The potential use of the civil rotorcraft for intercity passenger transport services

There are many high-speed rail (HSR) projects in Europe at different stages of development. The feasibility of these projects has been largely based on their capability to capture passengers in the inter-city travel market, both those using private car and air transport, especially in the business market and for trips of less than 600 Km. The main socio-economic benefits of HSR projects depend on the energetic sustainability of the electric traction rail and on a reduction in delays at congested airports due to the traffic shift. On the other hand, HSR projects absorb very high investment costs take a long time to realise and involve high financial risks. Based upon these considerations, there is a new interest in the development of innovative air passenger transport systems and services based on civil rotorcrafts. Both the helicopter and the tiltrotor are taken into consideration. Helicopters belong to a mature vehicle technology, but their use in commercial aviation is still rare. The civil tiltrotor, after more than twenty years of research and development activities, is ready to begin commercial transport passenger services. The scope of this paper is to assess the potentiality of civil rotorcrafts, as part of the air transport system, to improve the interurban transportation networks at domestic and/or regional level. To this aim some discrete mode choice models have been used to forecast traveller choice behaviour when the rotorcraft is introduced among other competing modes. Then, based on operating costs and willingness to pay for the service of the different competing transport modes, a financial feasibility evaluation will be conducted, from the vector point of view.