Urban Air Mobility: Vertidrome Airside Level of Service Concept

Abstract

The vertidrome, a ground infrastructure supporting vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) operations, is one of the key elements of Urban Air Mobility (UAM). It accommodates UAM airside and landside operations and may provide connection to other transportation modes. A vertidromes’ processing performance needs to be predictable and reliable in order to plan and execute satisfactorily passenger and cargo UAM transportation requests with respect to all stakeholders involved. Therefore, we propose a new performance assessment concept to predict and evaluate the performance of a vertidrome’s airside traffic flow with respect to specific stakeholder requirements, here defined as the passenger, the VTOL-vehicle operator and the vertidrome operator. Based on their individual objectives, each stakeholder defines a specific performance indicator, which in this paper is including but not limited to delay and punctuality. The proposed Vertidrome Airside Level of Service Concept (VALoS) is based on existent performance rating methods (level of service) for highway traffic and airport terminal facilities. After adjusting the level of service paradigm to UAM specifics, a new framework is proposed considering a vertidrome’s airside operation. Furthermore, the applicability of the VALoS framework is demonstrated. For this purpose, two exemplary use cases are defined considering a vertidrome layout change (reduction of gate parking positions) and an off-nominal condition causing deviations from the schedule (deviations of flight time/ gate service time).