No, there are still commuter helicopter flights between Manhattan and JFK. As well as EWR.

You can get a seat for $195: https://www.blade.com/jfk

Don’t forget about bicycles, there are 2-3 cyclist fatalities in the US every day.

That was in 1977. Reaching that far back to find a horror story just goes to show how safe commercial aviation is.

They are not meant to replace cars, they are meant to replace helicopters. And they will very likely be cheaper than helicopters.

The FAA mandates extensive training for anyone who wants to fly, regardless of the form of the aircraft. And even more training for commercial pilots (i.e. paying passengers).

Nothing in this article suggests that pilots of this vehicle would have less training than pilots of other aircraft.

I worry a lot more about drunk drivers than drunk pilots.

Helicopters aren’t failures, people still use them to get from the city to an airport and back. However, they are very expensive.

The vehicles in this article have the same use case, but they are intended to be cheaper.

Over 30 years ago, someone tried to claim copyright on a phone book. Their phone book had required manually collecting and verifying data from various sources, and the author of the phone book believed all that effort should be rewarded with a copyright on their product.

The Supreme Court rejected that argument. They established that copyright is not a general reward for the “sweat of the brow”. It is only meant to protect human creative expression. A phone book is not creative expression, and neither is any other handpicked database.

Because it’s perverse for someone to create content if successful content will surely be stolen and used against its creator.

They weren’t stealing content until now.

Because until now they weren’t competing against individual content creators.