Sensitivity Analysis of Fleet Size for Urban Air Mobility

Fleet size plays a crucial role in determining Urban Air Mobility (UAM) operational performance, such as passenger waiting time, rejection rate, and vehicle utilization. Since the UAM operational performance affects UAM demand and indicates the efficiency of operation, the fleet size needs to be appropriately determined. This study aims to analyze the impact of fleet size on the UAM operational performance, and a discrete event simulation is built for the analysis. The result shows that passenger waiting time and rejection rate are highly dependent on fleet size, and vehicle utilization and load factor are marginally related to fleet size. The result also shows that passenger waiting time and vehicle utilization improve up to a certain fleet size, and vehicle utilization decreases beyond that fleet size. Thus, this study suggests a fleet size that is beneficial to both passengers and UAM operators. The UAM operational performance is also analyzed for each vertiport in the vertiport network and can be used to determine the maximum number of vehicles assigned to the vertiports. This study can help stakeholders make strategic and tactical decisions such as vertiport capacity determination and fleet management, respectively.