Overview
Personal ground transportation today consists primarily of on-surface vehicles (cars), resulting in congestion. This limits the distance one can live conveniently from work. Employment centres become residential centres, leaving remotes areas unexploited for employment or residence.
Considerable progress will have to take place before personal aircraft will be taking off and landing (in abundance) from airfields near their owner's destination. This requires progress in aspects such as regulation, licensing, infrastructure, controlling, synergies with existing forms of transportation (co-modality) to name a few.
The PPlane project is a direct follow up study to Out-of-the-Box project that aimed to identify potential new concepts and technologies for future air transport and focused on a number of radical changes to the system rather than taking incremental steps.
As a result of the Out-of-the-Box project, PPlane implements a systematic approach to radical and novel ideas for Personal Air Transport System (PATS).
The project started with the definition of several operational concepts and implemented an optimisation model and several selection criteria to suggest and analyse new concepts for the personal air transport system of the future. The main selection criteria include: Security and safety, Automation and Control, Environment and Human Factors.
Horizontal areas such as technologies, regulation and affordability are considered in each of the above criteria. The resulting concepts are analysed and compared resulting in recommendations for implementation across Europe.The PPLANE team is led by ONERA and comprises well known organisations in the field of aviation from different domains including industry,research and academic institutes.
Additional external experts will be invited to the advisory board. PPLANE's objectives and methodology are an excellent match with the objectives of AAT.2008.6.3.3 ('Personal Air Transport Systems') and in particular with AREA 7.1.6.3 ('Promising Pioneering Ideas in Air Transport') matching the expected impact of assessing the viability or paving the way towards the realisation of the new ideas and concepts identified by ACARE. Moreover, the definition of the PATS concepts will be built according to the ATM structure planned in SESAR.
Funding
Results
The result of the project is a comprehensive view on the possibility to develop a Personnel Air Transport System (PATS), its viability, its structure (components) and its organisation (as a part of the global air transport system, integrated into the air traffic management system).
The PATS has the following characteristics: (a)fully automated transport enabling use of the aircraft without any prior expertise, (b)fly in various weather conditions and (c)'push button' navigation including the integration into the airspace. The aircraft is part of a 'system' that enables the 'user' to manage his flight from take-off to landing and get help and information from the ground, when and if needed, including emergencies.
The main issues that have been addressed are divided into five domains: security and safety, automation and control, environmental impact, energy constraints, human factors and social acceptance. In each domain, areas such as technologies, regulation, and affordability are considered resulting in the design of viable systems ideas. No potential show stoppers have been identified.
Strategy targets
Innovating for the future (technology and behaviour): A European Transport Research and Innovation Policy
Readiness
Further research is needed in order to continue the development of an actual Personnel Air Transport System.