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air transportation market that relies on smaller Table 1: Number of aircraft by type [1].
For the purpose of this study, small counterparts, the modes of operation are much
Piper PA28 aircraft up to 12 passengers such as General aviation is the term used to
Gulfstream V or similar business jets. Of course, define [2] aircraft operations that encompass all
similar size aircraft used for freight transportation civil aviation other than scheduled airline flights
are included in the analysis. and military aviation. It includes everything from
a privately-owned light single-engine aircraft to
As shown on Table 1, the largest fraction medical flights, crop-dusting, rotorcraft, sport
of small aircraft is powered by piston engines ballooning and many other aerial activities. From
an operational perspective, general aviation
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1.221J/11.527J/ESD.201J – Transportation Systems
Assignment 1- Fall 2004
operations can be segregated into three major professional need. For example, aircraft are
categories. Table 2 shows the utilization of utilized for aerial observations, tourism like site
aircraft for various type of flying. The activity seeing, or for critical transportation purposes like
where most of the vehicles are used is the air medical or air ambulances.
“personal” category. This category is probably In term of vehicle operation, much of the
the most heterogeneous in term of operations traffic in general aviation is flown under Visual
since it regroups everything from non Flight Rules (VFR). However, as this is the case
transportation activity such as leisure flying for airline traffic, certain part of general aviation,
around an airport, antique aircraft collection to mostly the commercial part is flown by reference
transportation purposes like private pilots owning to Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) wherever
their aircraft and using it as a substitute to other ground facilities adequately support that type of
modes of transportation. navigation. Basically, the VFR flights require that
------------------------------------ good weather conditions exist all along the flight
Corporate 11,000
Business 25,200 pattern. This makes this type of flying unreliable
Personal 148,200
Instructional 14,900 from a service perspective. On the other hand,
Flight 4,300
Aerial observation 5,100 IFR flights, as performed by corporate and
External load 200
Other work 1,800 business aviation, use the same rules and
Site seeing 900
Air tour 300
procedures as commercial airlines. Therefore,
Air taxi 3,700 they are not constrained by the weather and
Air medical 900
Other 1,000 service is more reliable.
------------------------------------
Total 217,500
------------------------------------
Infrastructure
Table 2: Number of aircraft by type of flying [1].
In January 2001, the US airport system
Corporate & Business Aviation is another
was composed of 19306 airports of which 5314
significant mode of operation. In this case,
were public (Figure 1).
aircraft are owned by companies (users) or owned
and managed by charter companies who provide
service to various customers. The largest fraction
of these operations is non-scheduled. However
there exist some scheduled services, mainly in the
case of corporate aviation where a company owns
one or multiple aircraft and uses them to move its
personnel from one company site to another.
Finally, the last category may regroup all Figure 1: Current set of airports in the U.S [3].
type of operations based on a specific
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1.221J/11.527J/ESD.201J – Transportation Systems
Assignment 1- Fall 2004
The ground facilities needed for most specific take off field length. Therefore, a large
general aviation flights are generally less aircraft which requires a long take off field length
sophisticated than those required by the airlines will be more restricted in term of airport access
operating scheduled flights, but there are many than a smaller aircraft. For example, single piston
differences between the smaller grass aerodromes engine aircraft have access to more than 6500
and the airports capable of accepting large runways in the United States (Figure 2).
corporate aircraft.
Issues about current small aircraft
Take-Off Length (ft) (MTOW / Sea Level / ISA+15C)
transportation systems
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
00
00
00
00
00
00
00
00
00
00
00
00
00
00
00
00
0
0
A340-500
A 380
Wide
B747-400
A310-300
B767-300
utilization of small aircraft and make it a less
B737-800
B757-300
popular mode of transportation than scheduled
Body Jet
Narrow
A321
A 320
A319
B737-600
airline services or ground transportation by car,
CRJ900LR etc.
Regional
E195
Jet
E145ER/ LR
CRJ200ER First, in the case of business and
E140LR
A TR72
Dash 8 Q100
Micro
M ust ang
Adam A700
Eclipse
Piston
Baron58
Piper M alibu
8000
7000 1593
1763
business models based on fractional ownership,
airports in the continental U.S.
Number of runways at public
4000 841
aircraft, lowers the costs, these options of travel
3000
1000-2000
2000-3000
3000-4000
4000-5000
5000-6000
6000-7000
7000-8000
8000-9000
9000-10000
10000-11000
11000-12000
12000-13000
13000-14000
14000-15000
15000-16000
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1.221J/11.527J/ESD.201J – Transportation Systems
Assignment 1- Fall 2004
Due to high costs, unreliability of service would have been put in place, the new very light
in some cases, the demand that would exist for jets, and the current set of more than 5300 un-
small aircraft transportation often find substitute congested airports in the United States, would
modes of transportation such as scheduled allow the emergence of new on-demand, point-to-
airlines or cars. point high speed (Figure 3) and low fare personal
transportation between suburban, rural and
RECENT EVOLUTION IN SMALL
remote communities.
AIRCRAFT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS
However, a technological breakthrough
on the vehicle side may allow a wider utilization
of small aircraft as a safe, fast and efficient mode
of transportation.
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1.221J/11.527J/ESD.201J – Transportation Systems
Assignment 1- Fall 2004
The currently long certification process services for significantly lower fares than current
required for aircraft certification make it costly business and corporate aviation. The air taxi
for manufacturers to quickly develop new aircraft based concept solves the limitations of the SATS
pushing the innovation and evolution process fast program that have been illustrated earlier. In fact,
as it is the case, for example, in the automobile the higher utilization of the aircraft implies lower
industry. unit costs. The safety and training issue is solved
Another limitation remains the level of by flying the aircraft with two professionally
training required from a pilot that would own and trained pilots, etc.
operate its aircraft for personal transportation.
Unlike current piston engine aircraft, very light CONCLUSION
jets are faster and fly higher which require more Starting from the current state of the
training and experience to fly. This training issue small aircraft transportation system, this paper
of private pilot willing to fly very light jets comes has addressed the current limitations of this
with insurance issues where insurances are transportation system. In addition, future
expensive and require pilots to go through special evolutions of the system enabled by emerging
training courses. technologies were analyzed and limitations for
From a cost perspective, the acquisition short to medium term development were
and operating cost requires the aircraft to be addressed. Finally, a business and operational
operated several hundred hours per year to justify model that might be the first step towards a more
such costs. accessible, reliable and efficient small aircraft
These are several barriers that make the transportation system was presented.
concept difficult to implement on a wide scale, at
least in the short term. REFERENCES
the upcoming years. The solution would come [3] Personal plot, data source: FAA,
from aviation companies, who would own and National Plan for Integrated Airport
System, 2002.
operate large fleets of these small aircraft and [4] Jane’s All the World Aircraft, 2004-2005
offer on-demand point-to-point air transportation
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1.221J/11.527J/ESD.201J – Transportation Systems
Assignment 1- Fall 2004
[5] FAA, Airport Form 5010 data, [online
database], URL:
http://www.gcr1.com/5010web/ [last
accessed September 2004]