Concept PTP: Massive Point-to-Point On-Demand Air Transportation

Domain: Gate-to-Gate
Principle Investigator: Seagull, Technology, Inc.

The core concept - based on using massive point-to-point (PTP) flights and on-demand air transportation - is to enhance the National Airspace System (NAS) capacity by both off-loading the capacity-limited hub-and-spoke airports and by providing more direct services to the traveler or shipper. The central Concept PTP premise is that there is a growing demand for more time-efficient, hassle-free, point-to-point and on-demand air transportation that better serves the traveling public and cargo shippers from door-to-door. Concept PTP more fully utilizes the 5000 non-hub-and-spoke public airports across our country. To facilitate Concept PTP, the air traffic management (ATM) and flight operations infrastructure systems, the aircraft fleets, and the current commercial aircraft operations management processes (scheduled passenger and cargo carriers, business aircraft operators, etc.) would be modified and augmented.

Primary research areas necessary to prove the viability of Concept PTP include:

• Modeling valid representations of a mixed PTP and hub-spoke system including the large increase in numbers of and types of jet aircraft and a large increase in underutilized airport usage to serve the population demographics of the USA in 2020;
• Investigating en route and terminal area ATM automation schemes to handle the resultant large increase in numbers of aircraft;
• Devising automatic ATM and landing guidance functions for non-towered airports to enable efficient and safe commercial IFR operations at these airports;
• Determining suitable flight and aircraft fleet scheduling algorithms and collaborative flight planning schemes to manage the greater spectrum of air taxis, business and fractional ownership jet operations in this new paradigm;
• Determining the flight deck and CNS infrastructure requirements to facilitate and interact with the new ATM and flight operations automation functions; and
• Conducting analyses and detailed simulations to test, verify, and validate the concept's technical feasibility, operational viability, and economic benefit.

The objective of this research is to show that Concept PTP offers a viable alternative to the current hub-and-spoke system in that it increases NAS capacity significantly and provides a more desirable air transportation system.

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