The advent of electrified, distributed propulsion in vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft promises aerial passenger transport within, into, or out of urban areas. Urban air mobility (UAM), i.e., the on-demand concept that utilizes eVTOL aircraft, might substantially reduce travel times when compared to ground-based transportation. Trips of three, pre-existent, and calibrated agent-based transport scenarios (Munich Metropolitan Region, Île-de-France, and San Francisco Bay Area) have been routed using the UAM-extension for the multi-agent transport simulation (MATSim) to calculate congested trip travel times for each trip’s original mode—i.e., car or public transport (PT)—and UAM. The resulting travel times are compared and allow the deduction of potential UAM trip shares under varying UAM properties, such as the number of stations, total process time, and cruise flight speed. Under base-case conditions, the share of motorized trips for which UAM would reduce the travel times ranges between 3% and 13% across the three scenarios. Process times and number of stations heavily influence these potential shares, where the vast majority of UAM trips would be below 50 km in range. Compared to car usage, UAM’s (base case) travel times are estimated to be competitive beyond the range of a 50-minute car ride and are less than half as much influenced by congestion.

In this work, we project the idea of aerial passenger transport in the near future: on-demand urban air mobility (UAM) for the greater Munich area in the year 2030. We propose a simulation framewor...

Introducing airplanes powered by renewable energy, such as electricity or hydrogen, is seen as one of the options to contribute to achieving climate neutrality in aviation, especially for regional and short-haul applications. It also brings new possibilities to connect small regional airports and reduce access and egress times to/from airports. This research aimed to gain insights into the acceptance and factors that may affect passenger acceptance of hybrid-electric airplanes for short-haul regional applications. In working toward the aims, a questionnaire was designed and distributed online to active long-distance travelers in Germany. Two structural equation models were estimated to identify the influential factors and their impacts on attitudes and the intention to accept hybrid-electric airplanes. The results confirmed not only the relevance of service attributes, such as travel time, safety, comfort, and climate impact, but also the impacts of psychological and behavioral factors. Generally, safety and security had the highest impact on passenger acceptance. Stronger concerns about the safety and comfort of the new airplanes and of conventional airplanes flying today might reduce the intention to use the new airplanes, whereas stronger climate concerns and trust of new mobility technology might lead to stronger acceptance. Moreover, passengers’ previous experience taking similar types of conventional propeller-driven airplanes might affect their safety concerns about the new airplanes. Information about new aircraft technology and test flying experience may help to overcome psychological barriers.

Technological advances are disrupting mobility patterns and transport technologies, both on the ground and in the air. The latter has been recently observed in the research community of urban air mobility (UAM). Research in this area has studied several areas of its implementation, such as vehicle concepts, infrastructure, transport modeling, or operational constraints. Few studies however have focused on evaluating this service as an alternative among existing transportation systems. This research presents an approach for the selection of indicators for a multi-criteria analysis for the assessment of UAM, in a case study of Upper Bavaria, Germany. A 5-stage approach is showcased including an expert assessment for the relevance and feasibility of indicators, based on two rating scales. A threshold for selection is presented, applied and validated for both scales. The results included a list of indicators for assessing the potentials of UAM integration to existing public transportation systems; the chosen indicators were then compared against existing ones for sustainable urban mobility. A high match between resulting indicators and previous ones further validate the results, and suggest that there is a need for an iterative approach in the assessment of disruptive transport technologies.