David Ballard

Air Transportation Strategic Trade Space Modeling and Assessment Through Analysis of On-Demand Air Mobility with Electric Aircraft

1 Manager of Strategic Analysis, Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, NASA HQ, Washington DC 20546 2 Chief Executive Office, 205 Skimino Landing Dr., Williamsburg, VA 23188, AIAA Fellow 3 Chief Science Officer, 508 Olive St., Santa Cruz, CA 95076, AIAA Member 4 Chief Technology Officer, 784 Rosewood Dr., Palo Alto, CA 94303, AIAA Member 5 Senior Economist, GRA, Inc., 115 West Av, Suite 201, Jenkintown, PA 19046 6 Senior Consultant, LMI, 2000 Corporate Ridge, McLean, VA 22102, AIAA Senior Member 7 Senior Fellow, LMI, 2000 Corporate Ridge, McLean, VA 22102 8 Senior Fellow, LMI, 2000 Corporate Ridge, McLean, VA 22102 9 Director of Transportation Research, Old Dominion University, 5115 Hampton Blvd, Norfolk, VA 23529, AIAA Fellow 10 Metron Aviation, 45300 Catalina Court, Suite 101, Dulles, VA 20166 11 Metron Aviation, 45300 Catalina Court, Suite 101, Dulles, VA 20166 12 IAI, Inc., 15400 Calhoun Drive, Suite 400, Rockville MD 20855 13 NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA 23681 14 NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA 23681, AIAA Senior Member 15 Associate Technical Fellow, Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Seattle, WA 12th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations (ATIO) Conference and 14th AIAA/ISSM 17 19 September 2012, Indianapolis, Indiana AIAA 2012-5594

Future National Airspace System Architecture Evaluation: Methods and Initial Results

The Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) represents the transformation of the National Airspace System (NAS) using 21 century technologies to ensure future safety, capacity and environmental needs are met. NextGen will be realized through investments in research and development, technologies, operational changes, and the coordinated efforts of private industry and federal NextGen Partner Agencies. The National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate’s (ARMD) Strategic Architecture and Analysis (SAA) office uses NAS-wide modeling and simulations to evaluate these alternatives and estimate the corresponding stakeholder benefits under future scenarios that consider different objectives and operating environments. The analysis contained in this paper, which was started in FY2012, expands upon prior SAA work supporting the Joint Planning & Development Office (JPDO) Interagency Portfolio & Systems Analysis portfolio assessments to include a far-term, full vision of NextGen in 2040 as well as the incorporation of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). This paper describes the formulation and evaluation of the NextGen alternatives in 2025 and 2040, methods for evaluating their performance and provides an initial set of results.

Modal Preference Modeling of Transportation Demand and Supply for Strategy Portfolio Analyses - Results and Future Plans

Future demand for transportation is and will continue to be shaped by forces that have not been well accommodated in past strategic analyses; further, regression-based analytical methods are less well suited than generative methods for projecting demands for modal options that have little historical data on which to base regressions. New transportation modes, business models, consumer behaviors and vehicle capabilities are the primary factors not well managed in regressive demand projection methods. An example is the ability to study co-evolutionary effects such as a “virtual” mode or modes (i.e., interacting by telepresence as a modal option) on population dynamics or urbanization trends. The risk is that current national transportation strategies in air mobility tend to be constrained by “business as usual” considerations of a rear-view-facing nature. In addition, air transportation demand projections are frequently made in modal isolation; that is, projections for air travel demand have not typically accounted for the full context of all other existing and prospective new modal options and their improvements. Further, if the strategy development processes do not consider the prospect of vastly different characteristics of external context, including new consumer behaviors and modal options then the strategies carry inherent risks. The plausible ranges and combinations in trends or vectors in technologies, energy, environmental, and prosperity considerations comprise a wide range of future conditions s in which strategies must be evaluated. Because 1 Chief Executive Office, 205 Skimino Landing Dr., Williamsburg, VA 23188, AIAA Fellow 2 Chief Science Officer, 508 Olive St., Santa Cruz, CA 95076, AIAA Member 3 Chief Technology Officer, 784 Rosewood Dr., Palo Alto, CA 94303, AIAA Member 4 Director, Transportation Research, Old Dominion University, 5115 Hampton Blvd, Norfolk, VA 23529, AIAA 2 Chief Science Officer, 508 Olive St., Santa Cruz, CA 95076, AIAA Member 3 Chief Technology Officer, 784 Rosewood Dr., Palo Alto, CA 94303, AIAA Member 4 Director, Transportation Research, Old Dominion University, 5115 Hampton Blvd, Norfolk, VA 23529, AIAA Fellow 5 Senior Consultant, LMI, 2000 Corporate Ridge, McLean, VA 22102, AIAA Senior Member 6 Senior Fellow, LMI, 2000 Corporate Ridge, McLean, VA 22102 7 Senior Economist, GRA, Inc., 115 West Av, Suite 201, Jenkintown, PA 19046 8 Manager of Strategic Analysis, Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, NASA HQ, Washington DC 20546

NextGen Metrics for the Joint Planning and Development Office

The Interagency Portfolio and System Analysis Division of the Joint Planning and Development Office has developed a number of metrics to assess the projected performance of the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). Metrics are currently being calculated for capacity and environment, two of the six goals established in the Department of Transportation’s 2004 Integrated National Plan for the Next Generation Air Transportation System. Metrics have also been posited but are not currently assessed for the four other goals: global leadership, safety, national defense, and security. The metrics for capacity and environment are based on projected performance of the National Airspace System (NAS), as evaluated by a suite of models and simulations that replicate operation of the NAS and its effects on the environment in terms of noise, local air quality, and climate. The NextGen goals and associated metrics show a high degree of correspondence with the 11 Key Performance Areas formulated by the International Civil Aeronautics Organization. The JPDO has also identified a set of stakeholder metrics, intended to reflect the impact of NextGen on its stakeholders and facilitate communication with them. These metrics include both monetized metrics, expressed in terms of the dollar value of benefits and costs, and nonmonetized metrics, as indicators of system performance. Issues that the JPDO metrics activity has addressed include selection of a representative point from the continuum of combinations of throughput and delay. The JPDO is also considering the value of calculating system efficiency metrics, and plans to continue to enhance alignment of its metrics with those of member agencies, develop target values, enhance stakeholder metrics, and support continued development of modeling and analysis tools. Challenges that remain include improved metrics for delay and predictability of system performance, as well as metrics for fundamental attributes such as robustness and flexibility.

Aviation Infrastructure Economics: From Metrics to Stakeholders' Business Cases

The JPDO, FAA and others use metrics to track the progress of NextGen and to evaluate implementation alternatives. However, to track NextGen deployment it is also necessary to understand the financial flows among the many parties that have to make NextGen investments. In some cases, a stakeholder’s business case is related to a specific metric. In other cases, a top-level metric will show that overall stakeholder benefits exceed stakeholder costs, the underlying business case decisions are driven by how funds flow among parties. When individual stakeholders cannot capture investment impacts as increased revenues or decreased costs, the stakeholder business case is not made and there is no reason to expect that party to invest on its own. This paper highlights how flows of funds among stakeholders occur and how these flows affect incentives to invest. It also suggests that if overall benefits to society exceed overall costs but are distributed in ways such that individual stakeholders lack the incentives to invest, other policies such as subsidies or regulatory standards may be needed.

Equipage Issues From Airlines' Perspective

Advances in avionics can produce new capabilities or improvements in existing capabilities for both aircraft operators and the air traffic management (ATM) system. In the absence of regulatory mandates to equip with new avionics, the operator decision to take advantage of these capabilities is an economic one. This paper addresses this avionics equipage decision by providing an analysis of the factors that are considered by airlines and other National Airspace System (NAS) users when making avionics upgrade decisions for fleets or individual aircraft. In addition, data on avionics equipage for airline and other operators are used to present some detail regarding the current state of avionics utilization in the United States