Development and Evaluation via Fast-Time Simulation of an Air Taxi Shuttle Service for the City of Frankfurt Connecting Airport and Trade Fair

The CORUS-XUAM project defined three bidirectional corridors within U-space for an air taxi shuttle service in Frankfurt, connecting Terminal 2 of the outer-city Airport to the inner-city Trade Fair. These corridors consider airplane approach cones for the northern and central runways, no-fly zones around hospitals, and large buildings. In our previous study, we used fast-time simulations to evaluate the U-space routing and its operating concept, based on historical air traffic data, including arriving and departing airplanes as well as police, and medical helicopters throughout the city. Our former research was focused on the limitations of the airspace, avoiding conflicts with other airspace users and between the air taxis using a different corridor or delaying the departure, as well as determining the throughput potential of such a corridor system. In this study, we additionally simulate demand for the airport shuttle service by using historical arrival and departure times, airplane types, and available seats per travel class. Our analysis now also considers ground limitations, specifically the capacities of the two vertiports and the turnaround time needed for recharging or changing the batteries. This lets us suitably size both vertiports and then draw conclusions about the real limiting factors of running an air taxi airport shuttle service as in Frankfurt, revealing that most of the time the limiting factors reside rather on ground than in air space. One notable exception are medical or police helicopters flying close to the Trade Fair vertiport blocking all three corridors at once and bring the airport shuttle service to a complete halt.