Market Structures for Service Providers in Advanced Air Mobility

Proposed concepts of operations for advanced air mobility rely on private service providers being responsible for providing air traffic management services to uncrewed aircraft such as drones and autonomous air taxis. While such proposals are unprecedented in the aviation context, one can draw parallels to the Internet, and the role played by Internet Service Providers in managing web traffic. A study of the evolution of the Internet illustrates that, without clear rules for cooperation around a nascent market, private profit motives incentivize against service provider cooperation, especially for traffic flows that traverse multiple regions managed by different service providers. To address this problem, we propose a profit-sharing mechanism based on the Shapley value that incentivizes service providers to cooperate. We show that this mechanism: (i) ensures that service providers route flights along globally optimal routes, and (ii) encourages service providers to cooperate to alleviate congestion. Finally, we discuss some of the remaining challenges with having a federated network of private service providers supporting traffic management for advanced air mobility operations.