Integrating Flight and Charging Schedules in Urban Air Mobility

This paper investigates the simultaneous optimization of flight schedule and charging policy of electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft for Urban Air Mobility operations. An optimization model is developed for a two-vertiport system to design an efficient flight schedule, including re-balancing flights, and a charging policy that serves a given demand with the objective of minimizing the required fleet size. The results highlight that charging aircraft to a lower State of Charge level during peak demand periods and to a higher level during off-peak times effectively reduces the fleet size, due to the non-linearity of battery charging times. The study includes a sensitivity analysis to determine the impact of various demand levels and flight times on the system. The results highlight the interplay between fluctuations in passenger demand and battery charging policies. Future work will integrate infrastructure constraints into the optimization model.