Flying taxis are taking off to whisk people around cities

IN OCTOBER 1908UAM, on a windy field at Farnborough, south-west of London, a handlebar-mustachioed former Wild West showman named Samuel Cody completed the first official controlled flight of a powered aeroplane in Britain. Since then many other pioneering aircraft, from Concorde to the giant Airbus A380, have flown at what became the biennial Farnborough air show. The aerospace centre that stages the show is now preparing for another sort of revolutionary aircraft to take to the sky.These new planes are variously described as flying taxis, passenger drones or, as the industry terms them, urban air mobility () vehicles. Around 200 such craft are at various stages of development around the world, according to experts at Farnborough’s first global urban air summit in early September. Some prototypes are already carrying out test flights and operators hope to begin commercial services within the next few years. Uber, which runs an app-based taxi-hailing service, aims to start flying passengers in Dallas, Los Angeles and Melbourne, Australia by 2023.