  The effects of traffic congestion are adverse, primarily including air
pollution, commuter stress, and an increase in vehicle operating costs and
accidents on the road. In efforts to alleviate these problems in metropolitan
cities, logistics companies plan to introduce a new method of everyday commute
called air taxis, an Urban Air Mobility (UAM) service. These are
electric-powered vehicles that are expected to operate in the forthcoming years
by international transportation companies like Airbus, Uber, and Kitty Hawk.
Since these flying taxis are emerging mode of transportation, it is necessary
to provide recommendations for the initial design, implementation, and
operation. This study proposes managerial insights for these upcoming services
by analyzing online customer reviews and conducting an internal assessment of
helicopter operations. Helicopters are similar to air taxis in regards to their
operations, and therefore, customer reviews pertaining to the former can enable
us to obtain insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the short-distance
aviation service, in general. A four-stage sequential approach is used in this
research, wherein the online reviews are mined in Stage 1, analyzed using the
bigram and trigram models in Stage 2, 7S internal assessment is conducted for
helicopter services in Stage 3, and managerial recommendations for air taxis
are proposed in Stage 4. The insights obtained in this paper could assist any
air taxi companies in providing better customer service when they venture into
the market.
  Keywords: Air taxi; Emerging technology; Urban Air Mobility (UAM); Helicopter
services; Online customer reviews; Text analytics;
