CASA spokesman Peter Gibson said he had seen proposals for low-altitude air taxi services that would fly people between locations such as an airport and the central business district of a large city and believed the companies behind the proposals were serious about them.
"There are companies, and I'm talking about big multinational companies, investing big dollars," Mr Gibson said.
"We are talking about hundreds of millions, if not billions."
Uber Air taxis to launch in US
The comments follow the announcement this year that Uber was considering including Melbourne or Sydney among the launch cities for its Elevate project.
The project involves an electric aircraft able to take people between specific points within a city.
The service was already slated to fly in Dallas and Los Angeles in the United States and the company is considering nine cities, including Sydney and Melbourne, outside the US to trial the project in.
Mr Gibson said Uber had already approached CASA to discuss regulatory issues around the use of air taxis, and he said there were few barriers to what the company was proposing because the regulatory framework to allow it was already there.
From the
ABC NEWS
Never get off the ground.
CASA will put so many regulatory hurdles in place it will uneconomic except for the UBER rich. In which case they will just take a chopper.
Mick