This Excel-based tool, developed for an aerospace company, was used during engineering trade studies to compare the results of commercial vehicle subsystem power architectures on the expected range of an aircraft. The baseline range (for a reference aircraft) and projected range (for the revised aircraft) are input into the program, as well as a starting location airport. The results of this tool provide the number of additional cities as well as the number of estimated additional passengers that could be serviced if this alternative architecture was implemented. This methodology provides a much better metric than simply a percentage increase in range, as it directly ties an architecture option to potential revenue increase.

The graphics for this tool were imported as picture files, and the respective latitude and longitude locations on each graphic image were calculated based on the dimensions of the image. Separate worksheet tabs contain the raw data for each city included (domestic and foreign) and can easily be updated (or added to) directly on those tabs without any additional programming modifications.

A second user option available for this tool is to display the additional airports that could be reached from a given starting airport for a specified aircraft range increase. This feature applies either for domestic (USA) flights or for international (world) flights, as the other two option buttons on the main screen indicate. Results of this calculation are shown graphically on the world map where the additional airports are indicated by the lines from the selected starting city.