NFPA Journal - Fall 2021 - 29

NFPA.ORG/TAKEOFF
Watch a video about the urban air mobility
(UAM) industry and fire safety concerns.
Read a white paper by a leading eVTOL
aircraft manufacturer about growing the
UAM industry.
ON
A CLEAR MORNING in June, what appeared to be
a large remote-controlled drone floated gracefully over
Le Bourget airport, a civilian airstrip just north of Paris.
It wasn't a drone, though-it was an electric vertical
takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft made by the
German aviation company Volocopter, designed to
carry two people in its application as a flying taxi.
As part of the 2021 Paris Air Show, Volocopter hoped to
use the three-minute demonstration flight to showcase the
technology it claims will reshape the future of ride-sharing.
By the time of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris,
Volocopter says it will have its eVTOL aircraft up and running
for people to travel around the city, unencumbered by
traffic in the streets below.
Volocopter isn't alone in its aspirations to do to air travel
what Uber and Lyft have done to terrestrial travel. All
around the world, there are companies touting eVTOL, and
to a lesser degree gas-powered and hybrid gas-and-electric
VTOL-aircraft designs aimed at revolutionizing the way
people get around, especially in dense urban areas where
vehicle traffic has become increasingly congested. " It's a
faster, cleaner, and smarter way to carry people through
their lives, " California-based Joby Aviation, which in 2020
bought the division of Uber that had been working to
develop a flying taxi business, states on jobyaviation.com.
" Flying with us might feel more like getting into an SUV
than boarding a plane. "
Companies like Joby Aviation and Volocopter operate in
what's known as the urban air mobility (UAM) market, one
that's expected to become a $15 billion industry over the
next decade, according to an August 2020 article published
in Inside Unmanned Systems magazine. A Morgan Stanley
Research report released the same year estimates that the
UAM market could become a $1.5 trillion industry by 2040.
But the UAM market also has a problem: a lack of fire
safety guidance when it comes to building the infrastructure
needed for VTOL aircraft to operate. This includes facilities
known as vertiports, where VTOL aircraft will take off and
land; as with helicopters, the vertical take off and landing
capabilities of VTOL aircraft mean vertiports can fit into
relatively small urban spaces. They could be standalone facilities,
like an airport, mainly serving passengers who want
to fly from one city to another, or single VTOL landing pads
incorporated into or onto existing structures, which could
be more useful to passengers flying from one spot to another
within a city.
" The rules applicable to UAM ground infrastructure are
literally all over the map and are not forward-thinking, " the
Inside Unmanned Systems article says. The Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) is working on writing standards
related to vertiports, but like existing FAA regulations, those
likely won't discuss the fire safety considerations for such
facilities in detail.
That's why current efforts by the technical committee to
add more information about vertiports to the 2024 edition of
NFPA 418, Standard for Heliports, are critical to filling this
gap in the UAM space. Experts say that guidance can't come
soon enough, as a number of vertiports are already being
planned for cities worldwide.
" Right now there's no standardized fire safety guidance
that speaks to vertiports, " said Rex Alexander, a veteran helicopter
pilot and president of Five-Alpha, an Indiana-based
consulting agency specializing in aviation infrastructure.
" We really need to put something in writing so that a
municipality that wants to embrace this new technology has
somewhere to look when determining what standard they're
going to build to. If we don't have that, it makes it really
rough. The way things are moving, we need to have that in
place in the next three to five years. " 
NFPA .ORG/JOURNAL * NFPA JOURNAL | 29
http://www.NFPA.ORG/TAKEOFF http://www.jobyaviation.com https://nfpa.org/journal
NFPA Journal - Fall 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - Fall 2021
