New Air Traffic Control System to Cut Millions of Tons of CO

[cdnpilot77]

A few weeks back we ran a piece about how UPS was using advanced logistics to reduce energy consumption and emissions while cutting costs at the same time. This is done by calculating optimum routes and traveling the minimum distances.

If this works well with 10-ton delivery trucks that are rolling around on wheels, imagine how much better it can work with 50-ton jet aircraft that are being lifted miles into the air. It is just common sense. But pilots are not able to choose their own routes, they must follow the guidance of the air traffic control (ATC) system, which has safety as its top priority, with attention to secondary concerns such as wait times and fuel consumption being served as resources allow.

But that system, which is now over fifty years old in many places, is struggling to keep up with a substantial increase in traffic volume and has its resources stretched pretty thin just dealing with its primary function. For example, the fact that the current, radar-based system only updates every 12 seconds requires substantial spacing between planes that would not be necessary with a faster, more modern system.

British inventor, Ned Parkinson, has been pushing for a new digital system that he claims could reduce emissions by as much as 8 percent, by simply directing airplanes on routes that are more efficient, while still maintaining sufficient separation distances to ensure passenger safety. That might not seem like a lot, but it equals 40 million metric tons worldwide, which is roughly equivalent to the carbon footprint of the Denmark, a land of more than 5.5 million people. And, keep in mind, it will be achieved by essentially updating the electronics and writing new, albeit incredibly complex, software. Those savings also count for more at high altitude than they would on the ground by about a factor of two.

Parkinson already has a working prototype running. It looks much the same as today’s controller screens, except that it calculates the most efficient trajectories for each plane. But despite Parkinson’s impressive credentials (he helped design the North Atlantic ATC system, in use for over twenty years), the British National Air Traffic Safety (NATS) authorities don’t seem particularly interested in implementing his system.

Meanwhile, on this side of the pond, GE is developing their new GPS-based ATC system called NextGen. This technology will provide an extraordinary range of features, including better tracking accuracy, on-board weather capability and perhaps most important from an energy-savings perspective, continuous descent approach capability which has been shown to save anywhere between 50 and 80 gallons of fuel per descent. When you consider some 30,000 flights per day in the US alone that could potentially take advantage of this technology, that’s a savings of some two million gallons of jet fuel every day. Some airlines have been a little slow to incorporate this technology, hoping that the FAA will eventually agree to pay for the required upgrades. But Southwest Airlines is investing $175 million of their own money to install this technology at three airports - that will save 3 minutes for every flight. According to FAA Administrator Randy Babbit, they expect to recover their entire investment in two years from the fuel savings.

At the time of this writing, 47 US airports have incorporated at least some aspects of NextGen technology. And while air travel is still the most carbon intensive way to travel, it is getting increasingly less so.

But as new rules come into play, like the EU’s newly passed carbon tax which will almost certainly raise fares, many people are going to start considering other options.


RP Siegel, PE, is the President of Rain Mountain LLC. He is also the co-author of the eco-thriller Vapor Trails, the first in a series covering the human side of various sustainability issues including energy, food, and water. Like airplanes, we all leave behind a vapor trail. And though we can easily see others’, we rarely see our own

http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/12/new ... -tons-co2/

[invertedattitude]

I'm going to post something here, that is the ONLY relative issue when it comes to conjested airspace

RUNWAY ACCEPTANCE RATE

[HeadingAltitudeSpeed]

I'm going to post something here, that is the ONLY relative issue when it comes to conjested airspace

RUNWAY ACCEPTANCE RATE

+1

And this is determined by runway occupancy times. When the ROT of arrivals gets up to the 90 second mark you are looking at flow rates around 25-30 if you expect any departures to leave the airport.

[cyeg66]

I'm going to post something here, that is the ONLY relative issue when it comes to conjested airspace

RUNWAY ACCEPTANCE RATE

+2
I was going to post something to that effect a week ago when this was first brought up. All this talk of free flight and letting computers determine routings and reducing conflicts is great, but fuel burn is really contingent on airport acceptance rates. The 200 gallons saved enroute are quickly gobbled up by a few vectors, a long downwind, slowed to 160 kts or less miles and miles from touchdown, etc. As mentioned, everything is predicated on how many pieces of tin can get on and off the runways. Using today's technology (not what is in development but rather what is actually being used today) it's possible to pack planes a lot closer together than what the law currently permits, but unfortunately it's the laws of physics that determine how a runway is maximized. For that reason, I currently see the push for things like NextGen as costly make-work projects and a lot of mostly hot air. Sort of like: "would be nice, but do we really need it now?"

[Old Dog Flying]

Of course if NexGen is as costly as that last piece of overpriced equipment..CAATS...or whatever it was tagged...we should see it about the turn of the century.

[invertedattitude]

Here's the simple facts as I see it.

Every day there are more people inhabiting this earth.

Every day those people will want/need to travel in some way.

So two things, until they invent a teleporter, or the ability for two airplanes to occupy the same physical space, all of this crap is for not, because all of the "free flight" and fancy pants wind model prediction machines means nothing if two airplanes end up arriving for the runway at the same time...

We're going in the wrong direction here, education and software needs to go to ATC/Flight crews, not to some dispatcher who thinks he/she knows better than what's actually happening...
Now if we can speed up the updating of rules to reflect modern day technology, that's how you're going to really save the system a lot of money.

[G.N. Thompson]

And then, of course, we could stop building huge mills in the middle of our air traffic control zones. That would reduce de-icings, wait time to take off, and maybe we wouldn't have scheduled carriers in the holding pattern for 70 minutes any more.
GNT

[cyeg66]

Uhhhh, sure, what this dude said....^

?????

[CapitalGuy]

Well, when I was a tower controller, Runway Acceptance Rate is something I would have said and it certainly is a valuable metric. However, now that I work in Air Traffic Management, and design, the picture has become a little bigger for me. Let us consider the North Atlantic, for example. ADS-B allows surveillance over the ocean which reduces the longitudinal separation on the NAT tracks by half. For a given volume of airspace less sep means more planes. They all exit the OTS at their coastal points and then head off to their respective destinations.

When considering the amount of traffic that transits Canadian airspace without to touching Canadian asphalt, improvements in enroute airspace can, and do, provide enormous efficiencies.