Optimal Air Corridor Design for Efficient Integration of AAM Vehicles into the NAS

Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) corridors are a vital concept in the growing field of urban air mobility (UAM) and are critical for facilitating safe and efficient integration of AAM/UAM aircraft with the National Airspace System (NAS). These corridors are designated airspace routes designed for the safe operation of crewed and uncrewed aircraft carrying passengers and goods in platforms such as electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicles. AAM corridors will eventually shape the future of air mobility and will change how both people and goods move within and between cities. With defined routes and altitude for AAM operations, it will ensure separation between these different aircraft types and significantly reduce the risk of collisions. As the NAS becomes more complex, AAM corridors will also help by improving the management of traffic by being integrated with existing air traffic control systems to limit disruptions. Also, by providing specific routes for AAM/UAM vehicles, these corridors can lower congestion in complex airspace, improve operational speed, and reduce travel times. AAM/UAM operations are likely to expand as time goes on and should be scalable, so they can accommodate the expected increase in traffic volume while still prioritizing safety and minimizing the risks to airspace operations, ground activities and infrastructure. This study proposes an AAM corridor operating at an altitude above 2,000 feet, connecting the cities of Thompson and Fargo in North Dakota, with designated vertiports at each location. Several key design considerations have been identified as important when designing AAM corridors, including focusing on minimizing the impact on existing NAS operations by accounting for current air traffic and addressing public concerns such as noise and safety, by avoiding more densely populated areas. Furthermore, the study examines the establishment of the route for AAM/UAM vehicles during airport entry and departure operations. In addition to designing the route between Thompson and Fargo, dedicated take-off and landing paths were developed for both vertiports. A weighted heatmap was generated encompassing the area between Thompson and Fargo analyzing the available data, complemented by detailed heatmaps for the four-square-mile regions surrounding each vertiport. The A* algorithm was then utilized to determine the optimal routes based on these heatmaps, using several real world datasets to identify the paths that best balance efficiency and safety. Once the path was calculated a curve fitting algorithm was used to smooth calculated paths. The development of AAM corridors will facilitate a structured, safe, and efficient integration of AAM/UAM vehicles into the current airspace system. The results presented in the paper use real-world data captured from both the airport and vertiport in each city as well as between the two cities. Future research could include AI-driven dynamic corridor adjustment and integration of multi-vehicle traffic in AAM corridors.