IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/tefoso/v196y2023ics0040162523005206.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Forecasting market opportunities for urban and regional air mobility

Author

Listed:
  • Bridgelall, Raj

Abstract

Analysts predict that future air taxis will fundamentally change the travel behavior of society. However, current market forecasts for air taxi demand varies widely because of inconsistencies in assumptions about travel purpose, technology acceptance, time savings, affordability, and safety. To successfully deploy Advanced Air Mobility (AAM), stakeholders need to reliably forecast routes where demand will be highest. To increase reliability, this study focuses on the Uber Elevate multimodal use case and combines top-down and bottom-up methodologies to forecast demand. The hybrid methodology forecasts demand within four distance bands from 100 miles to 400 miles, in 100-mile increments. Forecasting within distance bands informs a range roadmap for electrified vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. Geographic information system (GIS) and network trimming techniques identify 2083 viable routes among 859 U.S. cities. The findings are that approximately 78,000 passengers daily will access at most 4214 vertipads to fly on 3023 four-passenger eVTOL aircraft. Serving routes within the first 100-mile band will require two and five times more capital for aircraft and vertiports, respectively, than for longer routes. AAM stakeholders can utilize the hybrid methodology to forecast demand for specific routes in other regions of the world and for additional use cases.

Suggested Citation

  • Bridgelall, Raj, 2023. "Forecasting market opportunities for urban and regional air mobility," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:tefoso:v:196:y:2023:i:c:s0040162523005206
    DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2023.122835
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162523005206
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.techfore.2023.122835?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gurumurthy, Krishna Murthy & Kockelman, Kara M., 2021. "Impacts of shared automated vehicles on airport access and operations, with opportunities for revenue recovery: Case Study of Austin, Texas," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    2. Bridgelall, Raj & Askarzadeh, Taraneh & Tolliver, Denver D., 2023. "Introducing an efficiency index to evaluate eVTOL designs," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    3. Bridgelall, Raj & Stubbing, Edward, 2021. "Forecasting the effects of autonomous vehicles on land use," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    4. Bachwich, Alexander R. & Wittman, Michael D., 2017. "The emergence and effects of the ultra-low cost carrier (ULCC) business model in the U.S. airline industry," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 155-164.
    5. repec:cdl:itsrrp:qt4b3998tw is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Yahua Zhang & Faqin Lin & Anming Zhang, 2018. "Gravity models in air transport research: a survey and an application," Chapters, in: Bruce A. Blonigen & Wesley W. Wilson (ed.), Handbook of International Trade and Transportation, chapter 4, pages 141-158, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Kalakou, Sofia & Marques, Catarina & Prazeres, Duarte & Agouridas, Vassilis, 2023. "Citizens' attitudes towards technological innovations: The case of urban air mobility," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    8. Andre Jungmittag, 2016. "Combination of Forecasts across Estimation Windows: An Application to Air Travel Demand," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(4), pages 373-380, July.
    9. Nenad Njegovan, 2005. "A leading indicator approach to predicting short-term shifts in demand for business travel by air to and from the UK," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(6), pages 421-432.
    10. Banerjee, Nilabhra & Morton, Alec & Akartunalı, Kerem, 2020. "Passenger demand forecasting in scheduled transportation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 286(3), pages 797-810.
    11. repec:cdl:itsrrp:qt8nh0s83q is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cardol, Hanna & Mignon, Ingrid & Lantz, Björn, 2025. "Rethinking the forecasting of innovation diffusion: A combined actor- and system approach," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 214(C).
    2. Raj Bridgelall & Denver Tolliver, 2024. "Transforming Healthcare Delivery with Advanced Air Mobility: A Rural Study with GIS-Based Optimization," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(13), pages 1-22, July.
    3. Zancul, Eduardo & Deutskens, Christoph & Kreisköther, Kai & Heimes, Heiner & Kampker, Achim, 2025. "Designing electric mobility solutions: A dynamic capability model," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zuidberg, Joost, 2019. "Network geographies and financial performances in low-cost carrier versus network carrier competition: The case of Norwegian versus SAS," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 1-1.
    2. Yap, Ghialy & Allen, David, 2011. "Investigating other leading indicators influencing Australian domestic tourism demand," Mathematics and Computers in Simulation (MATCOM), Elsevier, vol. 81(7), pages 1365-1374.
    3. Ariza-Montes, Antonio & Quan, Wei & Radic, Aleksandar & Koo, Bonhak & Kim, Jinkyung Jenny & Chua, Bee-Lia & Han, Heesup, 2023. "Understanding the behavioral intention to use urban air autonomous vehicles," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    4. Zou, Li & Yu, Chunyan, 2020. "The evolving market entry strategy: A comparative study of Southwest and JetBlue," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 682-695.
    5. Lian, Ying & Lucas, Flavien & Sörensen, Kenneth, 2024. "Prepositioning can improve the performance of a dynamic stochastic on-demand public bus system," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 312(1), pages 338-356.
    6. Fichert, Frank & Kirschnerová, Ivana & Tomová, Anna, 2020. "Business models in business aviation – An empirical analysis with a focus on Air Charter Companies," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    7. Oliveira, Bruno F. & Oliveira, Alessandro V.M., 2022. "An empirical analysis of the determinants of network construction for Azul Airlines," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    8. Zhang, Xiaomeng & Zhang, Xinyu, 2023. "Optimal model averaging based on forward-validation," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 237(2).
    9. Gabrišová Ivana & Koman Gabriel, 2025. "Employer Branding and Brand Building in the Aviation Industry," LOGI – Scientific Journal on Transport and Logistics, Sciendo, vol. 16(1), pages 1-12.
    10. Liu, Jiayu & Beck, Christina Starr & Gao, Yi, 2024. "Can you judge a book by its cover? An analysis of travelers’ perceptions of airline logos and airlines’ business models," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    11. Wandelt, Sebastian & Signori, Andrea & Chang, Shuming & Wang, Shuang & Du, Zhuoming & Sun, Xiaoqian, 2025. "Unleashing the potential of operations research in air transport: A review of applications, methods, and challenges," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    12. Alessio Baldassarre & Danilo Carullo & Paolo Di Caro & Elisa Fusco & Pasquale Giacobbe & Carlo Orecchia, 2023. "Bilateral Regional Trade Flows in Italy: an Origin-Destination-Commodity GWR-SAR approach," Working Papers wp2023-18, Ministry of Economy and Finance, Department of Finance.
    13. Stacey Mumbower & Susan Hotle & Laurie A. Garrow, 2023. "Highly debated but still unbundled: The evolution of U.S. airline ancillary products and pricing strategies," Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 22(4), pages 276-293, August.
    14. Samadzad, Mahdi & Ansari, Fatemeh & Afshari Moez, Mohammad Amin, 2024. "Who will board urban air taxis? An analysis of advanced air mobility demand and value of travel time for business, airport access, and regional tourism trips in Iran," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    15. Scarpel, Rodrigo Arnaldo, 2013. "Forecasting air passengers at São Paulo International Airport using a mixture of local experts model," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 35-39.
    16. Sun, Xiaoqian & Wandelt, Sebastian & Zhang, Anming, 2022. "STARTUPS: Founding airlines during COVID-19 - A hopeless endeavor or an ample opportunity for a better aviation system?," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 10-19.
    17. Wang, Kun & Wan, Yulai & Jiang, Changmin & Gu, Hongyi, 2025. "Sourcing strategies for disruption recovery: Empirical evidence from the US airline industry," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 145-156.
    18. Mansour, Sari & Faisal Azeem, Malik, 2024. "How do increased job demands resulting from rationalization of costs exhaust flight attendants and push them to leave? An international study," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    19. Waltermann, Juliana & Henkel, Sven, 2025. "The human element in autonomous driving: Motivations, expectations, and behavioral change," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).
    20. Fuellhart, Kurt & Dai, Liang & Grubesic, Tony & Derudder, Ben, 2021. "The U.S. Essential Air Service Program and SARS C0V-2, 2019–2020," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:tefoso:v:196:y:2023:i:c:s0040162523005206. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00401625 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.