Air Cargo Operations Cost Database

The United State, and much of the industrialized world, is in the midst of a tremendous period of growth in air traffic services. One section that has experienced particularly strong growth is the air cargo industry. Over the past 10 years, world-wide air cargo traffic has grown at an average annual rate 8.6 percent. Furthermore, it is generally accepted that his phenomenal growth in air cargo traffic will continue through at least the year 2005. Such sustained growth will undoubtedly impact the demand for cargo aircraft. A primary motivation for this study is to address the questions of how large this impact on demand for cargo aircraft will be, and what proportion of the demand for cargo aircraft is likely to be satisfied by new cargo aircraft. To assist NASA in the analysis of these and related issues, we built a set of integrated mathematical models that (1) estimate the direct operation costs associated with air cargo operations, (2) predict the future volume of air cargo traffic, and (3) estimate the future fleet sizes and composition necessary to meet the predicted growth rates.