Editorial -Some reflections for Season Greeting 2024

Bonjour à tous

The last publication of the year is traditionally an opportunity for the UFH to present its best wishes to all the recipients of its publications. If we have chosen to illustrate the change of year with photos of meetings between the Paris heliport and its neighborhood, it is because the end of the year 2024 will coincide with fundamental deadlines for its future. Long besieged by opponents whose motivations have evolved because it was necessary to green projects for alternative uses of the site, the end of next year risks seeing the final assault put an inopportune end to effective service from Paris by helicopter, and premature in terms of implementing new vertical mobility projects.

The project to serve Paris by EVTOL is indeed the fashionable subject at the end of the year. After the hostile positions expressed by municipal councilors, the ADP group responded last week through a notable post on social networks sent by its executive general director Edward Arkwright. While it is of course essential to carry out the necessary tests to advance the EVTOL concept, it seems legitimate to wonder whether it is not premature to involve a large airport manager in a project which, in the short term , will undoubtedly be less a matter of practical exploitation than of timid experimentation. And even in this context, it is necessary to carefully measure the gap remaining to be filled between a flight of a few minutes at 300 feet, and the climb to 1500 to 2000 feet to engage in 20 to 30 minutes of flight over populated areas.
The debates held during the last Rotorcraft & VTOL symposium organized by EASA in Madrid on the occasion of the European Rotors show clearly highlighted the important points that remain to be resolved in view of the performances currently demonstrated, before being able to exceed the flight test stage permitted under the exemption rules.
For example, replacing, as proposed by an EVTOL project leader, the autonomy reserve to be provided to cover a delayed arrival linked to traffic management or to ensure a diversion, with a concept based on performance, is undoubtedly possible. But before launching above Paris, it will first be necessary to precisely define it and have the principles certified. If over the countryside this can be conceived without too much difficulty, the certification of a credible alternative procedure for calculating the flight time on arrival could well turn into a challenge in the context of an urban overflight.
Another sticking point concerns the certification rules that the agency must establish in order to guarantee, whatever the rate of wear of the battery, the availability of sufficient energy to support the necessary power peaks in critical flight phases.

What a great challenge for 2024! Predicting that it will be completed before next spring in order to accommodate the Olympics celebrations is another question.

Bonnes fêtes de fin d’année à tous.