GreAT in brief

In a nutshell

Starting date

1stjanuary 2020

Total budget

6 992 163 M€

Duration

42 months

Grant agreement

n°875154

ec grant

2 681 532

call topic

LC-MG-1-6-2019:
Aviation operations impact on climate change

coordinator

M. finke, dlr

Chinese correspondant

M. Hu, CARERI

full title

greener air traffic operations

website

project-great.eu

linkedin page

H2020-GreAT

Zenodo GreAT Community

Project Summary

Context

Human impact on the environment is more than ever an issue. Reaching agreements on climate targets is a challenge and a topic of concern among European citizens of all ages. Associated effects of global warming, like extreme weather events, are driven primarily by the emission of exhaust gases (in particular CO₂, NO_x) and water vapour creating contrails.

Hence, reducing emissions to protect the environment while maintaining mobility is a central societal need, now and in the future. To reduce emissions in the short and medium term, changes in flight trajectory design and ATC operations are an appropriate means.

Challenges and Objectives

Flight trajectories are influenced on one hand by environmental and aircraft parameters, and on the other by ATC-driven parameters, like route length or usable altitudes. During flight execution, re-planning on board of an aircraft using the flight management system enables to consider dynamic effects on the tactical level, like weather changes. For the efficiency of a greener trajectory, it must be flown as planned, even under the actual traffic situation controlled by ATC, which is often not the case today.

GreAT's overall objective is to reduce fuel consumption and gas emissions during “gate-to- gate” flight phases. Therefore, the partners will develop and assess environment-friendly air traffic operational concepts, adaptive airspace and green trajectory optimization technologies, and supporting avionic systems. Cross-evaluations between European and Chinese partners will validate the proposed concept and show potentials for a significant reduction of aviation’s impact on climate change.