Flying taxis are expected to be one of the main mobility attractions of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, a demonstration of French savoir-faire and technology. Unfortunately, they were dealt a blow before they even took off. It was the French Environmental Authority that delivered the hit. The independent body has asked the Groupe ADP – which manages the Orly, Roissy and Le Bourget airports in the Paris area and also operates the flying cabs – to reconsider its plans.

In early September, the independent body issued an unfavorable opinion on one of the routes to be taken by the futuristic aircraft - hybrid-looking machines halfway between a large insect and a helicopter. After a year of tests at the Pontoise vertiport, Groupe ADP and its partner Volocopter, designers of the VoloCity taxis, have identified three routes to be used by the craft during the Games, as well as two "loops," as the airport operator calls them, reserved for tourist flights.

The three routes lead from Roissy-Charles de Gaulle to Le Bourget, from the Paris heliport at Issy-les-Moulineaux to the Saint-Cyr-l'École airfield and from the Paris heliport to the vertiport at Quai d'Austerlitz. ADP is planning to install a barge on the Seine below the Gare d'Austerlitz to enable its flying cab to take off and land vertically. This route to the Austerlitz barge will be the only one to bring the crafts into inner Paris. To avoid passing above buildings, the taxis will have to fly over the Seine to the barge, moored at the foot of the Cité de la Mode et du Design.

It's this last destination that caught the attention of the Environmental Authority, which deemed the impact study for the Paris vertiport to be "incomplete." Contrary to Groupe ADP's claims, the independent body found that the flying taxis made far more noise than advertised. The authority measured them at 65 decibels in flight. They "are less noisy than combustion-powered helicopters but cannot be regarded as silent, contrary to what is stated in the file, unless one considers an average combustion-powered motor vehicle to be silent," said the authority.

When contacted, Groupe ADP pointed out that the noise level of the flying cabs had been measured by the RATP's acoustic laboratory. Above all, it said that the operating noise of the taxis, which will operate between 120 and 300 meters above ground (helicopters fly between 300 and 1,500 meters), would be "hardly perceptible in an urban environment." Tests carried out over a one-year period in Pontoise were designed, in particular, to verify the integration of this new type of mobility into air traffic, in cooperation with the French Civil Aviation Authority.

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