A new method for measuring energy intensity during commercial flight missions

Paper in proceeding, 2011

Today, air traffic contributes with about 2% of the global anthropogenic CO2 generation and constitutes one of the fastest growing transport sectors. With an increase in air transport of about5 % annually since the introduction of civil jet air transport in the early 1950ies, the aviation sector threatens to become a substantial and ever increasing contributor to Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. The very stringent environmental goals introduced by ACARE in their vision for the year 2020 and accepted by, for instance, the European Commission in their “Clean Sky” project for Europe and the Air Traffic Management (ATM) modernization program SESAR of Europe strives for further improvements in energy efficiency. The SESAR activities are closely linked with introduction of new concept of operations. In parallel, airlines are actively working with fuel saving initiatives throughout the world, to minimize its environmental impact. At present there are no standardized tools for measuring and validation of improved energy efficiency and the generation of GHG (in particularly CO2). This is highlighted by the ICAO and seen as a highly prioritized objective. From 2012, the aviation industry is part of the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) in Europe, where the annual emission of the airline is monitored. However, the monitoring of emissions required by the European ETS is on such a high level that it is not useful in the context of analyzing and validating specific segments of a flight mission or efficiency of different specific flight procedures. The challenge is to validate the increased efficiency associated with different improvements regarding modernization of the aviation industry. This study proposes a new method how to measure energy intensity during the latter part of flight missions, including the last cruise segment through the descent and approach until landing. A traditional concept of operation will be compared with new navigation technologies, for example, utilizing the latest satellite navigation concept by the usage of “curved approaches”, based on Required Navigation Performance Authorization Required (RNP AR) technology.