Project motivation

Advanced Air Mobility (AAM), or colloquially "air taxi" passenger transport, is an innovative form of mobility that is soon to be trialled commercially. As a strong economic region and a European transport hub with Frankfurt Airport at its centre, the Rhine-Main region seems to offer good conditions for integrating AAM. In the FLAMINGO research project (“Flugtaxis in der Rhein-Main-Region”), the project partners d-fine and Fraport, together with the associated partners Skyports, Beyond 1435 (Deutsche Bahn subsidiary for investments and external partnerships) and the City of Frankfurt, conducted a feasibility study for the development of an air taxi network in the Rhine-Main region, focussing on airport shuttle use case.

Key results

Based on surveys, expert domain knowledge as well as traffic simulations, modelling of economic feasibility and differentiated ramp-up scenarios, the project generated the following key insights:

• There is a general willingness to pay a premium for AAM services
• The Rhine-Main region offers numerous promising use cases for an AAM airport shuttle
• Regional connections show the most potential
• Stakeholder networks and pilot cases are essential