Assessment of Advanced Air Mobility Vehicle Integration at the Orlando International Airport

This study aimed to assess the potential operational implications of integrating Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) traffic at the Orlando International Airport (MCO) Class Bravo airspace. Researchers developed corridor prototypes within MCO’s airspace to analyze potential traffic conflicts and wake turbulence risks between MCO’s commercial and AAM traffic. Furthermore, an AAM ecosystem at MCO was developed to enable the simultaneous integration of realistic MCO and AAM traffic paths. The ecosystem was created on a series of operational assumptions derived from the FAA’s AAM implementation plans and concepts of operation. The findings of this study revealed that the AAM ecosystem (corridor designs and operational schedule) had little to no impact on existing commercial air traffic operations based on the assumptions made for this analysis. Additionally, the assessment revealed that integrating 22 aircraft/airframes could result in an efficient operational infrastructure with no traffic or wake turbulence conflicts with existing commercial air traffic at MCO. This groundbreaking study marks one of the initial evaluations of AAM integration at a major international airport in the United States.