Crown is the nation’s premier source of expertise for planning and deploying advanced air mobility (AAM) systems. We are playing a central role in trailblazing NASA, Federal Aviation Administration and state AAM initiatives. Our contributions to AAM market studies, concept development and implementation equip us to assist you in accessing AAM market opportunities.

Crown’s planning meshes expertise in AAM technology, airspace systems, and economics to offer clients a scalable path to an AAM system. The combination of this expertise produces service and infrastructure plans rooted in the realities of evolving UAS technologies — vital to planning a “transport mode” for which hype often outpaces technology readiness.

AAM Planning

Our AAM system plans define a targeted AAM system that integrates preferred service use cases and specify the steps to reach the target. Clients can then apply the same investment considerations to AAM as they do with any transportation mode, including critically important stakeholder engagement.

The components of our planning approach produce a comprehensive AAM system roadmap that satisfies community mobility and transport objectives and maximizes commercial growth opportunities.

Baseline Infrastructure Assessments: Typically, planning starts with an evaluation of (a) existing and planned launch and recovery locations and related services — heliports, hospitals, airports, future vertiports, power grid, and cargo distribution centers; (b) required links between existing and future transport and delivery modes and advanced vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft technologies; and (c) promising locations and support services for AAM operations.

Technology-Informed Economic Estimates: We apply a UAS-based “input-output” tool to forecast the AAM system’s impact on your region’s income, employment and tax revenues.  By structuring our tool to mirror your region’s economy and applying technology expertise and findings from a baseline infrastructure assessment, we offer estimates that reflect achievable infrastructure and technology phasing.

Candidate Use Case Identification: We assist you in selecting a set of preferred service use cases — the AAM System’s core components. The process starts with specifying use case candidates, operating technologies and service areas, such as small UAS (sUAS) medical package delivery, medium-to-large cargo and passenger operations and urban-rural-regional destinations.  To refine the list, we survey government, industry and community stakeholders to pinpoint their priorities and extract best practice use case solutions from AAM plans for comparable sites.

Analysis of Candidate Use Cases: For each candidate, we derive financial and operational profiles, encompassing initial implementation through mature state and including related ground infrastructure investments.  Financial profiles present capital investment and operating costs, accounting for vehicles type, fleet size and service frequency.  Operational profiles characterize airspace, route structure and UTM capability requirements.

The profiles form the basis for analyzing use cases along critical policy-making dimensions:

• Technology Readiness: vehicles, UTM, and operational systems
• Finance: Business case and investment
• Benefits: Quantified benefits and beneficiaries
• Non-Technical Barriers: Regulatory, financial policy, community, and environmental