Staging Airliner Service

Abstract

There is a general consensus building that historically high fuel prices and greater public awareness of the emissions that result from burning fuel are going to be long-term concerns for those who design, build, and operate airliners. The possibility of saving both fuel and reducing emissions has rekindled interest in breaking very long-range airline flights into multiple stages or even adopting in-flight refueling. It is likely that staging will result in lower fuel burn, and recent published reports have suggested that the savings are substantial, particularly if the airliner is designed from the outset for this kind of operation. Given that staging runs against the design and operation historical trend, this result begs for further attention. This paper will examine the staging question, examining both analytic and numeric performance estimation methodologies to quantify the likely amount of fuel savings that can be expected and the resulting design impacts on the airliner.

On the energy efficiency of hydrogen-fuelled transport aircraft

“…The Flight Optimisation System (FLOPS) is a multidisciplinary aircraft preliminary design and analysis package [18,19] whose applicability for the type of analysis used in this article has been demonstrated previously [12,14,16]. FLOPS is an aircraft configuration optimisation program developed for use in conceptual design of new aircraft and in the assessment of impact of advanced technology [18].…”

Review of Technologies to Achieve Sustainable (Green) Aviation

“…Nangia [30] has shown that fuel burn savings of as much as 50% were achievable by using a 5,000km design for a 15,000km journey, since a medium range aircraft can carry a much higher share of their maximum payload as passengers. This differencewhich appears essentially to be the difference between medium-range single and long-range twin-aisle aircraft -was not a feature of either the study of Hahn [28] or Creemers & Slingerland [29], which used the same fuselage for both long and medium range designs. This highlights the importance of cabin dimensions and layouts in considering future designs in which, both environmentally and commercially, seat-kilometers per gallon becomes an increasingly important objective.…”

“…The study by Hahn [28] has shown that by reducing the design range from 15,000km to 5,000km, with the fuselage and passenger accommodation fixed, it is possible to reduce the operational empty weight (OEW) by 29%. The study by Creemers & Slingerland [29] noted a 17% reduction in OEW by halving the design range from 13,334km to 6,672km.…”

“…It has been estimated, using a simple parametric analysis, that undertaking a journey of 15,000km in three hops in an aircraft with design range of 5,000km would use 29% less fuel than doing the trip in a single flight in a 15,000km design. Hahn [28] and Creemers & Slingerland [29] have performed analyses to address this issue using sophisticated aircraft design synthesis methods. Hahn [28], analyzing the assessment for a 15,000km journey in one stage or three, predicted a fuel saving of 29%.…”

“…Hahn [28] and Creemers & Slingerland [29] have performed analyses to address this issue using sophisticated aircraft design synthesis methods. Hahn [28], analyzing the assessment for a 15,000km journey in one stage or three, predicted a fuel saving of 29%. Creemers & Slingerland [29], considering a B747-400 (range 13,334km) as the baseline long-range aircraft, designed an aircraft with the same fuselage and passenger capacity (420) but for half the design range (6,672km).…”