Commercial Supersonic Air Travel: Flight Routing and Demand Forecasting

Abstract

There has been renewed interest in commercial supersonic air travel in recent years with new concepts currently being advertised for a potential comeback within the next decade. Current regulations do not permit overland operations for supersonic vehicles due to the sonic booms produced during flight. To capture a favorable market share, these vehicles would have to serve more routes than previously served while abiding with current regulations. This study presents a novel and comprehensive approach to overland-prohibited flight routing and route-specific demand forecasting for commercial supersonic air travel, in order to assess the expected market capture under nominal air traffic growth conditions. Results for a baseline reference scenario suggest that with efficient flight routing these vehicles could operate on many routes and capture 5 to 8% of the current demand for subsonic air travel. However, a sensitivity analysis of the top 10 routes showed that both flight routing and demand forecasting are notably sensible to the underlying assumptions and that results could vary considerably based on modeling inputs pertaining to both the aircraft and airline characteristics.