West Valley City • Before Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon, Apollo 11′s lightweight shock-absorbing footpads made their mark in history.
Now, the company that made those footpads is looking to take another big leap in the next frontier of air travel.
Hexcel announced Thursday its partnership with Utah aerospace industry association 47G and dozens of Beehive State-based technology companies to construct “air taxis” — lightweight “vertical takeoff” vehicles that would fly residents and visitors across the Wasatch Front.
The company and 47G want the futuristic system to be operational by 2034, when the eyes of the world focus on Utah for the all-but-certain return of the Winter Olympics.
“We know that we can’t continue to add lanes to our freeways,” Gov. Spencer Cox said Thursday at an event launching the initiative. “We can’t keep widening, but we can start going vertical. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Gov. Spencer Cox speaks during a news conference at a Hexcel manufacturing facility in West Valley City on Thursday, May 30, 2024.
The air taxis look similar to small airplanes and are a part of what’s dubbed “Project Alta,” an initiative led by 47G that includes the governor’s office, the Utah Department of Transportation and the Utah Inland Port Authority.
Plans call for creating a passenger system from Ogden to Provo with stops in Layton, Salt Lake City, Draper and Vineyard, 47G President and CEO Aaron Starks said.
The initiative, he added, also has business implications that pack environmental positives.
“The technology making this possible is environmentally friendly and will help the state accelerate its efforts to reduce the carbon footprint throughout the valley,” Starks said. “As infrastructure is developed, less trucks will idle in neighborhoods each night as small-package delivery and cargo will be now delivered via air.”
Hexcel’s West Valley City campus, the largest aerospace-grade carbon-fiber manufacturing facility in North America, will create the structures and rotor blades for the battery-powered air taxis, Hexcel President of Americas Philippe Chevrie said.
Utahns can already take advantage of what the coalition leading the initiative calls “advanced air mobility.” In Herriman and Lindon, drones deliver groceries for Walmart. In South Jordan, residents can have prescriptions from Intermountain Health delivered by drone.
Before Project Alta’s air taxis can take off, though, the group behind the initiative will have to partner with the federal government.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Michael Huerta, former FAA administrator and Project Alta chair, speaks at a Hexcel manufacturing facility in West Valley City on Thursday, May 30, 2024.
The project’s chair, Michael Huerta, assisted Utah’s transportation agencies during the 2002 Winter Olympics and served as the administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration from 2013 to 2018. He said federal standards for this new system — like pilot training requirements and certifications — are still being developed.
Utah is “ideally positioned” to shape the new age of air travel worldwide, Huerta said, because of its well-functioning, multimodal ground transportation system and a number of aerospace companies that call the state home.
Aerospace defense and tech companies make up 20% of Utah’s economy, the governor said, and the new air taxis will no doubt play a critical role in that economy once they take flight.
Utah is fertile ground — or sky — for this new air-mobility system, thanks to the state’s businesses, tourism and national parks, Cox said. And a developer the governor said he met with Thursday morning reinforced exactly that.
“‘He (the developer) said, ‘I hope you know that this is the golden age of Utah. What you guys are doing is unparalleled anywhere in the country right now,’” Cox recalled. “‘This is the epicenter for development, for growth, the epicenter for innovation. Everything that’s happening here is what the nation needs right now.’”
