Air Taxi Flight Sharing

Abstract

In traditional air taxi model, flight route and timing are assigned to every order individually, resulting in minimum utilization of seats, maximum number of empty legs and elevated price levels. Sharing flights, when possible, allow decreasing number of empty seats and distributing cost of flight among customers. Challenges to overcome are varying timing needs of customers and volatility of demand. This article investigates possibilities of synchronizing passenger orders. The proposed passenger pooling model replaces specific flight timing on order with constraints: latest arrival and earliest departure to provide room for coordination of orders, backed by web-based ICT. Theoretical test cases calculations verify the concept and compare it with traditional full on-demand and scheduled operations.