Fuel burn reduction potential from delayed deceleration approaches

Changing aircraft operational procedures is one strategy that can be used to reduce fuel burn and mitigate environmental impacts of aviation in relatively short timeframes with existing aircraft types. One promising modification comes from increasing the use of Delayed Deceleration Approaches where the deceleration to the standard stabilized final approach speed occurs later, which keeps the aircraft in clean aerodynamic configuration with low thrust for as long as possible. Although such approaches can reduce fuel burn, in practice aircraft often decelerate much earlier. This may be for a variety of reasons, such as airspace restrictions, slower traffic ahead, air traffic controller technique and airline procedures and/or pilot technique. In this study, operational flight data has first been used to quantify the potential fuel burn savings associated with Delayed Deceleration Approaches. Aircraft that were observed to decelerate and configure flaps later in the approach had 30-40% lower fuel burn and carbon dioxide emissions below 10,000 ft compared to those that did not. Estimates of US system-wide fuel burn and emissions reduction potential from Delayed Deceleration Approaches have also been produced. Second, radar tracks of flights to different airport areas have been analyzed to help identify reasons for early decelerations. By observing the context of evolution of the less fuel efficient flights, the role of different potential factors such as preceding traffic, traffic mix, highly constrained airspace, runway interactions and severe weather conditions affecting the airspeed schedule of a given flight have been examined. Weather appeared to be a major parameter affecting the airspeed schedule, and air traffic procedures involving early decelerations appeared to have been used in dense and complex airspaces.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Dumont, Jean-Marie, S.M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• R. John Hansman, Jr. and Tom G. Reynolds.

• Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/77108

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/77108