Minimising the environmental impact of aviation

With the increase in traffic in Europe, stakeholders are looking for ways to reduce the environmental impact of aviation, taking into account climate impact, air quality and noise issues simultaneously. However, comprehensive assessments with data on all three environmental aspects are not available for flight planning.

To address the situation, the ATM4E project developed a methodology to integrate multi environmental criteria into impact assessments done during the flight planning process. The method expands a concept developed for climate optimisation of aircraft trajectories, by introducing air quality and noise impact as additional criteria or dimensions, together with the climate impact of aircraft trajectory (CO2 and non-CO2 emissions). 

The project also developed algorithms to determine environmental impacts based on meteorological information available through the system-wide information management (SWIM). Results showed that depending on the prevailing weather situation, high resolution environmental information provided as part of the MET service could enable the optimisation of aircraft trajectories with the potential to reduce the climate impact by around 20% for specific routes.

The results suggest that identifying those routes with a large reduction potential enables aviation to improve considerably its environmental performance.

Benefits

Improved environmental information

Improved air quality

Better environmental performance