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Abstract
This article discusses the actual and potential impact of helicopter travel on urban mobility. Vertical flight has long promised a world of unhindered mobility, especially due to the versatility of the helicopter as a means of transportation. Some of the major utopias of mobility in the modern age have centred on the various capabilities of vertical flight, especially with regards to dense urban spaces. In this article I briefly uncover this modern desire for door‐to‐door air travel and situate contemporary uses of the helicopter in relation to historical fantasies of vertical flight. I then analyse a distinctive phenomenon in the contemporary world of vertical flight: the rise of helicopter travel in São Paulo, Brazil. By focusing on the various infrastructures that enable urban air travel and the needs and uses for helicopters in a major global city, this article investigates a relatively unknown but very significant development in contemporary urban mobility. The article also suggests a conceptual framework for understanding the emergence and effects of urban air travel in São Paulo, therefore seeking to contribute to developing theories of mobilities.
Notes
1. This article is based on the research project ‘Mobility, Urban Landscape and Social Exclusion: the Rise of Urban Air Travel in São Paulo’. This project was generously funded by an Economic and Social Research Council grant (ESRC Award No RES‐000‐22‐0732). The research involved collection of secondary data, including media reports and publicity material, over 50 interviews with stakeholders and a survey of the population of relevant districts of São Paulo city. The author would like to thank the ESRC for making this research possible.
2. For further information on the American Historical Association GI Roundtable Series' views on personal aviation, see http://www.historians.org/projects/ GIRoundtable/Airplane/Airplane1.htm (accessed 31 Jan. 2006).
3. For a good overview of financial and other constraints to the introduction of helicopter commercial operations in the UK, see York Aviation's (Citation2004) report on the feasibility of helicopter operations in Cumbria.
4. See, for instance, Hovercontrol at http://www.hovercontrol.com (accessed 31 Jan. 2006).
5. Ducted‐fan technology is but one of the developments sought by the pioneers who still believe in the market potential of ‘flying cars’. For a comprehensive view of recent experiments with city‐friendly vertical flight aircraft, see the websites of three promising technological and business developments: Urban Aeronautics' X‐Hawk, a vehicle designed to operate in complex urban environements, can be ‘viewed’ at http://www.urbanaero.com, Macro Industries' Skyrider X2R is neatly presented at http://www.macroindustries.com/website/files/skyrider/sr‐index.htm, while Moller International is already accepting deposits for the secure delivery of its M400 Skycar, following successful test flights (see http://www.moller.com/skycar); all these websites accessed 31 Jan. 2006.
6. The 1990s saw an increase in the visibility of intra‐urban air travel in São Paulo. Over 120 major reports on helicopter travel in São Paulo have appeared in four of São Paulo's main daily newspapers between 1996 and 2004, not including articles that reported on topical issues such as helicopter accidents or specific business issues. Most of these news reports heralded a new, heroic era of urban aviation in the largest Brazilian metropolis, while increasingly reporting on contested issues arising from this novel development. Articles proclaimed the relentless growth in helicopter operations, the steady construction of the ground infrastructure, and the incipient drive to regulate, control and discipline this form of urban mobility. In many of these articles, pioneers of this aerial revolution in the city, namely pilots, air traffic controllers, local authorities officials, but especially users and commuters, are portrayed as the harbingers of a new era of city mobility.
7. All translations are mine.
8. See http://www.daslu.com.br/dasludna_videos_01.php (accessed 31 Jan. 2006).
9. A recent figure given out by the Association of Helicopter Pilots of São Paulo State (APHESP) puts the figure at 310 helipads, 190 of them located in the main financial and corporate districts around Paulista and Faria Lima avenues (Magalhães & Diniz, Citation2004). The number of registered helipads in the whole of the UK recently stood at around 220, not including landing sites at hospitals, according to the British Helicopter Advisory Board's Information Handbook 2003/04. Such is the density of elevated helipads in São Paulo that for several years now helicopter pilots in the city make use of Pilot's Help [sic], a reference book that doubles up as an illustrated directory of all registered helicopter landing spots in Brazil. São Paulo, of course, takes a large chunk of the book, which works effectively as an air travel equivalent of an A to Z street atlas.
10. A typical landing or lift‐off fee is about US$40.
11. It is not easy to calculate with precision the number of helicopter operations in São Paulo, since no regular and consistent statistics are produced, and the private heliports often see such data in terms of industrial secrecy. If one takes the only official figure produced for the number of operations in one specific area of the city (the helipads in the controlled area around Congonhas airport), and add to figures from the two major public heliports and one of private heliports that are located within the municipality boundaries, one reaches a figure well in excess of 150,000 operations every year, which might be a conservative estimate, but consistent with anecdotal information about over 100 lift‐offs every hour in peak periods. Now, compare that with 11,000 operations a year in London's solitary heliport at Battersea, and one has an idea about the magnitude of urban helicopter operations in São Paulo. On the other hand, when I refer to what stakeholders themselves call ‘helicopter traffic’, the reader must not conjure up images of dozens of helicopters flying around one building and or hovering in line, negotiating their way across busy corridors. The notion of ‘traffic’ must be understood in its aviation sense, otherwise headlines such as ‘Helicopters are congesting the sky’ will be grossly misunderstood (Padilha, Citation2001)!
12. These programmes were, in 2004, Repórter Cidadão (Citizen Reporter) on Rede TV network, Cidade Alerta (Alert City) on Rede Record, both now discontinued, and Brasil Urgente (Urgent Brazil) on Rede Band. All use or used helicopters to report on local issues, often crime. In many occasions, they provide live reporting (aboard the network's helicopters) of police helicopter chases, a common feature in American TV networks as well.
13. The poll's universe was restricted to residents of districts where the main central helicopter routes are located, totalling a population of some 1.4 million. In total, 901 people from those areas were interviewed over the telephone, with a standard error of 3.3% in a confidence interval of 95%.
14. Although helicopter ownership is a privilege of very few corporations and individuals, like other expensive commodities in the age of access, the market makes fractional ownership possible. In fact, São Paulo is the home of what is regarded as one of the world's most successful helicopter fractional ownership businesses, Helisolutions. By cutting the cost of having a stake in a helicopter by nine‐tenths, and correspondingly decreasing operational costs, fractional ownership opens the world of vertical flight to a much larger market.
