ECO-FF

Efficient and robust planning tools for Commercial Formation Flight advancing sustainable aviation

Contact: mcerezo@ing.uc3m.es

The ECO-FF project aims to develop efficient planning tools to enable commercial formation flight as a near-term solution for more sustainable aviation. By allowing aircraft to fly in coordinated formations, fuel consumption, emissions, and operational costs can be reduced while improving airspace efficiency. The project will design high-fidelity optimization and AI-based algorithms capable of solving the formation flight planning problem at network scale under realistic operational conditions. The resulting tools will support the evaluation and future implementation of formation flight, contributing to aviation decarbonization and smarter air traffic management.

The aviation sector poses a significant challenge to the environment, ranking among the top ten global greenhouse gas emitters and contributing approximately 4% to observed human-induced global warming to date (Klower et al., 2021). As a key element of modern transportation, air transport is under increasing scrutiny because of its contribution to climate change. This challenge is further intensified by the sector’s projected growth, with air traffic expected to double the current number of passengers within the next 15 years (ACI, 2024), intensifying both environmental and management pressures.

This rapid growth presents a dual challenge: addressing the environmental impact but also, the airspace congestion and the limitations of current ATM and air traffic control (ATC) systems. Without innovative solutions, the sustainability of air traffic cannot be ensured. While the aviation industry is investing heavily in developing new technologies to ensure its sustainable future, many of these solutions face significant obstacles. Key technologies under development include Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAFs), hydrogen propulsion, and electric aircraft. However, these potential solutions require substantial technological breakthroughs and are not expected to achieve widespread deployment in the short term. In contrast, formation flight offers an immediate and practical solution. Unlike other emerging technologies, all the technical and technological requirements for its real implementation have already been achieved. Therefore, it can be deployed with today’s existing aircraft fleet, eliminating the need for extensive modifications or new manufacturing processes. This near-term applicability directly addresses the urgent need for decarbonization without compromising economic competitiveness or operational efficiency. Given the aviation sector’s critical role in global mobility and its outsized contribution to climate change, solutions like formation flight provide a viable and impactful pathway to reduce emissions and enhance air transport efficiency in the near term. By leveraging this innovative operational concept, the aviation industry can take a significant step toward addressing environmental challenges, alleviating airspace congestion, and preparing for a sustainable future.

The ECO-FF project aims to revolutionize aviation through the implementation of commercial formation flight, enabled by the development of an advanced formation flight planner. This cutting-edge tool will provide comprehensive, network-scale evaluations of this innovative operational concept. The knowledge generated through this research will demonstrate the feasibility of commercial aircraft formation flight across operational, economic, and environmental dimensions, even in real-world scenarios. By seamlessly integrating sustainability with economic and operational efficiency, typically seen as conflicting objectives, this innovative approach positions ECO-FF as a transformative solution to the aviation industry’s pressing challenges, paving the way for a greener, more efficient future in global aviation.

Research questions

• Can the Bi-level optimization problem be efficiently addressed at a network scale, incorporating high-fidelity models that account for critical factors such as scheduling, wind data, and uncertainties?

• What is the impact of considering scheduling, weather data, and high-fidelity aircraft models in the formation flight planning problem? Which is the difference in the predictability of trajectories when these factors are included compared to when they are omitted?

• Is it possible to approach the formation flight planning problem from an entirely different perspective, beyond the traditional bi-level optimization framework? What would be the most suitable methodology for such an approach?

• What are the potential trade-offs between the computational complexity of high-fidelity models and the operational feasibility of implementing these models in real-time ATM support systems?