Estimating the economic viability of advanced air mobility use cases : towards the slope of enlightenment

While different vehicle configurations enter the AAM market, airlines declare different ticket fares for their operations. This research investigates the operating cost of an airline and the economic viability with the announced fare per km rates. For this purpose, three use cases in the metropolitan area of Hamburg showcase representative applications of an AAM system, whereby a flight trajectory model calculates a flight time in each case. The direct operating cost are investigated for each use case individually and are sub-classified in five categories: fee, crew, maintenance, fuel and capital costs. Here, each use case has its own cost characteristics, in which different cost elements dominate. Additionally, a sensitivity analysis shows the effect of a variation of the flight cycles and load factor, that influences the costs as well as the airline business itself. Based on the occurring cost, a profit margin per available seat kilometer lead to a necessary fare per km, that an airline has to charge.

Subjects

urban air mobility

advanced air mobility

cost modeling

direct operating cost

profit margin

ticket price

intra-city

airport shuttle

regional mobility

DDC Class

330: Wirtschaft

380: Handel, Kommunikation, Verkehr

600: Technik

620: Ingenieurwissenschaften

Publication version

publishedVersion

Lizenz

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Name

drones-07-00075.pdf

Size

6.12 MB

Format

Adobe PDF

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Estimating the economic viability of advanced air mobility use cases : towards the slope of enlightenment