Commuting Gets Off the Ground Today’s domestic air travel system is taxed to the breaking point. In 2001, 570 million people flew on commercial airlines, and U.S. aviation officials expect domestic airline traffic to double by 2010. That’s more people than the system can handle.
Many airports already can’t handle the volume of air travel that occurs on their runways. At least two dozen of the major hub airports are classified as “seriously congested.” That means they’re at the limit of their capacity for takeoffs and landings during the most popular travel times.With many airlines already operating at a loss, the situation looks desperate for the major carriers. Adding planes and runways to existing airports won’t fix the problem. For example, whenever there’s a delay at one airport, all of the others in the same hub-and-spoke system are thrown off schedule. What’s needed is a new business model for the commercial aviation industry.
One new approach that might work is the Small Aircraft Transportation System concept, or SATS. SATS is a partnership among NASA, the FAA, and about 60 other organizations.
To create the infrastructure that would allow for travelers to bypass hub-and-spoke airports, the SATS program strives to prepare small airports for larger numbers of small planes. The U.S. Congress has funded the program with $69 million for a five-year proof of concept period that ends in 2005.
This highly decentralized web of airports contrasts markedly with the highly-centralized set of 24 major hubs that accounts for 80 percent of commercial airline traffic. Various ideas concerning the actual piloting of these small planes have been offered. For example, the industry could encourage a huge increase in the self-service private pilot population, or it could establish a national air taxi service. An even more dramatic and exciting solution involves self-piloting aircraft in which “smart airways” come to resemble the emerging vision of the “smart highway.”
The cost to install an unmanned SATS ground station at one suburban or rural airport is expected to be half a million dollars, on average. That seems affordable when you consider the $5 million minimum investment needed for a single traditional radar installation, or the $1 million for a traditional instrument landing system, both of which are necessary for commercial air traffic.
The bill for universal installation of the SATS system at all 5,400 public-use airports would be $2.7 billion. And 98 percent of the U.S. population lives within 30 minutes of at least one of these small airports.
The system’s designers expect broad acceptance of the SATS concept to help stop the closing of small public-use airports around the country. Today, the demand for land by suburban subdivisions is replacing one of these airports every two weeks, on average. At that rate, there won’t be any small airports left by 2025, when the SATS infrastructure is scheduled to be fully completed, unless businesses and governments support the local airstrips in hopes of financial payoffs later.
To take advantage of this infrastructure, several companies are developing a new generation of propeller-driven and jet aircrafts that would fly four to eight passengers at a time. These planes would take advantage of the 5,400 small and largely unused airports SATS is planning to use.
One of the most compelling of these crafts is the six-seat Eclipse 500, which has a pair of jet engines that each weighs only 85 pounds yet produces 770 pounds of thrust. The Eclipse can land on runways 2,500 feet long or less, and though it will initially come with its own avionics, the jet will be upgradable to the SATS system when it becomes available.
The Eclipse is expected to cost just under $1.2 million, compared to most new business jets that start at $6 million. What’s more, operating costs for the Eclipse are expected to be around 56 cents per mile, compared with $2 per mile for most other business jets.
Besides Eclipse, other small aircraft makers preparing for SATS include Safire, which is developing a new six-seater jet, the S-26. Its list price is $1.4 million. Cirrus and Lancair are also introducing new propeller-driven aircraft with synthetic vision screens that could accommodate SATS transmissions. The prop-driven SR20 by Cirrus is the only plane certified by the FAA for sale with a “whole-plane” parachute.
Each of these planes will be less expensive to buy and operate than any previous generation of corporate jets. They will be positioned to be the basis for a new “air taxi” industry. But, while these solutions offer major improvements over today’s hub-and-spoke systems using commercial airlines, and promise to be much less expensive than today’s corporate jets, they still fall short of the anytime, door-to-door service ideal envisioned by The Jetsons.
Fortunately, the intersection of several trends is about to make a radically new solution practical. Paul Moller has spent the last 40 years developing the Skycar, an aircraft that takes off and lands vertically like a helicopter, and flies like an airplane when in the air. It can also drive short distances on the ground like an automobile. And it’s easy to fly, thanks to Moller’s patented computerized control system.
Moller has received 43 patents, including the first U.S. patent on a fundamentally new form of powered-lift aircraft. The Skycar prototypes feature an airframe of mostly fiber-reinforced plastic, which enables it to be both lightweight and strong.
The Skycar’s engine can burn almost any fuel, from unleaded gasoline to diesel to natural gas. The four engine pods can lift the vehicle more than a mile in 60 seconds. Once in the air, the Skycar can cruise comfortably at 350 miles per hour and achieve up to 28 miles per gallon.
The Skycar is powered by eight small but powerful rotary engines. For take-off and landing, the engine pods pivot to a vertical position to direct airflow up and down. Moveable vanes at the back of the engine ducts can also be adjusted to direct airflow straight down. Once airborne, the Skycar transitions to forward flight by pivoting the engine pods to a horizontal position.
Unlike the Eclipse or Safire microjets, the Skycar is not limited to just the airways and the airport taxiways. The vehicle is designed to drive short distances on its landing gear, using ordinary roads. After landing, the wings fold, bringing the engines closer to the body so that it meets highway width standards. It drives comfortably at 35 miles per hour and fits into a single-car garage.
At introduction, the Skycar will be sold primarily to the same air taxi and corporate jet customers as the Cirrus and Eclipse, as well as to the military. The six-seat M600 is targeted for an $850,000 price point and the four-seat M400 should cost about $500,000. However, Paul Moller’s dream is to deliver this technology to the huge new “mass affluent market” composed of the nearly 8 million people with investable assets of $1 million or more.
According to Moller, getting the Skycar into the price range of the mass affluent represents a simple math problem: Historically, the manufacturing costs of aircraft and automobiles have averaged approximately five times the cost of their power plants.
Once mass production begins, Moller believes it will be possible to achieve $16 per horsepower for the Skycar’s rotapower engines. Since the M400 requires 680 horsepower to hover at sea level, this suggests a cost of approximately $55,000. This would permit full delivery of all amenities well within the $75,000-$100,000 range that the mass affluent typically pay for a luxury car.
But what happens when thousands of Skycars are in the sky at the same time? How do the drivers know who has right-of-way when there are no traffic lights in the clouds?
Such a scenario was inconceivable without air traffic controllers until recently. But next year, NASA expects to demonstrate the infrastructure that would make it safe for flying cars to fill the sky.
One easy solution is to connect the Global Positioning Satellite system in the U.S. with the proposed European Galileo System. This would amount to a global navigation satellite system.
The overloaded air travel system, together with the clogged highways, the rise of the new mass affluent class, and the advent of new technologies are setting the stage for a dramatic rebirth of civil aviation. The market potential is huge: certainly over $10 billion a year. The picture could evolve in several different ways, but we’d like to offer five forecasts for your consideration:
First, the micro-jet segment, aided by the implementation of SATS, will get moving quickly. According to some sources, Eclipse alone already has orders for 2,100 aircraft with deliveries expected to begin in late 2005. If the manufacturers’ projections are accurate, there could be as many as 15,000 microjets in the nation’s airspace by 2015. That is about twice the number of conventional business jets that are forecast to be sold during the next decade. The absolute number of this new class of aircraft depends upon whether the “air taxi” concept fulfills a demand for public transportation between airports not served by the airlines. One indicator of its viability might be the willingness of former American Airlines CEO Bob Crandell and People Express founder Donald Burr to team up to launch one of the first of these air taxi services, named Pogo (http:www.forbes.com/forbes/2004/0816/076.html). If only half the orders for microjets materialize, however, the number of microjets in use will still be significant.
Second, vertical take-off and landing, or VTOL, vehicles will become a huge industry by 2020 because they have substantial advantages over conventional airport landing. Initially, we expect interest in the Skycar to grow dramatically once potential customers see the vehicle in action. With the momentum provided by the microjet market, we expect the Moller or its licensee to begin commercial delivery of vehicles by 2010 or sooner. These aircraft are likely to be much like the M600 and M400 units we’ve described and sell for $500,000 to $1,000,000 each. From there, prices will drop rapidly and we’ll see a wave of new entrants, including today’s automakers, between 2015 and 2020.
Third, we expect Moller International to largely outsource manufacturing to an array of firms that can take full advantage of economies of scale and learning curve effects. Moller has wisely developed partnerships with larger firms over the years. Outsourcing manufacturing would allow the firm to maintain control of the technology and branding. This should permit a four-seat Skycar to retail for under $100,000 by 2020.
Fourth, we expect that as prices of microjets and Skycars come down, they will make the “air taxi” industry profitable for providers and affordable for customers. In 15 year it will cost about the same to take an air taxi from your driveway to your destination as it does to book a first-class ticket on a major airline. The implications for the commercial airline industry could be grave.
Fifth, we forecast that the Skycars and microjets will play a big role in sparking an “exurban” real estate boom between 2010 and 2025. Telecommuting is already making it increasingly attractive to relocate to areas far beyond the suburban sprawl. However, there is still the allure of top restaurants, theaters, and other amenities that can only be found in the urban centers. With ready access to an air taxi or your own flying vehicle, it will be easy to reach locations anywhere within a 300-mile radius for a night on the town. The same goes for commuting to the office. Even without this mass access to private aircraft, “fly-in eateries” are already becoming a major trend among the upper crust.
References List :1. For more information about NASA’s research and development program for small aircraft transportation, visit their website at:sats.larc.nasa.gov/main.html2. The Atlantic Monthly, June 2001, "Freedom of the Skies," by James Fallows. ⓒ Copyright 2001 by Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.3. For more information about Paul Moller and his invention, the Skycar, visit the Moller International website at:www.moller.com
1. To access the academic paper written by Paul Moller, visit:www.skyaid.org/Skycar/Media/airborne_personalized_travel.htm
