A partnership between Odense-based HCA Airport and Copenhagen Helicopter will be the first in Denmark to build an infrastructure for electrically powered air taxis between the country's largest cities. The first flying taxi will arrive on the island of Funen before the summer holidays this year, and the aim is to establish a landing pad on the roof of Odense Banegård Center, the city's multimodal transport and retail hub.

In the future, a fleet of CO2-neutral air taxis will transport passengers between Odense, Copenhagen and other Danish and European cities and towns, following the process taken by cities such as Los Angeles, Munich and Seoul that are already laying the foundations for a completely new layer of green AAM infrastructure.

The goal is to be able to display a flying taxi at HCA Airport before the summer, and in the slightly longer term the ambition is to establish one or more landing sites, the first on top of Odense Banegård Center.

"I imagine that in a few years you will be able to take the light rail to Odense Railway Station and from there take a flying taxi to Copenhagen or one of the other large Danish cities," says HCA Airport chairman of the board Kim Kenlev. "It is now that we have to start building a completely new infrastructure based initially on manned, flying taxis that fly on green power and contribute to the government's ambition for 100 per cent green domestic transport in 2030."

Kenlev sees great potential in a landing pad in Odense in particular: "I see no obstacle to the fact that in the long term you will also be able to fly to cities such as Gothenburg, Hamburg or Berlin. Advanced air mobility is high on the agenda everywhere, and these cities are within reach of these flying taxis.”

Initially, the partnership wants to attract foreign AAM actors to HCA Airport, which already houses an internationally recognised drone test centre, the UAS Denmark Test Center. It can be in the form of test and demonstration activities or in the long term, service and maintenance.

"Advanced air mobility is based on a revolution in aviation, which says goodbye to fossil fuels in favour of electrification and biofuels, in the same way as we see the transition from traditional cars to hybrid and electric cars and later self-driving cars. It provides completely new opportunities to transport the population on a daily basis, via the airspace, and at the same time reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, reduce noise levels and much more," says Copenhagen Helicopter CEO Martin Andersen.

Copenhagen Helicopter currently offers taxi flights with traditional helicopters, a growing area according to the company. It anticipates many opportunities in the AAM arena and estimates, among other things, that it will enable the movement of 84,000 passengers every day and the removal of 120,000 tons of CO2 annually from Danish roads by 2035.

Odense Municipality shares the ambition for more sustainable forms of transport. "This may very well be the beginning of what will in the future be a completely new way of transporting both ourselves and also goods," says mayor Peter Rahbæk Juel. "We can see that other countries and cities are very far ahead, so Denmark and Odense must also get involved. The flying taxis of the future can fly on green power produced by Danish offshore wind turbines, and they can contribute to moving traffic off the roads."

To be at the forefront of AAM development is a natural extension of the city's long-standing and strong position within robot and drone technology. Rahbæk Juel adds: "The Funen robot adventure began with some talented engineers from the University of Southern Denmark and a town that dared to think big and take a gamble. In the same way, I also see this as the first baby steps towards a new business adventure that will hopefully both generate jobs, contribute to the green transition and create a completely new way of transporting people."

He notes that Korea and Germany are relatively well advanced in creating an AAM framework, initially for piloted air taxis. Seoul aims to have flying drones fly permanently over the megacity as early as 2025 and in Germany, an Airbus-led partnership with Deutsche Bahn, Munich airport and Telekom is working to provide air taxi links between German cities. At the beginning of 2022 in the US, Boeing invested just over three billion Danish kroner in Silicon Valley-based Wisk Aero's development of a self-flying propeller aircraft.

A total of 86 million euros, equivalent to 645 million Danish kroner, has been set aside for the next three years.