[Atheros]

The real money maker here will be the heliports if they're privately owned. Because you own the bottleneck, you run the auction to determine who gets to take off and land. If the cost of the vehicles drops, more of the money that end users are willing to pay ends up in your pocket. Vehicle manufactures will be in a cut-throat race to reduce costs but ticket prices would never drop because $1 saved in vehicle cost would just be $1 in the pocket of the heliport operator.

That is unless the government can actually step up and set this up correctly: with a license auction. You bid on the right to operate the heliport every two years. License auctions work extremely well as demonstrated by radio frequency spectrum auctions and hot dog vendor location auctions.

[dmitrygr]

  > work extremely well as demonstrated by radio frequency spectrum

You are definitely not a USA resident! Thanks to those auctions we have an oligopoly of carriers who charge per GB like it is a gallon on Nobel Prize winners' sperm, while delivering service that compares unfavourably with a 56K modem on a bad line.

[Atheros]

$3.33/GB. Fairly middle of the road. No sperm required.

https://www.cable.co.uk/mobiles/worldwide-data-pricing/

[fulafel]

They can be bungled, but they demonstrably can be made work, a bit like aircraft...

(Though there is oddly little critique about the tight control of airwaves, and having only microscopic slices for free individual use like wifi and p2p links)

[Stevvo]

In most of the US opening a heliport is incredibly simple; take your parking lot or other land and paint some markings on the ground. Shoot off a letter to the FAA. Done.

That said, rotor-craft are not even required to land at a heliport; they can land anywhere that is safe unless doing so is trespassing or forbidden by a law.

A license auction would only restrict access and stifle competition.

[Terry_Roll]

You'll find somepeople in Govt will get bought and then the goal posts will be moved. Its std democratic practice.