Preliminary design and optimization for fleet to be used in the Small Air Transport system

Abstract

Over the last few years, teams from several research centres have been working on the concept of Small Air Transport, filling the niche between a regular surface transport and a scheduled air transport-on the distances over 200 km, utilizing numerous, though low in volume, passengers' streams-giving regions a chance to improve their communication capabilities. Small Air Transport's tasks are performed on small aeroplanes, which take up to 19 passengers, with a flight time of up to 4 h and at a reasonable price for a mass recipient. An important feature of the Small Air Transport system is personalization, which is flexible adaptation of the transport process to the customer's requirements and capabilities. This paper focuses on the selection and optimization of key parameters of aircraft fleet used in Small Air Transport. The research and analysis were based on the parameters of a reference aircraft selected for each individual class of small aircraft. Taking into account the data of currently used aircraft, the calculations were made to obtain the generalized transport costs per passenger kilometre. The generalized transport costs covers both-the total operating costs and value of time of passengers. As a result of minimizing these costs in terms of the variability of the key design factors of aircraft, the parameters of the recommended aircraft, in particular, classes were obtained. It was found that generalized passenger-kilometre costs for recommended Small Air Transport aircraft are only 20-30% higher than for regional aircraft (with the same load factor) and are more advantageous for Small Air Transport aircraft (lower cost) for small local passenger flows. Utilizing Small Air Transport aircraft, the profitability of air transport expands to significantly less intense passenger flows. The analysis allowed defining key design parameters of aircraft fleet in Small Air Transport in the initial phase of a project.

Comparative Analysis of Airspace System Accessibility for Uncrewed Aircraft Systems for Regional Operations

“…In the US, about 70% of passenger flights are operated from just 30 airports (operated in the relatively busy airspace Class B), although there are over 5,000 public US airports [2]. In Europe, a similar phenomenon exists with over 2,500 less busy airports [3,4]. Likewise, air cargo traffic is primarily oriented around hub-and-spoke operations, namely through major international hubs [5,17,18].…”

“…In fact, only around 0.6% of all airports in the US serve 70% of passenger flights and 1.8% of all airports in Europe are responsible for 50% of air transport services [2,3]. Moreover, most US and European local and regional airports are increasingly under-utilized [2,4]. The introduction of next-generation air transport systems, such as fixed-wing Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS), may help to revitalize traffic at these under-utilized airports [5,6].…”

“…Note that, in[19], regional aircraft referred to only piston and turboprop aircraft. The term has been expanded to include jet aircraft in this work because there is a strong desire by industry to expand beyond just turboprop aircraft into larger jet aircraft 4. Domestic refers to flight movements within the US or within a European country.…”

Design and aerodynamic evaluation of a medium short takeoff and landing tactical transport aircraft

“…In this context, specific computational aerodynamic studies have been performed on the Sky-Vultur aircraft, as a high-fidelity tool to validate its conceptual design, and to characterize the airflow around its aerodynamic surfaces. Key design parameters in terms of aviation safety and certification requirements were obtained from Iwaniuk et al 21,22 The authors reported a method to optimize two classes of aircraft, 9 seater and 19 seater. Some of the design requirements of the 19-seater aircraft have been used for this specific case since this number of passengers corresponds to the SkyVultur's passenger capacity.…”

“…Key design parameters in terms of aviation safety and certification requirements were obtained from Iwaniuk et al 21,22 The authors reported a method to optimize two classes of aircraft, 9 seater and 19 seater. Some of the design requirements of the 19-seater aircraft have been used for this specific case since this number of passengers corresponds to the SkyVultur’s passenger capacity.…”