Basically, don’t expect anything at this point.
Arlington won’t have flying taxis in time for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, as city leaders had hoped last year.
Arlington Mayor Jim Ross first announced the city was partnering with a startup with the hopes of making Arlington the first American city with advanced air mobility during his state of the city address in October 2024.
“Theoretically, when it’s all done and we expect it to be done for the World Cup in 2026, you can be flying these air taxis right into the Entertainment District,” Ross said during the address.
But a year later, Ross and other experts say that won’t happen.
This is due to a combination of factors, but the biggest obstacle is Federal Aviation Administration regulations that haven’t been completed.
Still, Ross told KERA News in a recent interview, Arlington hasn’t given up on being among the first in the country to have flying taxis.
Those taxis would be eVTOL aircraft – electronic vertical take-off and landing. The vehicle would be powered by an electric motor instead of a combustion engine and would take off and land the same way as a helicopter.
While the air taxis won’t be ready to move people in time for the World Cup, Ross said it’s not unreasonable to expect at least one of them to be in the skies over the Arlington Entertainment District in what the mayor referred to as a World’s Fair type demo.
Ernest Huffman agrees.
The aviation planning and education program coordinator for the North Central Texas Council of Governments, Huffman’s job includes researching new forms of air travel often called advanced air mobility.
The millions of visitors expected in North Texas for the World Cup wouldn’t be able to hop on an eVTOL and fly to the games, but Huffman said it could still benefit the region.
“We’ve been trying to do an advanced air mobility demonstration type day for the World Cup games,” Huffman told KERA News. “This just gets us more momentum and more leverage to do so. And we can use that demo event for our kickoff for our EIPP piloting program.”
Even that’s not certain, though, Huffman said. The FAA has pushed back the launch of eVTOL programs in the past and he wouldn’t be surprised if it happened again.
NCTCOG and Arlington are making preparations, though, so they can be ready if an aircraft has the necessary approval to conduct the demonstration.
Alicia Winkelblech, Arlington’s director of transportation, said it could be 2027 when the first manufacturers of air taxis get FAA certification to move people.
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Huffman’s timeline isn’t quite as optimistic, but isn’t terribly far off.
Huffman said the earliest, most realistic scenario for commercially operated air taxis is likely 2028, when Los Angeles will be home to the summer Olympics.
“If I were to guess, I would say around 2028, around Olympics time, you’ll probably see some commercial operations,” Huffman said. “You’ll see some real small operations, probably in Florida, a New York operation.”
He said there could even be an operation in North Texas by then, but it would likely be one single route.
See here for the previous update. It’s quite the dropoff from “we will have flying taxis to take people to the World Cup games” to “okay, maybe we’ll be able to do a demo”, far enough that Mayor Ross might have been advised to temper his enthusiasm a bit from the beginning. I suppose I can understand the desire for the big vision, but yeah, I think Los Angeles in 2028 is the more realistic timeframe. You know I’ll be on the lookout for further updates.