[KNS]

Air taxis are going to have pretty limited use for quite a while. I've been following the development of a lot of these companies and have a friend who is chief pilot for one of the top two major players.

The majority of the advanced air mobility (AAM) taxis are going to start off with pilots. Most of the companies have stated they want to start off by taking you from a suburban area (local airports to begin with, later "vertiports") to your metropolitan airport - JFK, LAX, DFW, etc. That means they will have to be certified to fly in all kinds of weather. Uber gets you to the airport in all kinds of crap weather, to succeed they will have to do the same.

Most of these AAMs are years away from getting certified to fly in nice weather, flying in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC), or "the soup" is even further away. Icing conditions (your flight is leaving O'Hare in January) is barely on the table.

You will one day drive to your "vertiport" to catch your flight to JFK. Where will these be built? How long will approval take? They will utilize "freeways in the sky". People hate airplanes over their neighborhoods now, soon they'll have an air transportation corridor over their communities?

Lastly - for the autonomous AAMs, I don't know who in their right mind is going to climb into a pilotless drone. One or two highly publicized crashes could kill the whole thing.

Another thing I've noticed about all these designs is they talk about carrying 4-6 passengers. I haven't seen any specs about the craploads of baggage people take with them to the airport.

Edit: Something else came to mind...

You have to drive to the Vertiport to catch your air taxi to LAX. If I have to pay for parking while my car sits at the Vertiport I may as well pay for parking at LAX/JFK. If I choose to keep my car at home in the garage and catch an Uber to the Vertiport, now I'm paying twice for Uber ground and Uber air.