15 minutes? If you flew in a small aircraft regularly,
     you would know it takes 40-60 minutes to prep a plane
     from park to airborne in zero traffic

How much of that prep is eliminated by going full automation? Isn't most of the prep the pilot running through a checklist?

If there is unavoidable time consuming checking, you could do that in advance and provide the plane as an autonomous taxi. So it shows up, picks you up, drops you off.

> Isn't most of the prep the pilot running through a checklist

Yes, but...

Things like "check your propeller for cracks", or "verify that the control surfaces are actually moving when the controls say they should have moved" should not be skipped.

But you can skip a lot of things just by virtue of this being an electric vehicle - like "visually verify fuel level without using the gauge", or "check oil level", or "test carb heat" or "verify dual magnetos" etc.

If these are automated, though, they can be done in parallel. A camera pointed at the propellers can be checking them for cracks at the same time that another camera is checking that control surfaces actually move.

there are better ways to detect aileron deflection via automation than with a camera, but I take your point.

> 15 minutes? If you flew in a small aircraft regularly, you would know it takes 40-60 minutes to prep a plane from park to airborne in zero traffic.

It takes 10-15min (max!) to check a Cessna 152, start, and call for departure clearance. Add on another 10-15min for taxi via the pumps & power+pre-take-off checks, you still have 30min left to play with.

I do agree with your main point that you don't just hop in and turn the key, just think that an hour for all that is taking your sweet time.

That fifteen minutes is for flying time in air taxi service. So you get into an aircraft ready to fly. I'm guessing two minutes of liftoff/landing and transitional flight on either end, and 11 minutes/22 miles of cruise in between.

Running out of fuel seems like less of a safety concern with this. Since it can land vertically, there are way more sites where it can make an emergency landing if the range estimate turns out to have been too optimistic.

Also, with a computer flying, you can do something less extreme: actively and continuously manage the compromise between speed and efficiency. If your confidence of reaching your destination drops below the required threshold (say 99.999%), slow to whatever speed is required to achieve that confidence.