Greener Air Traffic Operations

Project Information

GREAT

Grant agreement ID: 875154

DOI

10.3030/875154

Project closed

EC signature date 3 December 2019

Start date 1 January 2020

End date 30 June 2023

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Smart, Green And Integrated Transport

Total cost

€ 6 992 163,75

EU contribution

€ 2 681 532,50

Coordinated by

DEUTSCHES ZENTRUM FUR LUFT - UND RAUMFAHRT EV
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - GREAT (Greener Air Traffic Operations)

Reporting period: 2023-01-01 to 2023-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The perception of environmental problems, especially global warming, is more than ever an issue, especially in this day and age when reaching agreements on today's climate targets is a challenge and a topic of concern among citizens of all ages. Associated effects of global warming, like extreme weather events, are driven primarily by the emission of exhaust gases (especially carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides and methane) and water vapor creating contrails. Hence, reducing emissions to preserve the environment, while keeping the air mobility, is a central society need now and in the future.
The flight trajectories are influenced on one hand by environmental and aircraft parameters, and on the other hand by air traffic control (ATC) driven parameters, like route length or usable altitudes. Thereby, to reduce the emissions in short and medium term, changes in flight trajectory design and ATC operations are one appropriate means.
The overall objective of GreAT is to reduce the fuel consumption and gas emissions during “gate-to-gate” flight phases through developing and accessing environment-friendly air traffic operational concepts, adaptive airspace structures and green trajectory optimization technologies, and supporting avionic systems. Evaluation campaigns between the European partners, combined with the Chinese partners through cross evaluations are intended to validate the proposed concept and to show a potential significant reduction of the aviation’s impact on climate change.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The main objective for this reporting period was to complete all remaining activities, and to close all work packages which were still open. This contains last documentation activities for the concept work and the development on supporting airborne avionics (on Chinese side), as well as the completion of last validation activities and exercises, including result analysis and reporting. Further, the environmental impact assessment was conducted mainly in this period with the methodology that was prepared in earlier periods. The main communication and dissemination action within this period was the GreAT Final event held on 24th May 2023 at KLM premises in Amsterdam. Several project closure activities were performed as well, e.g. preparing the final review meeting and creating this report, but also archiving of data from the exercises, internal documentation and communication.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

GreAT suggests improvements to European and Chinese Air Traffic Management (ATM) and will help to reduce the environmental impact of aviation. Knowledge about the possibilities and limits of improved ATM procedures in reducing CO2 emissions was gained through the optimization of flight trajectories and adaptation of the air traffic management working methods. Prototypes of tools, supporting the implementation of these new working methods are finished and available.
The results of this project are beneficial for both Europe and China in terms of technology, economy and society.
The mutual benefits from this project are listed as follows:
• The alignment of technology and concepts are enhanced between Europe and China in the area of air traffic management. Expertise was shared on operational improvement to mitigate the environmental impact.
• The coordinated evaluation enabled a common validation and environmental impact assessment methodology, which can be applied in both Europe and China.
• The concepts and algorithms developed within this project were simulated and validated in the validation environments established by EU and Chinese partners to test the adaptation in European and Chinese air traffic scenarios.

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