Green Flight Trajectories: A REACT4C data analysis

• Main Author: Verbist, P.J.F. (author)
• Other Authors: Grewe, V. (mentor)
• Format: Master Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:f3888a38-f978-4eb2-997a-30c7ad768e6a

REACT4C is a project that received European funding to investigate whether air traffic across the North Atlantic Ocean can be rerouted such that the resulting climate impact is reduced. The project considered 400 daily flights in each direction. Eight frequently occurring weather situations were identified, based on the strength and location of the jet stream between North America and Europe. It was found that the climate impact could be reduced to a large extent, although the impact reduction potential heavily depends on the direction of flight, the weather pattern under consideration, the climate metric used to quantify climate impact, and the relative importance of climate impact and economic cost during the optimization. The way in which climate-optimal trajectories compare to their cost-optimal counterparts, is still largely unknown. This research examines how the routes are affected by the climate optimization. Two kinds of studies are performed. The first one is a case study, in which the trajectories of one combination of direction, climate metric, weather type and level of climate optimization are compared with the cost- optimal routes. The influence of each of these four case differentiators on the flights is examined as well, using a one-factor-at-a-time approach. A tool is made that can be used to analyze the trajectories of any combination of flight direction, climate metric, weather pattern and level of climate optimization. The second study is a general analysis of the REACT4C routes, taking into account all combinations of the four case differentiators. This study is conducted to unravel general trends in the way direction, metric, weather and level of climate optimization influence the way in which flights are rerouted. The following characteristics are used to quantify how routes are altered. First, the percentage of affected flights is determined. Then, the flight duration and flight distance increments with respect to the cost-optimized flights are computed. Furthermore, the shift in latitude ...