Kitty Hawk to partner with Boeing on the development of flying taxis

The company aims to provide flying taxi services through the two-seater Cora, that can be simply summoned using an app

Kitty Hawk Corporation, an American aircraft manufacturer backed by Larry Page, Alphabet’s CEO and founder of Google, recently announced that it is going to partner with aerospace giant Boeing to develop semi-autonomous flying taxi.

Reportedly, Kitty Hawk will be working on its two-seater Cora, a flying vehicle, with Boeing and the company hopes to deploy it in service as a semi-autonomous flying taxi.

Citing reliable sources, Kitty Hawk has been quite over the past few months after giving series of announcements about the single-seater flyer, its partnership with Air New Zealand and the two-seater Cora. The company aims to provide flying taxi services through Cora that can be simply summoned using an app.

Sources indicate the company plans to fly the vehicle with the help of autopilot systems that do not require a pilot on board but would be supervised by a human pilot situated at a remote location.

Supposedly, the key element of this partnership with Boeing seems to revolve around safety. The NeXt division of Boeing is focused on the different ways the piloted and autonomous craft can share airspace safely.

According to the sources, Kitty Hawk has major companies as its competitor in the flying taxi space. For instance, Uber is planning to initiate test flights in 2020 with its Uber Air Service. The commercial launch for the same is planned for the year 2023.

Uber has been working with five different aerospace companies in order to build craft for the services. These includes one company that Boeing purchased back in 2017. Lilium, another startup, completed its own test flight of a five-seater aircraft this year, sources confirmed.

Steve Nordlund, Boeing NeXt’s VP and general manager said that working with a company like Kitty Hawk helps the company reach closer to the goal of advancing the future of mobility safely.

 

Source Credit- https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/26/18759514/kitty-hawk-cora-boeing-next-partnership-flying-cars-taxis-electric