Commercial aviation is a vital part of the United States economy. It generates over $1 trillion annually, which is more than 5% of the U.S. GDP, and produces approximately 10 million jobs. Every year there is an increase in commercial air traffic. This is attributed to expanding trade between states and other countries, which requires larger amounts of cargo aircraft in operation, and also catering to the growing number of middle and upper class passengers who travel for business and pleasure purposes. A rise in commercial aviation leads to the use of more aviation fuel on a monthly and annual basis. This in turn leads to escalated levels of combustion by-products from jet and turbofan engines into the atmosphere. The negative effects of these by-products range from producing poor air quality and consequent health hazards to contributing to global warming. This study is aimed at assessing the impacts of aircraft emissions on the local air quality in Corpus Christi using the Emissions and Dispersion Modeling System. Flight data for the study was obtained from the Department of Transportation's Research and Innovative Technology Administration. Analyses of the emissions were compared on monthly, annual, engine type and airline provider bases. Climatic, economic and anthropogenic factors were identified in the analyses.

The continuous growth in flight operations has led to public concern regarding the impact of aviation on the environment with its anthropogenic contribution to global warming. Several solutions have been proposed in order to reduce the environmental impact of aviation. However most of them are long term solutions such as new environmental friendly aircraft and engine designs. In this respect, management of aircraft trajectory and mission is a potential short term solution that can readily be implemented. Therefore, in order to truly understand the optimised environment friendly trajectories that can be actually deployed by airlines, it is important to investigate the impact of degraded engine performance on real aircraft trajectories at multi-disciplinary level. Several trajectory optimisation studies have been conducted in this direction in the recent past, but engines considered for the studies were clean and trajectories were ideal and simple. This research aims to provide a methodology to enhance the conventional approach of the aircraft trajectory optimisation problem by including engine degradation and real aircraft flight paths within the optimisation loop (framework); thereby the impact of engine degradation on optimum aircraft trajectories were assessed by quantifying the difference in fuel burn and emissions, when flying a trajectory which has been specifically optimised for an aircraft with degraded engines and flying a trajectory which has been optimised for clean engines. For the purpose of this study models of a clean and two levels of degraded engines have been developed that are similar to engines used in short range and long range aircraft currently in service. Degradation levels have been assumed based on the deterioration levels of Exhaust Gas Temperature (EGT) margin. Aircraft performance models have been developed for short range and long range aircraft with the capability of simulating (generating) vertical and horizontal flight profiles provides by the airlines. An emission prediction model was developed to assess NOx emissions of the mission. The contrail prediction model was adopted from previous studies to predict contrail formation. In addition, a multidisciplinary aircraft trajectory optimisation framework was developed and employed to analyse short range flight trajectories between London and Amsterdam and long range flight trajectories between London and Colombo under three cases. Case_1: Aircraft with clean engines, Case_2 and Case_3 were Aircraft with two different levels of degraded engines having a 5% and 10% Exhaust Gas Temperature (EGT) increase respectively. Three different multi objective optimisation studies were performed; (1) Fuel burn vs Flight time, (2) Fuel burn vs NOx emission, and (3) Fuel burn vs Contrails. Finally optimised trajectories generated with degraded engines were compared with the optimised trajectories generated with clean engines ... [cont].

Combustion emissions from aviation operations contribute significantly to climate change and air pollution. Accordingly, there is increasing interest in advancing battery-powered propulsion for aviation applications to reduce emissions. As batteries continue to improve, it is essential to recognize breakthroughs in battery specific energy in the context of air transport vehicles. Most electric aircraft designs and programs have focused on small aircraft because of restrictive battery performance. This work presents a feasibility assessment for an all-electric airliner based on an Airbus A220-100 with turbofan engines replaced by electric motors and propellers. The analysis compares the performance characteristics of the electric airliner to the A220-100 and establishes several configurations with varying battery pack-specific energy. The short-term electric airliner could replace conventional aircraft on very short, high-density missions. In contrast, the long-term electric airliner requires significant battery technology improvements that are not currently foreseen. The alternative long-term electric airliner could complete half of the A220-100’s missions, but the necessary specific energy value is also not anticipated shortly. All-electric airliners would significantly impact manufacturing, operations, costs, and emissions but are commercially infeasible with current battery technology. Additional development of more advanced battery technology is required to increase the specific energy of battery packs, enhance battery safety and reliability, and develop lighter high-power electric motors.

The interdisciplinary research project AviClim (Including Aviation in International Protocols for Climate Protection) has explored the feasibility for including aviation’s full climate impact, i.e., both long-lived CO2 and short-lived non-CO2 effects, in international protocols for climate protection and has investigated the economic impacts. Short-lived non-CO2 effects of aviation are NOx emissions, H2O emissions or contrail cirrus, for instance. Four geopolitical scenarios have been designed which differ concerning the level of international support for climate protecting measures. These scenarios have been combined alternatively with an emissions trading scheme on CO2 and non-CO2 species, a climate tax and a NOx emission charge combined with CO2 trading and operational measures (such as lower flight altitudes). Modelling results indicate that a global emissions trading scheme for both CO2 and non-CO2 emissions would be the best solution from an economic and environmental point of view. Costs and impacts on competition could be kept at a relatively moderate level and effects on employment are moderate, too. At the same time, environmental benefits are noticeable.