Small Aircraft Transportation Systems (SATS)

Vision

The vision for the Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) is to provide the nation with an alternative to existing road and airline choices for travel. It envisions a new world of on-demand, point-to-point, affordable jet travel that has the potential to expand economic development to small communities, increase productivity throughout the nation, and improve the overall quality of life.

Background

The SATS project is a five-year, $69 million research and development program conducted through a public-private partnership jointly managed by NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Consortium for Aviation Mobility (NCAM) that will ultimately result in the transformation of the air transportation system. It envisions the use of small aircraft for mass transportation, which is a disruptive innovation.

Today, 98% of air passengers travel through 460 commercial service airports and 70% travel through 30 large hub airports. If SATS is implemented, the result will be a more distributed air transportation system that supplements the congested hub and spoke transportation system by utilizing over 3,000 underutilized airports throughout the nation. Its focus is to prove that the following four new operating capabilities will enable safe and affordable access to virtually any runway in the nation in most weather conditions:

• Separation and sequencing of multiple aircraft operating at airports without traditional ground-based terminal radar and communications systems.
• Safer aircraft takeoff and landing operations in poor weather at minimally equipped airports (without control towers or ground-based navigation and lighting systems), while minimizing land-use impacts.
• Improved single-pilot performance for safety, accuracy, and ease-of-use.
• Integration of larger numbers of small aircraft into the National Airspace System.

About Indiana SATS Consortium

The Indiana SATS Consortium (INSATS) is the sixth SATS Lab to be established in the United States and was founded to foster economic growth in the state of Indiana by serving as a catalyst for the development of the aeronautics and aerospace industries.

While the other five SATS Labs (located in Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Michigan) are focused on the research and development of SATS technologies, INSATS' far-reaching mission is to lead the nation in SATS operational deployment and transform Indiana into a dynamic hotbed for aviation research and development. Our near-term goals are to educate government officials, universities, businesses, community leaders and the general public about SATS and its potential to unleash untapped economic growth in small communities and to prove the regional economic benefits of using the SATS technologies to make point-to-point air travel available from most small airports.