This is like reading a story about them newfangled car things that are supposed to replace horses. It'll never happen. Too dangerous... :)

Back in the days before airport security lines, that was about what it took to get from new york to boston. Only 100+ people at a time instead of just a few.

"This is like reading a story about them newfangled car things that are supposed to replace horses. It'll never happen. Too dangerous"
You must then still be living in the mid century, wake up call: It's already happening ;) Volo is extensively being tested as we speak,Ehang already flown with a passenger, and in a few years time you will awake into the future seeing them fly over your head.

In the event of emergency, could the failsafe position of the wings be vertical to allow the twin props to autorotate?

of course it'll happen it already happened, amazes me how ignorant people are at how reliable multirotors is.

Is this for the common everyday folk.... I think not.

Just what we need. A CO2 spewing air taxi for the well heeled. Wish they could do this with ni-cad batteries.

I'd rather take the Hyperloop. Same 'flight time' but gets you from City center to city center without needing to go through airport security.

What a scam. Buy a ticket now for a potential flight in 2024, from a rehashed airplane company who accidentally got one off the ground once in 2015? (insert swamp land sale boilerplate here) Feels too much like a pyramid scheme to me. Pass.

Using a complete parachute is a very clever idea. In fact, contrary to popular belief, there is no technological difficulties in such project unless you want to hyper-optimise energy consumption. Many drones have been developped with this type of technology. The real difficulty is to develop a safe plane that could be certifiable by the authority for public transport without any doubts. By using a full parachute, you can cover most if not all of the scenarios of propeller failures. The residual risk would thus be the failure of the chute itself (beware of the propeller ...) and the low altitude failures where there is no time to deploy the chute.