ECONOMIC VIABILITY

Enabling metropolitan air mobility

What makes a transportation system successful for the society?
What parameters have to be fulfilled for a system to survive in the long term?

How can a new transportation system be accessible for a large percentage of the society of a metropolitan area?

What do customers expect from transportation to be willing to pay a price, that is high enough for covering the costs for the transportation system?

It is very difficult to justify a new transportation system, when there are already dozens of possibilities to get from point A to point B in a cheap, simple and socially accepted manner.

Nevertheless, there are certain use cases that are not covered very well by today's existing transportation system.

THE PASSENGER'S ADVANTAGE

The basis for everything

This concept, with its high passenger capacity is suitable for line operation. The question now is, if the advantage for the passenger is high enough for justifying the system.

As, this concept will mostly be used for line operation, the time advantage for the customer has to be very high. Compared to point-to-point-transportation, the passenger will have to invest additional time for the last mile to his final destination. However, there are certain advantages, which will be described further on this page.

Time study

The total time consumption for a person to get from JFK-airport to his final destination in Manhattan, including boarding times and last mile travelling, is approximately one hour for ground vehicles.
As seen on the graph, there is an overall advantage of 30 minutes, when using an aerial hub-to-hub transportation system. Calculating with opportunity costs of 120$/h, this time saving means a customer advantage of 60$.

What is the best size for a passenger drone in line operation?

Different sizes of drone concepts have been evaluated before finding the best settings, regarding the size. If the passenger drone is very big, for example with a capacity of 50 passengers, there might be positive effects on the cost per passenger per flight on the one hand. But on the other hand the drone landing sites have to be huge, the boarding time increases and the transport frequency decreases.

The perfect size of a public transport drone depends on the passenger volume and the ability of fast boarding and de-boarding. On an airport with 20.000 passenger movements per hour, there might be 20% very busy people and 20% of the very busy people are willing to pay a higher price to get to their final destination. This means that a transport capacity of 800 pax per hour in both directions will be necessary. With a frequency of 5 minutes, the capacity per unit needs to be 33 pax.

How should a 2 seater air taxi concept handle this amount of customers? (With 2 seats, there would be one takeoff every 15 seconds)

Therefore, this concept has an increased capacity of 25 to 35 pax, depending on the interior configuration.

MACROECONOMIC BENEFIT

Imagine, if we could help millions of people to reach their goals faster

If one line in operation can help 800 people per hour to reach their goal 30 minutes earlier, how much more wealth would we generate?
With 16 hours per day in operation and 60% utilization, there would be saved about 4000 valuable hours per day, which represents a value of 500,000$. Every day.

OPERATIONAL INCOME AND COSTS

As seen on the time study, there is a benefit of 30 min on the route from JFK airport to Manhattan.
Now, the questions are:
How much would a customer pay for this advantage?
Is it possible to cover the total costs by ticket sales?

How much more value can be generated to satisfy the society's needs?

MARKET PRICE

If we would make the simple calculation, that 30 minutes time saving would be worth 60$ (120$/h opportunity costs), then the customer would accept a total travel price, 60$ higher than driving in a taxi.
However, the customer needs an extra benefit for choosing this transportation system. With this concept, we can offer one ticket for a flight at the price of a taxi and still generating enough revenue to cover the operational costs.

OPERATIONAL COSTS

The average operational costs will be at 1$ per pax per kilometer at 60% capacity utilization, 50% ground time and at a service time of 3800 hours per year.

CONTRIBUTION MARGIN

If we offer the ticket price at the price of a taxi, the minimum degree of utilization for generating a positive contribution margin with this aircraft concept in line operation would be 30%. At 60% degree of utilization, the contribution margin would already be at 50%. This margin will ensure an increasing shareholder value in the future.