Recommendations for Emerging Air Taxi Network Operations based on Online Review Analysis of Helicopter Services

The effects of traffic congestion are adverse, primarily including air pollution, commuter stress, and an increase in vehicle operating costs and accidents on the road. In efforts to alleviate these problems in metropolitan cities, logistics companies plan to introduce a new method of everyday commute called air taxis, an Urban Air Mobility (UAM) service. These are electric-powered vehicles that are expected to operate in the forthcoming years by international transportation companies like Airbus, Uber, and Kitty Hawk. Since these flying taxis are emerging mode of transportation, it is necessary to provide recommendations for the initial design, implementation, and operation. This study proposes managerial insights for these upcoming services by analyzing online customer reviews and conducting an internal assessment of helicopter operations. Helicopters are similar to air taxis in regards to their operations, and therefore, customer reviews pertaining to the former can enable us to obtain insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the short-distance aviation service, in general. A four-stage sequential approach is used in this research, wherein the online reviews are mined in Stage 1, analyzed using the bigram and trigram models in Stage 2, 7S internal assessment is conducted for helicopter services in Stage 3, and managerial recommendations for air taxis are proposed in Stage 4. The insights obtained in this paper could assist any air taxi companies in providing better customer service when they venture into the market. Keywords: Air taxi; Emerging technology; Urban Air Mobility (UAM); Helicopter services; Online customer reviews; Text analytics;