Calculating Optimum Routes

摘要

Foresight and broad planning could reduce commercial aviation fuel consumption by up to 6% annually. That is more than 3.8 billion litres (1 billion USgal) a year that could be saved, predicts the Partnership for Air Transportation Noise and Emissions Reduction (Partner). En route traffic optimisation would mean fewer aircraft queueing up in the air needlessly. The plan would assign aircraft the most di-rect and efficient routes possible using 21st century monitoring and co-ordination, and they would onlyrnchange speed and direction when necessary, and then only in "small and efficient ways", says John-Paul Clarke, director of the Georgia Tech Air Transportation Laboratory and principal investigator for the fifth project of Partner, which is led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.