Preliminary design and optimization for fleet to be used in the Small Air Transport system

Abstract

Over the last few years, teams from several research centres have been working on the concept of Small Air Transport, filling the niche between a regular surface transport and a scheduled air transport – on the distances over 200 km, utilizing numerous, though low in volume, passengers’ streams – giving regions a chance to improve their communication capabilities. Small Air Transport’s tasks are performed on small aeroplanes, which take up to 19 passengers, with a flight time of up to 4 h and at a reasonable price for a mass recipient. An important feature of the Small Air Transport system is personalization, which is flexible adaptation of the transport process to the customer’s requirements and capabilities. This paper focuses on the selection and optimization of key parameters of aircraft fleet used in Small Air Transport. The research and analysis were based on the parameters of a reference aircraft selected for each individual class of small aircraft. Taking into account the data of currently used aircraft, the calculations were made to obtain the generalized transport costs per passenger kilometre. The generalized transport costs covers both – the total operating costs and value of time of passengers. As a result of minimizing these costs in terms of the variability of the key design factors of aircraft, the parameters of the recommended aircraft, in particular, classes were obtained. It was found that generalized passenger-kilometre costs for recommended Small Air Transport aircraft are only 20–30% higher than for regional aircraft (with the same load factor) and are more advantageous for Small Air Transport aircraft (lower cost) for small local passenger flows. Utilizing Small Air Transport aircraft, the profitability of air transport expands to significantly less intense passenger flows. The analysis allowed defining key design parameters of aircraft fleet in Small Air Transport in the initial phase of a project.