“Real Air Taxis will soon be on their way into major cities,” says London based AVCEN. Avcen is to bring its innovative Jetpod aircraft design off the drawing board and into proof-of-concept build and flight trials.
The Jetpod is a lightweight, Very Quiet Short Take-Off and Landing (VQSTOL), 6-seat, twin-jet powered aircraft. The Jetpod also comes in two Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) variants based on the same design.
The Jetpod cruises at 300 knots (350 mph) and only requires an incredible 125 metres (410 feet) to take-off or land. This is achieved through a combination of horizontal and vertical thrust management as developed by Avcen. The Jetpod does not require a runway and can operate from grass and oughly prepared dirt strips. The Jetpod has been designed to withstand multiple daily low-level flight sectors using a rugged undercarriage. The Jetpod has a wide-bodied, high ceiling appeal, with an easy to enter set of rear-clamshell passenger doors and walk-in foot-ramp.
Avcen has developed its own noise attenuation technologies. This will mean that we can considerably reduce the noise output of the latest and quietest jet engines by an additional -17 to -20 decibels. The Jetpod, with its twin-engined safety, will sell for under one million US Dollars.
“We are expecting a great deal of interest from around the world in this unique form of localized air transportation,” says Mike Dacre, Avcen’s Managing Director.
The Jetpod T-100 air taxi and the P-100 personal transpeeder can operate quietly into tiny city-centre landing sites that will be one tenth of the length normally required, thereby opening up cities to true pay-on-demand, free-roaming air taxis.
The military M-300 version is well suited to command-and-control, fast extraction of wounded troops, and on-board Aircraft Carrier operations without the need of a catapult or arrester gear. An E-600 air ambulance variant is also being introduced.
The hover capable UAVs can fly in almost any weather day or night. The U-500 is capable of rescuing one person remotely under the control of base-station operatives some 300 miles away. Rescuing a person remotely in this way has never been done before. The U-600 variant has been designed to carry out unmanned light re-supply, construction and engineering repair tasking along-side oil rigs, large ships and high-rise buildings. Avcen will see the aircraft through the trials, after which we will need external investment to get us to production.