I thought I was a professional curmudgeon and pessimist until I became reacquainted with the highly entertaining and constructively contrarian analysis of aerospace expert Richard Aboulafia. In his July letter, the Teal Group’s v-p of analysis turns his attention to advanced air mobility (AAM) and how, in his view, it could prove to be every bit as big a wash-out as the damp-squib very light jet (VLJ) air taxi revolution of the 2000s.
“With a sense of futility,” Aboulafia offers the AAM trailblazers some unsolicited advice. Let’s just say it probably won’t be well received by the evangelical game-changing cults in Silicon Valley and Bavaria.
Aboulafia closes his reflections with a classic “glass-half-full; glass-half-empty” juxtaposition. On the one hand, he concedes that this time it may be different from the VLJ anti-climax, in part because of the oceans of cash crashing onto the sun-kissed shores of AAM world. VLJ start-ups, he notes, didn’t have the option of turning to special purpose acquisition company sugar daddies. “Some of this SPAC cash is an illusion, but many AAM companies will last longer than those VLJ failures,” he predicted.
| 
