Analysis of Flight Routes and Hints for Passengers – The Trip Emission Ecolabel

Abstract

Purpose - This project calculates Trip Emission Ecolabels (TEE) based on fuel performance, equivalent CO2, local noise level and local air pollution with NOx. As such, flight routes to different destinations (domestic, short-, middle- and long-distance) can be compared. Passengers obtain hints for selecting a flight option for minimum environmental impact. --- Methodology - The TEEs for flight connections are calculated with an Excel tool. Considered are the distance of the flight and aircraft performance parameters from a database depending on aircraft and engine model and cabin layout. --- Findings - Flight booking engines consider today at best CO2 emissions, but not the whole environmental impact of a flight. The fastest, shortest or cheapest flight may not be the flight with the least environmental impact. For an evaluation of the trip, both the flight routing and the aircraft environmental performance per passenger is important. --- Research Limitations - The available data for turboprop engines does not contain information about nitrogen oxides (NOx) emitted by the engine. Therefore, turboprop aircraft are not taken into account in this report. Due to the many available flight connections and combinations, this report can only work with selected examples. --- Practical Implications - The applied method allows calculating and comparing the environmental impact of a trip with a combination of different stopovers and aircraft. Today, flight options have to be extracted from flight booking engines and have to be processed offline. In the future these calculations can be offered to passengers directly by flight booking engines. Furthermore, also airlines could calculate and decide on the aircraft, engine, cabin layout and routing, to offer environmentally beneficial flight connections. --- Social Implications - The environmental impact of different trips can be made more transparent and can therefore be discussed in public. --- Originality - This project is an addition to previous research and the first one to use the existing TEE method to this extent.