A Study on the Impact of Aircraft Technology on the Future of Regional Transportation Using Small Aircraft

摘要

Recent activities in electric propulsion and autonomy provide opportunity to improve regional air mobility in general. In this effort, the authors focused on Midwest as a candidate region for inter-city, intra-city and "airport shuttle" services via on-demand air taxi operations. The study incorporates multiple conventional take-off landing (CTOL) aircraft powered by either conventional fuels or electricity as the aircraft model choice for an air taxi service. The paper presents a computational analysis framework to evaluate three different "modes" of transportation - airline, automobile and air taxi. As an output, the framework provides the total trip time and cost associated with a mode of transportation. The framework is also developed in two variants - a specific trip model and a generic trip model. The specific trip approach leverages Google Map and Rome2Rio APIs for driving and flight information respectively, while the generic approach uses curve-fit/approximate models for rapid calculations of trip time and cost for various system-level market analysis. Potential market size analysis with the generic trip model reveals, even with on-board professional pilots and the existing infrastructure and setup, CTOL-capable aircraft could appeal to about 1.7% individuals in the Midwest. With the inclusion of Distributed Electric Propulsion (DEP), eCTOL could increase the potential market size from 1.7% to somewhere in between 7.2% - 12.2%, due to its expected lower cost of operations. These numbers increases exponentially as increasing levels of autonomy are included and improvements in the overall operational capability of the air taxi operator are made. For example, an improved ride-sharing model, that could increase the number of passengers per flight from two to three, could lead to a potential market size of 32% and 15% for eCTOL and CTOL aircraft respectively. Similarly, a remotely piloted eCTOL aircraft could lead to a net increase in the potential market attractiveness by as much as 39% (25% for CTOL-capable aircraft), while a fully autonomous vehicle with no human intervention could make travel via air taxi affordable to nearly all the individuals in the Midwest. The study here suggests significant market potential for both conventional CTOL and eCTOL aircraft with increasing levels of autonomy and /or improved operational capabilities for this new on-demand mode of transportation.