Business travellers heading to Los Angeles could soon swap notorious freeway gridlock for a five-minute eVTOL hop after Reuben Brothers and Joby Aviation unveiled plans for the city’s first residential air taxi vertiport.
The property group, controlled by the billionaire brothers David and Simon Reuben, has struck an alliance with the California-based aircraft manufacturer to install the vertiport on the existing helipad at Park Elm Residences at Century Plaza, South Tower, in Century City. Once operational, the scheme will make Park Elm the first residential development in Los Angeles to integrate an on-demand air taxi service into its amenity package, with residents able to book flights across the greater Los Angeles area directly from the building.
Journeys that regularly exceed two hours by road could, the partners say, be completed in as little as five minutes by air — a pitch that is likely to resonate with the senior executives and international business travellers for whom Century City has become a preferred west coast base.
Joby’s all-electric aircraft, which produces zero operating emissions and is engineered to operate at noise levels significantly below those of conventional helicopters, is in the final stages of United States Federal Aviation Administration certification for commercial service. Last month the company completed a series of piloted demonstration flights across the San Francisco Bay Area, using one of the world’s most recognisable skylines to showcase what it described as operational readiness — evidence, it argued, that air taxis are no longer a concept but a commercial proposition in waiting.
Under the partnership, Joby will build out and operate both the vertiport and a dedicated passenger lounge, its first in a residential setting, while Reuben Brothers will fold the service into the Park Elm amenity offer. The lounge will draw on the expertise of Blade, the urban air mobility operator now a division of Joby and widely regarded as the leading name in the sector, which runs nine passenger lounges in the New York area and across the South of France.
The companies are jointly pursuing the local, state and federal approvals required to launch operations.
The announcement arrives at a pivotal moment for the advanced air mobility sector. Joby, which counts Delta Air Lines and Uber among its strategic partners, was recently named in several winning applications under the White House-backed eVTOL Integration Pilot Programme (eIPP), giving the company the opportunity to begin early commercial operations this year across 12 US states. Industry observers view the federal scheme as a potential accelerant for the American air taxi industry as a whole, and a useful tailwind for Joby’s path to commercial service.
For the business travel market, the Century Plaza tie-up offers a tangible preview of a segment that has long been promised but rarely delivered: seamless, point-to-point premium urban transport that bypasses congestion entirely. If the service launches as planned, Park Elm residents, and, in time, a wider pool of corporate flyers, could find that the run from Century City to Los Angeles International Airport, Santa Monica or downtown becomes a matter of minutes rather than hours.