Impact of Transformative Air Vehicle Operations on Logistic Supply Chains

ABSTRACT

Global supply chains have reached critical capacity, resulting in escalating prices, long delivery times, and has had a crippling effect on manufacturing, health care, agriculture, and commerce in general. In addition, the cascading effects of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as other intra-supply chain problems have resulted in a 40-year high inflation and degradations in quality of life, employment, GNP, and personal and national security. During the pandemic, shortages in the workforce and all transportation carrier modes forced the acceleration of digitally powered solutions for capacity improvements. At the same time, emerging technologies in autonomy, electrification, fuel cells, and low carbon powerplants are pushing the envelope of OEM development for over-the-road trucks, aircraft, and maritime vessels. These new transportation modes offer clean, low noise, and high safety operations, which promise to move people and goods faster, cleaner, and ultimately more affordably between origin and destination. This paper provides an overview of general logistics issues that can assist VTOL designers and operators in determining critical configuration parameters, location demographics, flight operations, and emerging Aircraft On Ground (AOG) technologies to maximize near-term ROI for transformative VTOL aircraft. Copyright © 2022 by the Vertical Flight Society. All rights reserved