Urban Air Mobility

Dynamic Lane Allocation in UAM Corridors for Efficient Multimodal Door-to-Door Mobility

Park, Jung Ho
Kam, Jordan
Bulusu, Vishwanath
Alexandre Bayen
Sengupta, Raja
2026

This article presents dynamic directional lane allocation in urban air mobility (UAM) corridors as a discrete-time mixed-integer linear program (MILP). This formulation activates, deactivates, and reverses lane direction as bi-directional airspace demand evolves. We model demand from disaggregate ground travel data by decomposing each trip into a multi-modal sequence with first-, middle-, and last-mile legs and routing the UAM-served middle-mile segment through a vertiport-side dispatch model. We use the San Francisco Bay Area as a case study by placing a multi-region spanning corridor...

Advancing Air Mobility: Considering Equity in Emerging Transport Systems

Cohen, Adam
Susan Shaheen
2026

The Research Handbook on Air Transport Management brings together leading academic researchers from around the world to reflect on and synthesise the state of the art in their respective subject specialisms. In so doing, the Handbook demonstrates the depth and diversity of research into various facets of flight, and identifies areas requiring future work.

Navigating Uncertainty in Advanced Air Mobility: Scenario Planning for Policy Pathways at San Francisco International Airport

Susan Shaheen
Cohen, Adam
Wolfe, Brooke
2026

Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) includes innovative aviation technologies and services that could alter how people and goods are transported. However, future AAM growth and potential regional integration are uncertain and influenced by a range of factors. In this paper, we report findings from expert interviews (n = 35) and a scenario planning workshop (n = 32 stakeholders), conducted between August 2024 and July 2025, to explore potential alternative futures for AAM at the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) and the greater San Francisco Bay Area. We applied a two-axis framework:...

Urban Air Mobility: Viability of Hub-Door and Door-Door Movement by Air

Bulusu, Vishwanath
Raja Sengupta
2020

Owing to a century of innovation in connected and automated aircraft design, for the rst time in history, air transport presents a potential competitive alternative to road, for hub-to-door and door-to-door urban services. In this article, we study the viability of air transport, for moving people and goods in an urban area, based on three metrics - enroute travel time, fuel cost and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. We estimate the metrics from emission standards and operational assumptions on vehicles based on current market data and compare electric air travel to gasoline road travel. For...

SimUAM: A Comprehensive Microsimulation Toolchain to Evaluate the Impact of Urban Air Mobility in Metropolitan Areas

Yedavalli, Pavan
Burak Onat, Emin
Peng, Xin
Raja Sengupta
Waddell, Paul
Bulusu, Vishwanath
Xue, Min
2021

Over the past several years, Urban Air Mobility (UAM) has galvanized enthusiasm from investors and researchers, marrying expertise in aircraft design, transportation, logistics, artificial intelligence, battery chemistry, and broader policymaking. However, two significant questions remain unexplored: (1) What is the value of UAM in a region’s transportation network?, and (2) How can UAM be effectively deployed to realize and maximize this value to all stakeholders, including riders and local economies? To adequately understand the value proposition of UAM for metropolitan areas, we develop...

SimUAM: A Comprehensive Microsimulation Toolchain to Evaluate the Impact of Urban Air Mobility in Metropolitan Areas

Yedavalli, Pavan
Burak Onat, Emin
Peng, Xin
Raja Sengupta
Waddell, Paul
Bulusu, Vishwanath
Xue, Min
2021

Over the past several years, Urban Air Mobility (UAM) has galvanized enthusiasm from investors and researchers, marrying expertise in aircraft design, transportation, logistics, artificial intelligence, battery chemistry, and broader policymaking. However, two significant questions remain unexplored: (1) What is the value of UAM in a region’s transportation network?, and (2) How can UAM be effectively deployed to realize and maximize this value to all stakeholders, including riders and local economies? To adequately understand the value proposition of UAM for metropolitan areas, we develop...

Hierarchical Vertiport Network Design for On-Demand Multi-modal Urban Air Mobility

Peng, Xin
Bulusu, Vishwanath
Raja Sengupta
2022

The vertiports that connect ground and air transportation modes play a critical role in enabling Urban Air Mobility (UAM). Parameters like aircraft occupancy and vertiport operational capacity, along with the ground traffic congestion near vertiports have dominant impacts on the vertiport network design and consequently on the total addressable market and value proposition of UAM. We propose a hierarchical method to design a vertiport network for multi-modal UAM with multiple-seat aircraft based on the passenger demand. Our objective is to determine vertiport locations and assign...

A Traffic Demand Analysis Method for Urban Air Mobility

Bulusu, Vishwanath
Onat, Emin Burak
Raja Sengupta
Yedavalli, Pavan
Jane Macfarlane
2021

This paper explores the addressable market for Urban Air Mobility (UAM) as a multi-modal alternative in a community. To justify public investment, UAM must serve urban mobility by carrying a significant portion of urban traffic. We develop a traffic demand analysis method to estimate the maximum number of people that can benefit from UAM, for a given use case, in a metropolitan region. We apply our method to about three hundred thousand cross-bay commute trips in the San Francisco Bay Area. We estimate the commuter demand shift to UAM under two criteria of flexibility to travel time...

Evaluating eVTOL Network Performance and Fleet Dynamics through Simulation-Based Analysis

Onat, Emin Burak
Bulusu, Vishwanath
Chakrabarty, Anjan
Mark Hansen
Raja Sengupta
Sridhar, Banavar
2024

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) represents a promising solution for future transportation. In this study, we introduce VertiSim, an advanced event-driven simulator developed to evaluate e-VTOL transportation networks. Uniquely, VertiSim simultaneously models passenger, aircraft, and energy flows, reflecting the interrelated complexities of UAM systems. We utilized VertiSim to assess 19 operational scenarios serving a daily demand for 2,834 passengers with varying fleet sizes and vertiport distances. The study aims to support stakeholders in making informed decisions about fleet size, network...

A Simulation-Optimization Framework for Developing Wind-Resilient AAM Networks

Onat, Emin Burak
Cao, Shangqing
Rizwan, Raiyan
Jiang, Xuan
Mark Hansen
Raja Sengupta
Chakrabarty, Anjan
2024

Environmental factors pose a significant challenge to the operational efficiency and safety of advanced air mobility (AAM) networks. This paper presents a simulation-optimization framework that dynamically integrates wind variability into AAM operations. We employ a nonlinear charging model within a multi-vertiport environment to optimize fleet size and scheduling. Our framework assesses the impact of wind on operational parameters, providing strategies to enhance the resilience of AAM ecosystems. The results demonstrate that wind conditions exert significant influence on fleet size even...