By Schedule or On-Demand ?-A Hybrid Operational Concept for Urban Air Mobility Services

Recent advancements in aircraft technology, aviation concepts, and airspace management made by the collective effort of industry, government, and academia have set the stage for a new transportation mode called Urban Air Mobility (UAM). Attracted by the potentially large commuter and personal air travel market, companies such as Uber and Airbus are working towards launching their UAM services in near future. As the type of fleet deployed and the nature of operations in UAM are inherently different than ground-based transportation, new concepts and procedures are currently being developed to ensure safety and efficiency of such operations which will take place alongside traditional aviation. Additionally, new models of operations management are needed to support strategic and tactical decision making of the service providers, such as scheduling, dispatching and fleet planning, for maximizing their preferred objectives. Although such models will be critical to the success of the enterprise, no research, to the best of our knowledge, has yet been conducted on developing these models. Taking into account the unique set of operational constraints associated with UAM services, this paper proposes mathematical models for commercial transport service providers to decide which type of scheduling to offer, how to dispatch the fleet and schedule operations, based on simulated market demand, such that profit is maximized. The optimal fleet size can also be determined using the models. Three different settings of services – on-demand service, scheduled service, and a mix of both services (hybrid operations) – are modeled for carrying out a comparative analysis of the different forms of operations based on metrics such as fraction of total demand served and profit.