Emission-aware adjustable robust flight path planning with respect to fuel and contrail cost

Aviation emission has always been regarded as the major contributor to climate and atmosphere changes. The recent research suggested that flights can be re-routed from sufficiently cold and humid atmospheres to mitigate the level of contrail production in particular regions during the flight planning stage. To address the needs, a weather data-driven flight path planning is proposed in this work. The spatial meteorological condition is generated using historical data and formulated as uncertain factors to develop a robust solution. Airlines can determine their allowance of flight level changes, pre-determined constrained flight levels set and robustness towards the maximum tolerance level of uncertain contrail length of a flight path. The overall cost can be further minimised, with a lowered total contrail length with the least increases in fuel consumption cost. The suggested methods validate the possibility of emission-aware adjustable robust flight path planning and ensure sustainable air transport operations.

Automated summary

This study proposes a weather data-driven flight path planning method to reduce contrail production by rerouting flights in different atmospheric conditions. Historical data is used to generate spatial meteorological conditions, which are formulated as uncertain factors to develop a robust solution. Airlines can determine allowable flight level changes and optimize for lower contrail length and fuel consumption cost.