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This paper presents results of research which considered the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA's) assertion that the Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) will be an economical alternative to automobile and airline travel, when considering the economic value of a traveler's time, within a range of mid-length trips. To simulate a likely near-term niche for SATS, performance was studied in the corporate aviation environment, using NASA's metric for overall transportation performance. Travel$ense software was used to examine the costs of traveling on two hypothetical SATS aircraft versus automobile costs and airline fares, net the cost of travelers' time, traveling among a sample of 53 city pairs in the continental United States.

This paper summarizes several years of research which considered the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's assertion that the Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) will be an economical alternative to automobile and airline travel, when considering the value of travelers' time. Performance was studied in the corporate aviation environment, using NASA's metric for cost effectiveness. Cost, cost effectiveness, and the sensitivity of cost effectiveness to key independent variables were examined. Analyses shed favorable light on NASA's premise.