Journal Article

United States

NTL-AVIATION-Aviation Planning and Policy ; NTL-AVIATION-AVIATION ; NTL-ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT-Aviation Energy and Environment ; NTL-PLANNING AND POLICY-Aviation Planning and Policy ;

Accurate modeling of airplane fuel consumption is necessary for air transportation policy-makers to properly adjudicate trades between competing environmental and economic demands. Existing public models used for computing terminal-area airplane fuel consumption have been shown to have substantial errors, potentially leading to erroneous policy and investment decisions. The method of modeling fuel consumption proposed in this paper was developed using data from a major airplane manufacturer. When compared with airline performance/operational data, this proposed method has been shown to accurately predict fuel consumption in the terminal area. The proposed method uses airplane performance data from publicly available environmental models supported by the Federal Aviation Administration and others. The proposed method has sufficient generality to protect the proprietary interests of the manufacturer, while still having adequate fidelity to analyze low-speed airplane operations in the terminal area. This improved methodology will enable more informed decisions by policy-makers seeking to account for the effects of fuel consumption and airplane emissions on plans for future airspace and airport designs.

PDF

Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, Technical Reference Center