Urban Air Mobility Demand Estimation for Airport Access: A Los Angeles International Airport Case Study

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) or Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) is a concept aerial transportation mode being designed for intracity transport of passengers and cargo utilizing autonomous electric vehicles capable of Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) from dense and congested areas. Airport ground access trips could be among the early adopters of UAM because of the high customer willingness to pay, and substantial time-savings for long-distance or significantly congested access trips. This study aims to estimate demand for UAM in the airport ground access segment of Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). Travel behavior is derived from the airport passenger survey 2019 provided by Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA). A mixed logit model captures the mode-choice behavior that is later modified to include UAM. Total daily originating passenger trips are estimated from the T-100 database. The calibrated model is then applied to calculate the UAM demand. Utilizing the developed UAM demand estimation framework, a feasibility analysis is performed through a series of sensitivity analyses with respect to UAM passenger cost per mile (CPM) and UAM network size (number of vertiports). Furthermore, the Also, UAM demand in specific high-demand corridors (according to the ground access traffic) is analyzed. UAM could capture an estimated 3.6% market share in airport access trips to/from LAX at $2.00 UAM cost per passenger mile, assuming 2.4 passengers per flight (additional to $15 base cost per passenger and $20 landing cost per flight).