(Serbian) Finance Minister Siniša Mali recently, from the World Economic Forum in Davos, triumphantly announced, as if it were one of the most important pieces of news for citizens, that the Serbian government has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the American company Archer Aviation, a manufacturer of electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOL), “flying taxis.”
He also boasted that Serbia is the first country in Europe to sign such an agreement, and will therefore be the first European country where these aircraft will be tested.
The government plans the first flights as part of the official opening of Expo 2027 on May 14 of next year, but experts in this type of transportation claim that the remaining time, about 450 days, is not enough to meet all safety procedures and standards. This is all the more so since the manufacturer of the ordered “flying taxis,” Archer Aviation, has not yet even received flight permits from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. Without them, the entire project could fail.
European rules “unfavourable to business”
Never mind that Europe is much more demanding in this regard than the US. This is evidenced by comments from Archer Aviation representatives that the regulations issued by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) are “unfriendly to business” and that its strict requirements could slow or hinder the commercial deployment of flying taxis in the European market.
For now, from Minister Mali’s statement and the American company’s announcement, it is known only that Serbia has expressed its readiness and received the option to acquire an initial fleet of up to 25 Midnight-type aircraft, which take off and land vertically and are battery-powered. Each of them costs about five million euros, and the goal of their development is for them to eventually be cheaper to operate than helicopters, primarily thanks to their electric propulsion and simpler technical solutions.
The range of these aircraft is between 80 and 130 kilometers, depending on the battery capacity, and in addition to the pilot, they can carry four passengers. In the meantime, Serbia has amended the rules governing air traffic and pilot training to enable this mode of transport by adopting a relevant European Commission regulation into its domestic legal system, which governs the use of such aircraft. Need we mention that in Europe, no country has yet certified and issued permits for this type of aircraft, that international aircraft certification takes years, and that there is not a single vertiport – an airport for landing, takeoff, and servicing of electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, that there are no trained pilots for this type of aircraft, specialized charging ports, safety protocols…
What will the transportation cost be and can that investment ever be paid off?
Even if those technical and legal prerequisites are ignored, the key question arises: are there at least the basic assumptions that the use of 25 “flying taxis” for commercial purposes can be profitable. And what the cost of a ride will be, given that such aircraft, due to their battery capacity and range, are intended for short-haul routes, meaning only a small number of elite and most affluent passengers. Or for government officials, whose flights will be paid for by the budget, with money from all taxpayers. It is also very important how much, in addition to the acquisition of the aircraft themselves, the construction of the necessary infrastructure to support this will cost.
Only on the basis of all this data can one approximately determine how much revenue all these aircraft would need to generate annually for this investment to be profitable. This was obviously not even on the minds of the initiators of the “flying taxi” idea. After all, President Aleksandar Vučić himself, on the RTS show Oko, when asked by journalist Anica Telesković, answered that feasibility studies were not conducted for many public investments. “If we had done a feasibility study for every project, nothing would have ever been built in Serbia,” Vučić fired back. No comment.
For citizens, the more important question is who will pay for the pleasure of the wealthy minority. This is especially true considering that all of Archer’s other partners are typically wealthy countries, which have oil resources or are technologically far more advanced than Serbia.
There is also no answer as to why the government abandoned its intention to procure “flying taxis” from China. In May 2024, after a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Vučić stated that he was laughed at in Serbia when he spoke about flying taxis, and that during his visit to China, he had spoken with one company about these aircraft.
A year and a half later, in November 2025, the Chinese company Xpeng Aridge began their mass production. This is another piece in the puzzle of China’s enormous technological advancement, which in 2024 allocated $56 billion from its budget to finance scientific and technological development.
Due to the questionable procurement, soaring public debt
Serbia will also have to take on additional debt for this “investment,” because without new loans, it cannot pay either its maturing obligations or other government expenses. Last year, the deficit in the state treasury was 2.3 billion euros, and an even larger deficit of about 2.55 billion euros is planned for this year. Therefore, the public debt of 39 billion euros, as of the end of January, will continue to increase. Not only by the 125 million euros that will be paid for the “flying taxis,” but by at least as much again, the cost of building the accompanying infrastructure.
Considering the lifespan of the aircraft, the necessary investments in infrastructure, technical and human resources, for that investment to pay off, the annual revenue from the use of each of those 25 aircraft would have to be at least five million euros.
And it is not yet known who will operate them. The state, or someone else to whom it will entrust this task on its behalf. Many questions with no answers for an investment of 125 million euros, plus another that much for additional equipment and infrastructure. It is obvious that this venture makes no economic sense and that the logic of drunken millionaires prevailed among the authorities.
(Radar, 10.02.2026)
https://radar.nova.rs/ekonomija/leteci-taksiji-za-ekspo-2027/