Analysis of Urban Air Mobility Operational Constraints

Urban air mobility (UAM) refers to a set of vehicles and operational concepts proposed to provide on-demand or scheduled air transportation services within a metropolitan area. This paper investigates potential operational constraints that could arise during the implementation or scale-up of a UAM system. Literature on helicopter passenger networks was reviewed to determine operational constraints experienced by prior services similar to UAM. A constraint analysis was applied to near-term UAM operations in Los Angeles, Boston, and Dallas to assess if the historical constraints persist, or if novel constraints have emerged. The three city cases represented geographically diverse implementation regions for UAM services. A notional door-to-door concept of operations was applied to 32 reference missions within the three city cases. The reference missions exhibited a variety of requirements in terms of flight distance, passenger volume, market type, population overflight, and air traffic congestion, among others. By reviewing ground and flight operations for each reference mission, eight operational constraints were identified that could limit UAM system growth potential or prohibit UAM services altogether. The three most stringent constraints concerned community acceptance of aircraft noise, takeoff and landing area availability, and air traffic control scalability.