Or do these companies really think shuffling their pax to the airport at 200 mph, 4 pax at a time with a single pilot is going to be a money maker? Seems sort of iffy from a business perspective.

In the modern era, leadership training/education programs tend to emphasize the hazards (and lessons learned from the past) associated with complacency and failure to recognize and react to future trends (especially disruptive trends). So business leaders today are probably a little spring-loaded to not get left behind in the dust and wind up like Blockbuster or Kodak... somebody at UAL seems to be leaning into some of these maybe future things.

Yeah, but that wasn’t the question. The question was if - in a time of pilot shortage - having a single pilot shuttling people from heliport to heliport or heliport to airport four at a time - will actually bring in a profit? Clearly, larger helicopters have done that in the past, carrying as many as 14 pax in an S-76 for high end corporate pax
https://www.blade.com/p/jfk
although the profitability of those companies is a little suspect. And even those did twin pilot ops in some weather. Not saying it can’t be done - we put a man on the moon - just wondering if it can be done profitably.

Virtue signalling is possible. Just saying that they might not care if there's a clear business case at this point, just don't want somebody else to beat them to the punch with something disruptive.

VC's for example don't need definitive proof that a business concept will succeed, they assume that most will not, but the one that goes big time more than pays for all the others. The art of VC is getting the ratio right.

As for pilots, yeah where are you going to get them? Will eVTOL time count towards ATP mins? Maybe UAL could wire that into their pilot development pathway program. Maybe they're planning on a high degree of automation such that they can use a dumbed-down pilot rating and basically hire uber drivers. Since an eVTOL can land automatically and pretty much immediately wherever it happens to be, you can probably get away with fewer pilot skills. Also if the lift systems fails, the computer can handle that better than a human, or not at all. I don't think those pilots will need any sort of rotor type skills.

There is no pilot shortage. There never was.

Kit Darby sold hot air.

There might be a shortage if they deploy a lot of flying ubers (with revenue potential of about $11.37 per pax per trip) and the job requires a CPL.

Shortage at the top tier? Nah. But you might argue that there is more opportunity this decade than is typical.

Ehhh, it's all vaporware.

Airlines are just making these splashy announcements to try to keep their names in the news, and hopefully get a little stock bounce.

What the hell is Virtue Signaling?

Been on deployment for a while?

They don't let me out much.

Google definition didn't make much sense.