An aviation company called Joby showed off a prototype of its electric helicopter in Grand Central on Thursday, announcing what it says is a plan to fly New Yorkers from Manhattan to JFK in under seven minutes at “Uber Black pricing.” (Joby is technically an “electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft,” per the company, so imagine “helicopter” as a term of endearment.) One small roadblock is that Joby has not yet been certified for commercial use by the Federal Aviation Administration, and its current projections for actually flying anyone anywhere seem to be in Dubai at the end of 2025. As Gothamist reports, the company “offered no timeline” for certification in the United States. Eric Adams, who also announced this plan almost a year ago with a test run around Manhattan, is excited, for what it’s worth.
Getting to the airport is generally miserable and expensive, due to a number of poor infrastructural decisions the city and state have made over many decades. A taxi can easily take more than an hour from Manhattan and cost over $70. The minimum cost by subway is $11.40, since the eight-minute AirTran connection costs $8.50. To solve that, the mayor has apparently set his sights on flying a small number of people there instead for, like, $100. Joby is pitching its helicopters as an emissions-free alternative to Blade, which currently offers flights to the airport. Regular helicopters are also terribly noisy, and Joby says its helicopters are “as quiet as a conversation.” (In my family, this means incredibly loud, actually.) The AirTrain is also very quiet.