Air taxi hub for flying electric taxis – the world’s first – wows visitors in England. There’s just one problem

Coventry has seen better days. Once known as Britain’s motor city, the settlement of about 400,000 people in England’s Midlands has been left struggling for an identity by decades of slumping vehicle output that followed widespread destruction from World War II bombing.

This spring, however, Coventry is once again at the forefront of world-leading innovation in personal mobility as it hosts what’s billed as the first-ever fully functional hub for flying taxis, the electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) craft that backers are talking up as the biggest new thing in aviation.

The site is fully functional, that is, apart from the air taxis themselves.

With the scores of proposed eVTOL models yet to win regulatory sign-off, unmanned drones are standing in for the typically five-person craft during three weeks of demonstration flights in Coventry.

Everything else, though, is just as it will be when the first flying cabs come to market in a few years’ time, according to the hub’s developer, Urban-Air Port, a London-based start-up that’s leading the push to develop so-called vertiports in competition with British rival Skyports.