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Ekarostoday at 7:44 AM3 repliesview on HN

Seems awfully tiny for any real total capacity. Should scale it up to size of say large railway car size so dozens if not hundreds of people at one time. This would also cut down cost and allow wider range of population that is no limited from use to use it.


Replies

clitoday at 8:02 AM

What you are describing seems outside the scope of this particular aircraft model.These are meant to land on existing helipads in NYC. From the article, the business model is to cut down 1-2 hour commutes to and from the JFK airport to seven-minute flights. Never mind the helipad space, just boarding hundreds of passengers and their luggage would cut severely into that time saving.

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yellow_leadtoday at 7:47 AM

I say the same about ground taxis - buses are much more efficient

iso1631today at 8:08 AM

Or perhaps take that large railway car, put a few together, and run then on or through the ground direct from the airport to a few downtown locations every couple of minutes. The efficiency per person would be ridiculously high (20,000 an hour), and I suspect the individual end-to-end speed would be faster than by air

15 minutes for JFK to West 34th Street is just 14 miles. That doesn't include any boarding/off boarding process, which are far faster in a train than anything, including in a taxi.

That's about the distance from Heathrow to Paddington which also takes 15 minutes.