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When Uber Elevate popularized the concept of urban air mobility with its seminal white paper in 2016, it promised that electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft would ultimately be “an affordable form of daily transportation for the masses, even less expensive than owning a car.” That long-term vision has underpinned much of the investment in and government support for UAM, and it resonated with one of the companies represented at the first Uber Elevate Summit in Dallas, Texas in 2017: Southwest Airlines, which has done as much as any company to democratize air travel in the United States since its first flight in 1971.
“I hosted Gene Kim, who at the time ran the network operations center for Southwest, and that got people really excited — it was sort of a surprise,” recalled Nikhil Goel, who was previously Uber Elevate’s head of product and now serves as chief commercial officer for the eVTOL developer Archer Aviation. “It wasn’t like we were announcing anything, but [Southwest] was actually the very first airline that ever got involved with UAM in any capacity.”
Related: Archer reveals details of plan to operate eVTOLs for United Airlines
On Friday, Archer and Southwest did announce something: a memorandum of understanding to develop operational concepts for electric air taxi networks in California. The news came as something of a surprise, because in the eight years since the Elevate white paper was published, it has become apparent that eVTOLs will launch at a price point closer to that of helicopters than Uber X.
Joby Aviation and Delta Air Lines are working together to develop a “Home to Seat” service that is explicitly targeted at premium customers, and United Airlines CFO Mike Leskinen (formerly president of United Airlines Ventures) has said in the past that the eVTOL airport shuttles that Archer will operate on its behalf will “be expensive at first” and initially used by business travelers.
Unlike Delta and United, Southwest is not exactly renowned for its premium travel offerings. Yet there’s no fundamental disconnect between the Archer and Southwest brands, Goel explained in an interview with The Air Current.
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