Electra Publishes First-Ever Direct Aviation Market Outlook which ‘Quantifies Scale of RAM Demand’

Elec­tra has pub­lished what it says is the first-ever direct Avi­a­tion Mar­ket Out­look, which is an analy­sis of U.S. trav­el pat­terns that quan­ti­fies the scale of region­al mobil­i­ty demand and out­lines how a new mode of air trav­el will reshape it.

The report, which was released today (Wednes­day), exam­ines the emer­gence of Direct Avi­a­tion, which con­nects pas­sen­gers direct­ly from where they are to where they want to go, and finds that tens of mil­lions of trips occur dai­ly across dis­tances that are inef­fi­cient to dri­ve and poor­ly served by tra­di­tion­al avi­a­tion.

These are trips where Direct Avi­a­tion will reduce door-to-door trav­el times by hours.

A Large, Exist­ing Mar­ket

Electra’s analy­sis shows that region­al trav­el in the Unit­ed States is already exten­sive:

• 35 mil­lion pas­sen­ger trips (dri­ving) per day across dis­tances of 50 to 500 miles

• 1.6 tril­lion pas­sen­ger-miles annu­al­ly

• More than 6,000 routes with over 1,000 trav­el­ers per day

At the heart of this mar­ket are trips between 50 and 265 fly­ing miles, where demand is both con­cen­trat­ed and large­ly unserved by exist­ing avi­a­tion.

More than 80 per­cent of these trips lack a prac­ti­cal air option, forc­ing trav­el­ers to rely on cars despite sig­nif­i­cant time costs.

Marc Allen, CEO of Elec­tra, said: “Avi­a­tion is enter­ing a new era, where capa­bil­i­ties that weren’t pos­si­ble before are now fun­da­men­tal­ly chang­ing how we move. Direct Avi­a­tion is how that shift shows up in the real world, giv­ing peo­ple the abil­i­ty to go from where they are to where they want to go with­out the time, fric­tion, and con­straints that define trav­el today. It will slash trav­el times by hours, chang­ing how peo­ple live, work, and play.”

For routes with at least 1,000 trav­el­ers per day, the analy­sis iden­ti­fies:

• 1,851 routes with more than one hour of poten­tial time sav­ings

• 540 routes with more than two hours of poten­tial time sav­ings

• 227 routes with more than three hours of poten­tial time sav­ings
  

The report also high­lights dozens of rep­re­sen­ta­tive high-demand routes across four Direct Avi­a­tion cat­e­gories: Inter­ci­ty Con­nec­tors (mov­ing peo­ple between urban cen­ters), Leisure Launch­pads (mov­ing peo­ple to their vaca­tion des­ti­na­tions), Air­port Feed­ers (get­ting peo­ple effi­cient­ly to near­est hub air­port), and Small Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vice (con­nect­ing rur­al res­i­dents with region­al des­ti­na­tions), where trav­el times will be dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduced.

The analy­sis fur­ther shows how demand clus­ters into dense region­al mar­kets, with illus­tra­tive mesh net­works, or webs of direct, point-to-point routes link­ing mul­ti­ple com­mu­ni­ties, includ­ing the North­east Cor­ri­dor, Texas Tri­an­gle, South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Flori­da and the Mid­west.

Scal­ing a New Mod­el of Region­al Flight

Direct Avi­a­tion aug­ments the exist­ing hub-and-spoke sys­tem with a new lay­er of dis­trib­uted access, point-to-point rout­ing, and oper­a­tions designed around total jour­ney time, enabling fre­quent, short-haul region­al shut­tle flights aligned with how peo­ple already move by car.

Deliv­er­ing Direct Avi­a­tion at scale will require a new region­al mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem, includ­ing:

• Dis­trib­uted access points clos­er to where peo­ple live and trav­el. This includes nov­el
  access points (such as barges, rooftops, park­ing lots, or fields), gen­er­al avi­a­tion
  air­ports whose use can be max­i­mized, and air­port feed­ers that don’t add to
  con­ges­tion
• Air­craft pur­pose-built for short-haul, high-fre­quen­cy oper­a­tions that are able to
  access urban and sub­ur­ban access points (Ultra Short air­craft)
• Oper­a­tors and ser­vice mod­els designed around net­works of region­al shut­tles
• Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works and infra­struc­ture to enable safe,
  scal­able deploy­ment
• A broad sup­pli­er base to sup­port pro­duc­tion and oper­a­tions at scale

For this sys­tem to work, air­craft must meet a spe­cif­ic set of require­ments, includ­ing access, qui­et oper­a­tions, pay­load, range, safe­ty, and afford­abil­i­ty, col­lec­tive­ly known as the Rule of Six.

Electra’s EL9 Ultra Short air­craft is designed for this oper­at­ing mod­el, com­bin­ing hybrid-elec­tric propul­sion with ultra-short take­off and land­ing capa­bil­i­ty to enable oper­a­tions from com­pact, dis­trib­uted access points.

Based on this analy­sis, the route and pas­sen­ger demand will require 12,000 to 16,000 air­craft over the first ten years of oper­a­tions, for a nation­wide fleet of region­al shut­tles.

Elec­tra is releas­ing the Direct Avi­a­tion Mar­ket Out­look along­side an inter­ac­tive microsite
detail­ing nation­wide demand, route-lev­el analy­sis, and region­al net­work oppor­tu­ni­ties.

To down­load a copy of the doc­u­ment, please click here.