With increasing fuel costs, and the tie between carbon emissions and global warming, the efficiency of airlines should be a priority. There are some measures afoot to reduce emissions and increase efficiency, and I was encouraged to discover that passenger airline fuel efficiency has improved an incredible 36 percent since 2000.
Some of the measures that have had dramatic affect are:
- single-engine taxi procedures – using only one engine to get to and from the gate
- flying at higher altitudes and powering down the engines when descending
- more even distribution of cargo weight and reducing overall weight of payloads
- flying at slower speeds
Additional steps that could help tremendously are:
- smarter routing of planes for minimum fuel burn, including in-flight alteration of altitude based on weather
- the redesign of hubs and schedules to improve efficiency
- allowing for a reduction in FAA fuel reserve requirements to reflect smarter planes and better systems (the weight of unneeded fuel needless inefficiency)
Would you fly on an airline that was touted as the most fuel efficient, even if it meant slightly longer travel times? My brother-in-law is a pilot for the most efficient airline that deploys a number of state-of-the-art techniques to reduce fuel consumption, and as a result lower emissions. While the measures may largely driven by the company’s bottom line, I feel the societal benefits should be promoted. Why not begin a marketing campaign that promotes the green benefits of these measures? The problem is that these measures also make this airline one of the slowest, with flight times on average five to ten minutes longer.
Personally, I have no problem with these extra minutes. They seem to me a trivial trade off for greener flying. If promoted, the public might rebel against these measures, given that a trade-off is involved. It’s high time we start to embrace a bit of sacrifice in light of the broader gains.
One thing that you can do personally to help improve airline efficiency is to read about the Smart Skies initiative, and encourage congressional action. This effort is aimed at the creation of a smarter air traffic control system and a fairer distribution of our skies between commercial, corporate and cargo traffic.
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