 and 600,000 passengers for tourist flights each year, and cities like Paris are also promising markets.
Helipass’s objective from the start has been to "digitize" the private aviation market, by providing both a user-friendly booking platform for customers and also software that operators can use to handle all aspects of their business, including payments, fleet planning, and passenger records. It feels this approach is even better suited to high-volume eVTOL operations than to helicopters.
Back in May 2015, Helipass partnered with Uber to launch the Uber Copter service at the Cannes Film Festival on the French Riviera. Over six days, around 400 passengers took helicopter flights booked via Uber’s app.
After being an advanced air mobility trailblazer for several years, Uber ceased its direct involvement when it sold its Uber Elevate app to eVTOL aircraft developer Joby in December 2020. “Now we’re developing our platform to support eVTOLs, tourism will come first and this is a concrete and real market that needs to switch from using helicopters to get public acceptance,” Aguettant commented.
Helipass also sees airport to city center connections being established in locations like Nice, Monaco, New York, Cape Town, and Hong Kong. Aguettant said that, in the wake of the pandemic, growth in on-demand helicopter charter flights has slowed, although, from his perspective, private helicopter owners are using their equipment more. He added that with other high-end leisure opportunities impeded by Covid, some consumers are drawn to pleasure flights in helicopters as an enjoyable way to spend time with friends and relations in a bubble-like environment.
The company is one of around 30 companies involved in a project to develop eVTOL operations in the Paris area in time for the 2024 Olympic Games. Aguettant said the consortium, which includes several aircraft developers such as Volocopter, Airbus, EHang, Pipistrel, Vertical Aerospace, and Ascendance Flight Technologies, is likely to start fundraising at the end of 2021 to support the project’s next steps.
Helipass will not be acting as some kind of sales agent for Eve’s aircraft. Instead, its objective is to stimulate and support the market environment in which eVTOLs can thrive.
In this regard, Aguettant is urging manufacturers and other stakeholders in the new industry segment to take a collaborative approach. “This is a new market and everyone involved must share everything to grow it,” he argued. “Some [aircraft manufacturers] want a vertical business [in which they retain full control of operations] but this is not the best way to open up the market. They need to share information to scale it up quickly.”
That said, Aguettant feels it will likely be well into the second half of this decade until the new eVTOL services gain significant momentum. “Realistically, it will be between 2026 and 2030 before this market really amounts to something.” Eve's eVTOL aircraft is expected to enter commercial service in 2026.
