Twelve years ago, when I started covering electric air mobility, the conversation was almost entirely about whether it was possible.
Could you build an aircraft that flew electrically? Could the batteries hold enough charge? Could the certification process accommodate something this new?
Those questions have been answered. The aircraft exist. The batteries have improved enough to matter. The FAA and EASA have issued type certificates. The industry is no longer hypothetical.
And yet most coverage of advanced air mobility is still written as if we’re in 2015.
The question that doesn’t get asked.
The business press covers announcements. New aircraft unveiled. New funding rounds closed. New partnerships signed. New routes announced.
What it rarely covers is the distance between announcement and operation — and in this industry, that distance has swallowed entire companies.
Lilium. Overair. Volocopter, and a few pivots along the way for some. The vertiport infrastructure that got announced in a dozen cities and built in none of them. The routes that got regulatory approval and no aircraft to fly them. And the cheering goes on.
The question that matters right now is not what is being announced. We have plenty of solutions. What we need is how it will operate, where, and when. And just what is being built, what is actually being certified, and what the unit economics look like when the aircraft finally enters commercial service.
Those numbers are available. They just require knowing where to look and who to ask.
What has changed.
Three things have shifted in the last eighteen months that most general coverage hasn’t caught up to:
Certification is the constraint, not the technology. When people ask me about “flying cars” and “air taxis” my answer has been steadfast over the past seven years. The technology is there and improving. We’re waiting on certification. The airframes that are closest to commercial operation are not the ones with the most sophisticated technology. They are the ones that understood the FAA’s certification pathway earliest and built their aircraft around it. A fuselage with wings and propellers is easier to certify than a never seen before multiple rotor electric helicopter configuration. This is not obvious from the outside, but it is the single most important variable in predicting which companies reach revenue first.
The business model has quietly shifted. The original urban air mobility pitch — short hops within city centers, replacing the taxi — has given way to something more robust and more viable: medical transport, EMS, cargo, military logistics, and premium and last-minute point-to-point routes in geography where no ground alternative exists. The companies still pitching mass urban transit are behind. The ones who pivoted to adjacent markets are ahead. Those preparing for infrastructure got it right.
The infrastructure problem is real and largely unsolved. Vertiports require real estate, power infrastructure, regulatory approval, and operational staff. The companies that are succeeding are the ones building directly with operators who already control the real estate — hospitals, logistics hubs, military installations — rather than trying to build standalone consumer infrastructure from scratch.
What this newsletter will cover.
Each Thursday I will publish one issue: one topic, one analysis, one perspective from twelve years of watching this industry from the inside.
No press releases reprinted. No manufacturer announcements uncritically passed along. No speculative valuations treated as fact.
What you will get: pattern recognition from someone who has seen enough cycles in this industry to know which signals matter and which are noise.
If that is what you came for — good. Let’s get to work.
— Nicolas Zart
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