Urban Air Mobility Development in Europe: Analysis of an Airport Shuttling Service

Critical air quality levels, threatening green house gas emissions, unreliable transportation systems are only some of the most concerning aspects of the worldwide society. Among the potential applications of Urban Air Mobility, an airport shuttling system is starting to take the shape: it consists of passengers air transportation to and from local airports over fixed routes. In this research, an airport shuttling service for three main European cities is designed and evaluated under three perspectives: the system capacity, total costs and environmental sustainability. The study consists of defining a model, which based on standard set of metrics and assumptions, can be a reliable representation of a future service in the real world. By defining input parameters and formulas, three main variables are calculated for each city and airport to evaluate and perform quantitative and qualitative analyses on the outcomes obtained. The methodology suggested is used to investigate the potential introduction of such service in the European landscape and it should provide a backbone for future research.