Charles Alcock is managing editor of the AIN Media Group, having rejoined the company in 2019. He has been an aviation journalist since 1986, and previously worked for AIN from 1990 to 2017, most recently as editor-in-chief. His main focus is on covering new aviation technology and business models, as well as international news.
Having been raised in the London area, Alcock studied at the University of Manchester in the UK and earned an honors degree in Politics and Modern History. He speaks English and French, and some German.

Managing Editor

For a company that has contributed more than its fair share of the hype surrounding so-called urban air mobility (UAM), Uber has been largely muted on the subject this year. What close observers of Uber Elevate’s ambitious plans are trying to discern is whether this silence is due to the understandable distractions of the Covid-19 pandemic, or, perhaps, a change of course.
In a lively panel discussion on October 8 as part of the Vertical Flight Society’s Forum 76 conference, Mark Moore, Uber Elevate’s engineering director of aviation, almost seemed to play down expectations for the eagerly anticipated launch of commercial services, which the company has previously indicated could make a partial start during 2022. He sowed the idea among his audience that plans for Uber Air could, after all, turn out to be an evolution, rather than a long-promised revolution.
“It will be a case of scaling [services] and that won’t be instant, with a start in 2023 or perhaps 2024,” Moore explained. “[Initially], it will be a small number of flights and modest growth in the first three or four years.”
In his view, global UAM operations are likely to start achieving around 12 million flight hours per year. By comparison, he explained, scheduled Part 121 airline operations in the U.S. account for just over 25 million flight hours (or at least they did, pre-Covid). In his view, the UAM sector won’t surpass this level of operations during the current decade, and he predicted that it could take another 10 to 20 years to reach that point.
Commenting on the now-suspended Uber Copter helicopter services trialed in New York City in 2019, Moore said that the company had “learned a lot” from the “multi-modal on-demand service,” which included connecting car service. “The real world is challenging, and choreographing a network is a lot of work,” he reflected. “We are still building foundational technology this year.”
As things stand, Uber is still expected to launch trial operations in Dallas and Los Angeles. Since late 2019, little or nothing has been heard of plans to start flying in Melbourne, Australia. 
In early October, Paris announced an open invitation for companies to express interest in providing UAM services in time for the 2024 Olympic Games. Uber has not confirmed whether it intends to throw its hat into this ring, but in 2019 it opened an Advanced Technologies Center in the French capital to focus on issues such as optimizing large-scale eVTOL aircraft operations, airspace management, automation, and machine learning for aviation.
Then on October 12&nbsp;came the news that Uber Elevate head of product Nikhil Goel is leaving the company, after&nbsp;having been one of the guiding forces behind the project and the author of its seminal white paper on UAM published in 2016. According to Goel’s LinkedIn page, he departed Uber Elevate in August. His Twitter feed suggests&nbsp;that he hasn’t necessarily turned his back on the world of UAM and eVTOL aircraft. 
In this year of Covid, Uber is certainly not alone in the transportation business in having faced harsh trading conditions and a squeeze on its bottom line. Announcing results for the second quarter of 2020 in August, Uber reported group revenues as being down 29 percent and net revenues being down 33 percent. Revenues for its “mobility” activities, which include car ridesharing and Uber Elevate, were down by 66 percent, a hit that was mitigated by a welcome 162 percent increase&nbsp;in revenues from delivery services.
Uber is due to publish its third-quarter results on November 5. In the wake of unsubstantiated media reports that the company may be looking to offload or share the burden of Uber Elevate with backing from other investors, observers will be scouring the company’s next statement to shareholders as much for what it doesn’t say as for what it does.
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Charles Alcock

Uber's plans to launch its Uber Air ridesharing network will require massive investment in ground infrastructure. (Image: Uber)

Uber Watchers Look For Clues About Its Next UAM Moves

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