Exploring General Aviation Pilot Perspectives on Proximate Urban Air Mobility Operations

Abstract

Urban air mobility is a vision for new aviation operations that leverage advances in flight automation, electrical propulsion, and vertical flight technologies to address passenger and cargo needs for faster on-demand, short-range air transport. Enabling urban air mobility operations in the National Airspace System will require significant coordination across the aviation and transportation communities, including the general aviation community. The urban air mobility operating vision will introduce new and complex interactions to these pilots, driving a need for coordinated operating procedures that align with the needs of each community. This paper summarizes an exploratory human-in-the-loop experiment performed at The MITRE Corporation to explore general aviation pilot perspectives on proximate urban air mobility operations. Pilot participants used a certified flight deck simulator to fly a route in an environment with various urban air mobility traffic configurations. Objective and subjective measures were collected to understand general aviation pilot perspectives. Results indicate pilot preference for a limited number of corridors within a segment of airspace even at higher urban air mobility traffic rates. Acceptability of other urban air mobility operating concepts explored in this research study decreased with an increase in urban air mobility traffic rates.