UAE flying taxi trials to begin in Al Ain in May 2025
Falcon Aviation Services in Abu Dhabi, which will start air taxi services in UAE on January 1, 2026, Ramandeep Oberoi, CEO of Falcon Aviation Services.
In March 2024, US electric flying manufacturer Archer Aviation and the UAE aviation services operator Falcon Aviation became vertiport infrastructure partners for key sites in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
Archer and Falcon Aviation, in the agreement, will create world-class vertiport infrastructure at Atlantis, the Palm in Dubai and the Marina Mall heliport in Abu Dhabi’s Corniche. Both companies will provide passengers on Archer’s Midnight flying car between these two Falcon vertiports, and these flights will be nearly all water-based with views of both cities and take no more than 30 minutes from takeoff to landing.
Archer Aviation has just revealed the first commercial flying car flight in Abu Dhabi during the first quarter of 2026.
Talking at the Mebaa 2024 exhibition and conference in Dubai on Tuesday, Oberoi said Archer’s flying car Midnight ‘will be trialled in May 2025 in Al Ain for 3-4 months then relocate to Abu Dhabi. The experiments will be conducted in the heat and dust. The plane is actually being tested now in California."
The authorities of Abu Dhabi and Dubai are aggressively striving to create this new type of transportation which is not just an experience, but something that will become necessary in future to deal with the increasing traffic in the roads.
"Flying taxis will be first offered within Abu Dhabi and we want to link Abu Dhabi-Dubai by mid-2026. "We need to make a market, Abu Dhabi-Dubai, Dubai-Ras Al Khaimah (For Wynn Resort project), and Al Ain. "We are working with a road network that is also very good in the UAE," Ramandeep Oberoi said.
In the case of hiring, he said the company has a slow structure.
‘We are not going to take on many people. There will be people who are already working on the project from the US. There will be ground operations guys to do vertiports which we already have. Then we have engineering staff. "We’ll throw in some more," he said.
When it comes to flying taxi fare, he said, there are talks with partners and stakeholders.
"Dh1,000 a passenger I would like to get from Abu Dhabi to Dubai. We may start higher earlier. Your price should be twice as much as the taxi and not more. And Dh300 is a bomb in the city."
"These numbers are now on papers but that can be different", he added.
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