Air taxis will appear in Dubai in 2026

Uber has announced that by the end of 2026, it will be possible to book an air taxi ride through its app in Dubai. To do this, electric aircraft created by the startup Joby Aviation are used.

According to the companies, Joby’s aircraft will seat a maximum of four passengers and will be flown by licensed commercial pilots. It is planned to open four special sites – vertiports – in Dubai. They will connect the city’s international airport with one of the shopping centers, a hotel on the Palm Jumeirah island and the American University of Dubai.

Although the service is not expected to launch in the United States any time soon, Joby is completing the final stages of certification with the Federal Aviation Administration. Uber emphasized that it has long considered urban air mobility as a promising direction that can change the way people travel in megacities.

Joby noted that cooperation with Uber will make the new format of transport more familiar and accessible, combining land and air travel into a single system and reducing travel time. Users will be able to book Uber Air flights in the same app where they book regular trips. The service will also include transfer to and from the vertiport using Uber Black cars.

Once all approvals are received, Joby expects to eventually expand into other markets, including New York, Los Angeles, the UK and Japan.

The Dubai market entry comes nearly six years after Joby acquired Uber’s air mobility division Elevate. As part of the 2020 deal, Uber invested $75 million in the startup.

Then the company sold off part of its assets amid a sharp decline in demand for transportation in the first year of the pandemic. Around the same time, Uber sold its self-driving car division to startup Aurora, and last year announced collaborations with Lucid and Nuro on robotaxis.