Development and Application of a Dynamic Solution Framework for Urban Air Taxi Fleet Operation

Ale Ahmad, Haleh Sadat

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-hpmz-y160

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Development and Application of a Dynamic Solution Framework for Urban Air Taxi Fleet Operation

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Urban Air Taxi (UAT) is the use case of passenger-carrying Urban Air Mobility (UAM) at its mature state, and it offers a ubiquitous on-demand (or nearly on-demand) per-seat service that moves passengers in urban or suburban areas using groundbreaking aircraft. However, the absence of a dominant electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft technology and UAT operator feeds the uncertainty around UAT. This dissertation focuses on outlining the concept of operations for UAT services, defining the UAT problem, and developing and applying a dynamic solution framework to address the stochastic and dynamic problem of UAT fleet operation. As a result, it provides the UAT operator with a decision-making tool to achieve higher network efficiency.To accomplish this goal, the UAT concept of operations, which involves a ubiquitous service with air pooling and elimination of short repositioning flights, is first outlined. Subsequently, the entities relevant to the UAT fleet operation are specified, and their associated states and events are presented in detail. The dynamic and stochastic problem of UAT fleet operation is modeled on a rolling horizon basis. A static and deterministic problem is solved at each decision epoch to help the UAT operator make the dynamic operational decisions, including acceptance and rejection of requests, routing and scheduling the aerial fleet, and assigning the requests to flights. Based on a node-based representation of the UAT network, the snapshot problem is modeled as a Capacitated Location-Allocation-Routing Problem with Time Windows and Short Repositioning Elimination (CLARPTW-SRE). For narrow time windows and relatively short minimum distance for repositioning flight legs, the corresponding MIP could be solved quickly using commercial software, enabling its real-time application. The proposed dynamic solution framework is subsequently implemented using a discrete-event simulation. The impacts of various exogenous and design parameters on demand consolidation are examined using comprehensive sensitivity analyses in a synthetic network. Furthermore, the framework is applied to the Chicago network using a fixed fleet of UAT aircraft and Chicago Transportation Network Providers (TNPs) demand. Augmenting the devised UAT operational strategy with real-world data would validate the network efficiency assumptions (e.g., the average load factor and utilization) made by many UAM market studies and offer estimates of the said parameters for future studies.

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