Systems analysis of urban air mobility operational scaling

Urban air mobility (UAM) refers to a set of vehicles and operational concepts that provide on-demand or scheduled air transportation services for passengers and cargo within a metropolitan area. Prior UAM systems based on helicopters or small aircraft did not achieve sustained, large-scale adoption. The goals of this thesis are: to identify the principal scaling constraints of UAM, to discern how the severity of these constraints varies with different implementation locations and operational concepts, and to assess the feasibility of large-scale UAM services in the United States subject to these constraints. Seven potential scaling constraints are identified through exploratory case studies of UAM operations in three U.S. cities. Of these constraints, the development of takeoff and landing areas (TOLAs) and the provision of air traffic control (ATC) services are proposed as principal near-term constraints and selected for detailed analysis.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Vascik, Parker D.(Parker Denys Neff)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• R. John Hansman.

• Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/128057

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/128057