Change-oriented aircraft fuel burn and emissions assessment methodologies

Advancing the National Airspace System (NAS) generally requires research to project the costs and benefits of proposed operational changes that improve system efficiency and environmental performance. Aviation regulatory agencies increasingly rely on aircraft fuel consumption and emissions assessments to support investment decisions needed to adopt new technologies that ensure the best value to the public. The varying scopes of such assessments and often limited availability of data to support evaluations of future change scenarios pose analytic challenges. This paper describes a methodological framework for standardizing benefit estimations. The framework is centered on the concept of operational change, identifies key benefit mechanisms, defines applicable metrics, and presents quantitative fuel burn and emission benefit estimation examples. It aims to support assessments that are based on on-board flight data, surveillance data, and model evaluations in a manner independent of specific implementations of simulation capabilities and software tools. The examples characterize and compare typical operational change scenarios on a parametric basis and rank associated benefit pools of actual changes observed in recent operational improvements including implementations of Performance Based Navigation (PBN) procedures at major airports in the NAS.