Maybe this time it was a a little too big. The Milan – Cortina Olympics are the Winter Olympic Games largest ever. There are several locations. In addition to Milan and Cortina there are also other centers where the competitions are held like Bormio and Livignoall over an area that the organization calculates around i 22,000 square km.
The impact on transport in the first days of the Games it was good. There were no particular inconveniences, except for some journalists from the foreign press. The profile of NBC Bay Areaan American media based in San Francisco, told the story in a video four hours of public transport to go and follow a race in Livigno starting from Milan.
Yet there is a missing piece in the transport systemat least if we scroll up the list of declarations a campaign started in 2023 to bring flying taxis to Milan. The idea was to add gods small electric helicopters to the services that connect the city with the Malpensa and Linate airports. The flying taxis were to depart from the runways and land in the vertiports think about CityLife and Porta Romana. What happened to them?
Ilia Malinin upsets the Olympics with the backflip that had been banned for 50 years
Rise and demise of the project, for now
The first signs had already arrived in October 2022 but in January 2023 there were also official confirmations. The January 17th the CEO of Sea Armando Brunini presented himself to the Mobility Commission of the municipality of Milan to show the entire line of development of the project: “In the timeline, the objective is to arrive at the first vertiports between 2023 and 2024, including design, construction and testing, to then be ready in 2026”. Sea is the acronym for Joint-stock company Airport Operationsthe company that manages Milan’s airports.
The aim is therefore for the Olympics. The cost? Content. According to Brunini, the expense for one route would have been similar to that incurred for pay for a taxi: “From an analysis the initial price could be around 120 euros per person. But this is a start because both for the volumes that the industry will produce and for the fact that vehicles for 4, 6 passengers are being worked on, it is estimated that the price could drop to 70 or 80 euros, therefore absolutely comparable with a taxi service”.
What happened to flying taxis
Flying taxis were a bit of a one hangover of innovation in those years. It was also discussed in Naples and Rome. Here too, it didn’t go very well. The last sighting of the flying taxi in the press dates back to December 2024in the newspaper The Day. Here is what Armando Brunini said in another meeting of the Milan Mobility Commission:
“It is not excluded that some small tests could be carried out for the Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina, but the entry into operation will certainly not be what we hoped for”.
Once this announcement passed, flying taxis were no longer mentioned. The only portal that still talks about flying taxis in Milan is Whiteworka news site with the headline “Milan inaugurates the first “Vertiporto”: flying taxis for the 2026 Olympics are underway.”. But by reading more closely you can see that we are not on the most reliable site in the ecosystem. A few launches before you find an article entitled: “The “rush hour tax”: Dynamic Price arrives at the Supermarket. Shopping at 6pm will cost 20% more”.
