Mobility and transportation are at the heart of our society as they facilitate access to jobs, goods and services. Because air travel is one of the fastest and most progressive branches of the transportation sector it has wide visibility and receives worldwide and European pressure to be more environmentally efficient. 

ALBATROSS is a wide scale initiative of major European aviation stakeholder groups to demonstrate how the technical and operational R&D achievements of the past years can transform the current fuel intensive aviation to an environment-friendly industry sector.

To reach this goal ALBATROSS followed a holistic approach by covering all flight phases, directly involving all relevant stakeholder groups (such as Airlines, ANSPs, Network Manager, Airports and Industries) addressing both operational and technological aspects of aviation and Air Traffic Management (ATM). The project demonstrated solutions from alternative aircraft fuel, to enhanced ATM, Airspace Users operations on the ground, TMA, and en-route. To foster increased flexibility and scalability the demonstrated approaches also leverage cutting-edge technologies, such as modern air-ground connectivity means, and novel highly collaborative ATM procedures.

The possibilities of implementing a “perfect flight” (in other words; the most fuel efficient flight) are explored and extensively demonstrated in real conditions, through a series of live trials in various European operating environments. The demonstrations spaned through a period of several months and utilize over 1000 demonstration flights, which are supported by Air France, Novair, Lufthansa, Wizz Air and Swiss on Airbus and Boeing aircraft, 2 Airports and major ANSPs. During this effort a strong pressure is put on objective measurability and representativeness of the results, built on systematic data collection, utilizing Big Data Analytics, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.