NAS Demand Predictions, Transportation Systems Analysis Model (TSAM) Compared with Other Forecasts

Abstract

The current work incorporates the Transportation Systems Analysis Model (TSAM) to predict the future demand for airline travel. TSAM is a multi-mode, national model that predicts the demand for all long distance travel at a county level based upon population and demographics. The model conducts a mode choice analysis to compute the demand for commercial airline travel based upon the traveler's purpose of the trip, value of time, cost and time of the trip,. The county demand for airline travel is then aggregated (or distributed) to the airport level, and the enplanement demand at commercial airports is modeled. With the growth in flight demand, and utilizing current airline flight schedules, the Fratar algorithm is used to develop future flight schedules in the NAS. The projected flights can then be flown through air transportation simulators to quantify the ability of the NAS to meet future demand. A major strength of the TSAM analysis is that scenario planning can be conducted to quantify capacity requirements at individual airports, based upon different future scenarios. Different demographic scenarios can be analyzed to model the demand sensitivity to them. Also, it is fairly well know, but not well modeled at the airport level, that the demand for travel is highly dependent on the cost of travel, or the fare yield of the airline industry. The FAA projects the fare yield (in constant year dollars) to keep decreasing into the future. The magnitude and/or direction of these projections can be suspect in light of the general lack of airline profits and the large rises in airline fuel cost. Also, changes in travel time and convenience have an influence on the demand for air travel, especially for business travel. Future planners cannot easily conduct sensitivity studies of future demand with the FAA TAF data, nor with the Boeing or Airbus projections. In TSAM many factors can be parameterized

A Vision and Opportunity for Transformation of On-Demand Air Mobility

“…Various studies have projected consumer demand for transportation [3] [4] [5,6]. As part of the present strategic framework study for NASA, we will produce domestic demand forecasts using a state-of-the-art agent-based simulation of transportation consumer demand [ [25].…”

On-demand assessment of air traffic impact of blocking airspace

“…Boeing publishes its latest assessment of the 20-year demand for world travel in its Current Market Outlook (1) , and Airbus provides its projection of 20-year demand in its Global Market Forecast (2) . Finally, the Transportation Systems Analysis Model (TSAM) (3) developed by Virginia Tech's Air Transportation Systems Lab and NASA Langley can be used to project the passenger demand for trips more than 100 miles selecting among three modes of transport: automobile, airline, and on-demand services using very light jet aircraft. All these forecasts focus on demand growth at the airports, not in the airspace in between; that is, they do not provide a prediction of trajectories of fights between the origin and destination airports.…”

“…DART is a product of AvMet, information at http://www.avmet.com/dart 2. Fast-time simulation tool developed by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames 3. Fast-time simulation tool developed by The MITRE Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD).…”

Characterizing a Wake-Free Safe Zone for the Simplified Aircraft-Based Paired Approach Concept

“…As a result of this increased demand, and because of the correlated increase in the number of commercial flights, many of the nation's airports are forecast to see rising arrival and departure delays in the near future 1,2 . A considerable part of these increased airport delays is due to the available throughput of the airport runways.…”