Exploration of Near term Potential Routes and Procedures for Urban Air Mobility

Abstract

This paper investigates routes and procedures for Urban Air Mobility (UAM), which aims to reduce congestion on the roads and highways by offering air taxi as an alternative to driving. The routes and procedures being explored are current-day helicopter routes along with different communication procedures that are available as tools in the near-term. Three different levels of UAM traffic were evaluated in the Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) area. The current-day helicopter routes were modified to separate them from traditional traffic, and a Letter of Agreement (LOA) was introduced in some of the conditions to reduce verbal communications. We found that modifications to the routes and introduction of LOA helped increase the number of UAM flights that the controllers reported they could manage and reduce their communications, which made controller self-reported workload more operationally acceptable. However, the self-reported workload experienced by busy airport towers cannot be effectively managed via the usage of LOA and modified helicopter routes, suggesting there is an opportunity to re-think roles and responsibilities of the UAM system participants.

Evaluating the Interoperability of Urban Air Mobility Systems and Airports

“…Initial human-in-the-loop experiments simulated for Dallas-Fort Worth Airport by NASA suggest that a local controller may be able to support between five and ten concurrent UAM arrivals alongside their current traffic load in visual conditions (16). To increase throughput further, towers may open additional controller positions.…”

Rotorcraft systems for urban air mobility: A reality check

“…Yet, this type of services is already available by helicopter, with several safety limitations, among which the rotor downwash is an important example. There is a further emphasis on the use of eVTOL air taxis to "alleviate transportation congestion" (for example, Refs (17,18)), although it is not made clear what amount of eVTOL taxi capacity is required to bring about this alleviation.…”

“…Examples shown in the literature refer to the "Los Angeles area", or Dallas or San Francisco, which are not representative of the world at large (16,18) , since these large conurbations do not have a network of public transportation infrastructure that competes with the aircraft. In other reports we read that "consumers" would use a ride-sharing operation "to call VTOL to their desired pickup location and specify drop-off destinations at rooftops throughout a given city".…”

Dynamic Delegated Corridors and 4D Required Navigation Performance for Urban Air Mobility (UAM) Airspace Integration

“…The projected UAM operations and high demand for UAM airspace integration into the existing airspace system may result in more workload for ATC and exceed the capacity of current ATC system resources (Vascik, Hansman, & Dunn, 2018). For this reason, during the peak hour with high traffic congestion, the operations of UAM aircraft may be delayed, restricted, or even prohibited in specific airspace due to the limited ATC workload (Vascik, Hansman, & Dunn, 2018;Verma, Keeler, Edwards, & Dulchinos, 2019). Thus, the need for developing new airspace management constructs and operational procedures for the current airspace system is essential to reduce airspace manager and air traffic manager workload to enable the accommodation of projected UAM operations, thereby increase the viability of UAM airspace integration.…”

“…Verma et al (2019) used the airspace of the Dallas Fort Worth area, consisting of Class B and D airspace, to explore potential routes and procedures to allow UAM aircraft to integrate into the airspace. The results show that the existing routes flown by helicopter and methods of communication may help to manage UAM operations in the near-term but may not meet the requirements for the middle-term and long-term.…”