Understanding the Sustainability Impacts of Aircraft Taxiing, and How Analytics Can Aid Airports on the Journey to Net Zero
Emu Analytics
Innovative and easy-to-use digital twin software for aviation, rail and other transport operators.
This article by Emu Analytics compares aircraft taxiing behaviours and sustainability impacts at 6 international airports -
find the analysis available as a PDF for download at the end
Did you know...
That over the course of just one week in February 2022, across six iconic international airports, the total distance travelled by aircraft on the ground, was more than 105,000 kilometres? That is twice around the world before the planes have even taken to the sky! Much of this distance would have consisted of at least one of the aircraft engines being on, potentially emitting almost 12,000,000 kg of CO2.
Here at Emu Analytics, we have over the past year taken part in the Connected Places Catapult’s Future of Air Mobility Accelerator Programme, working with Glasgow and Heathrow Airports, to help them measure, monitor and ultimately, take decisions to address the sustainability and economic impacts of inefficient aircraft taxiing behaviours – proving that the right information should be backing the decisions when introducing initiatives to reduce the taxiing behaviours, so airports and airlines can combat the fuel burn and make strides towards a more sustainable industry.
This sparked our interest to look at six iconic international airports around the globe, using the same data, tools, and techniques, to see how this challenge affects these locations in different ways.
Figure 1. This map shows the performance of stand turnaround time at Heathrow Airport.
We know that busy, international airports emit masses of CO2 in their day-to-day business. Airports and airlines are already innovating towards greener modes of transport, sustainable aviation fuels, autonomous processes and more to combat this issue.
However, an often-forgotten part of the airport’s environmental impact is unnecessary aircraft taxiing with engines running – burning fuel which is costing both the airlines and our rapidly changing climate.
Figure 2. This screenshot shows one airline's aircraft taxiing behaviours at Heathrow Airport.
At Emu Analytics, we have utilised our Digital Twin software, Flo.w, to explore how six major international airports compare in the four relevant metrics: taxiing by aircraft volume, by distance travelled and by time spent taxiing, and from this, inferring the probable levels of emissions.
This analysis has been put together by the Location Intelligence team at Emu Analytics using a real-time ADS-B feed of plane location data from a global leader in precision live flight tracking, Plane Finder – and is a snapshot of one normal week of commercial traffic at the six major airports:
Figure 3. This map uses data from Planefinder to show a week's worth of commercial plane movements at Charles De Gaulle (21st - 27th Feb 2022). Find the interactive map here.
Busiest airports ≠ the highest emissions
When calculating which of the six chosen airports have the highest number of aircraft taxiing in one week, we found LAX to be the busiest by far, with over 14,000 taxiing aircraft in one week (this covers arrivals, departures, and intra-airport taxiing) – 9,501 more than Frankfurt Airport. Note that this is not simply the number of scheduled flights, rather, it is all aircraft seen moving on the airfield using data from Planefinder.net
When looking at these numbers, the assumption may be that the busiest airport would be the one having the highest emissions due to the volume of aircraft movements.
However, this isn’t the case. There are other critical metrics that play a role in the total emissions of aircraft taxiing, one of them being the layout of the airport itself, which plays a key part in how far each aircraft travels during taxiing before take-off and after arrival.
22,000km of taxiing
Our first bit of analysis confirmed that LAX has the greatest number of aircraft taxiing, and this correlates to the total accumulative taxiing length.
The cumulative taxiing distances travelled in one week show different figures:
However, Schiphol Airport proved to be the airport where arriving aircraft travelled the greatest cumulative distance when taxiing, surpassing all other airports, including the busier US ones.
Figure 3. This map shows one day of raw GPS data (from Planefinder) for departing commercial flights at Amsterdam airport (21/02/2022). (21st - 27th Feb 2022). Find the interactive map here.
Schiphol airport: arriving aircraft travel twice as far as departing aircraft
Our analysis of the taxiing behaviours at Schiphol also highlighted that the cumulative taxiing distance by arriving aircraft is approximately double the distance of those departing for the week in question, February 21st to 27th (with 12,821km covered by arriving aircraft vs 6,154km for departures).
82 days’ worth of taxiing in one week
However, the time aircraft at Schiphol airport take to taxi is still significantly lower than aircraft at JFK airport, where aircraft spend longer time taxiing even if the distance travelled is less. Long distances between the runway to the stand can cause unnecessary taxiing, but lack of space could also have negative impacts, with congestion causing aircraft to spend additional time queuing to get to their stand.
At JFK Airport, the total amount of time spent taxiing across all aircraft arriving and departing amounts to 82 days’ worth of time, in only one week.
领英推荐
European airports have less taxiing time than US airports
An interesting observation from our research is that the total taxiing time tends to be lower at the European airports, with Charles de Gaulle and Schiphol airports accumulating 35/36 days compared to the 64/82 days of JFK and LAX, despite the fact that the arrival taxiing distance at Schiphol is significantly higher. Heathrow however, moves into third position for the longest time spent taxiing with a total of 41 days, despite its smaller footprint than many of its peers.
What does this mean for the total emissions?
A research article from 2018 by Cambridge University found that for a typical landing and take-off cycle at Heathrow Airport, on average 36% of the fuel is consumed during the taxi phase. From our calculations of a week in February 2022; this is the accumulative carbon emissions on the aircraft taxiing stage alone, and how the six airports compare to each other - with JFK coming up on top.
Using the US Environmental Protection Agency's Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator this JFK figure for one week in February turns out to be the equivalent of 463 homes’ energy usage for one year.
In conclusion
This analysis shows that all the six airports have a great opportunity to optimise ground movements to reduce emissions caused by taxiing. Our Flo.w Digital Twin solution is not just telling us the extent and impact of fuel burn caused by taxiing, it is analysing the unique patterns of taxiing behaviours at each airport. Were this to be expanded to a real-time analysis of day-to-day operation, it would ensure that the airport knows the exact pain points to address when introducing initiatives to combat the issue, and could monitor the effectiveness of their interventions.
Figure 4. This map shows one week of Planefinder GPS data for commercial planes at JFK airport (21-27/02/2022). Find the interactive map here.
Many airports and airlines are already implementing strategies to assess and prevent the impact of aircraft taxiing – ranging from innovations in electric and hydrogen fuelled aircraft and vehicles to optimisation initiatives to reduce the time and distance aircraft spend airside.
Heathrow Airport recently released their refreshed sustainability strategy for the decade ahead – “Heathrow 2.0: Connecting People and Planet”. The Royal Schiphol Group, the operator of Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Rotterdam The Hague Airport and Lelystad Airport have launched their roadmap towards operating a fully autonomous airside operation by 2050.
Emu are already working with leading airports and airlines such as Heathrow and British Airways who are benefiting from Emu’s Digital Twin software Flo.w to analyse taxiing behaviours to implement informed prevention strategies and monitor the effectiveness of these in real-time.
Figure 5. This map show one week's worth of commercial aircraft movements at Frankfurt airport (21st-27th Feb). Find the interactive map here.
However, to fully understand the sustainability impact of an airport’s airside operation, the airports would have to look at all the moving assets burning fuel. We have done this at a number of UK airports, bringing in vehicle fleet telematics as well as aircraft taxiing data into our Digital Twin software to provide a historic, real-time, and predictive view of the bigger picture of CO2 emissions – a carbon accounting dashboard – to provide the airport with the necessary tools to implement sustainability initiatives and then monitor the effectiveness of them in real-time.
By implementing our Digital Twin for these airports, or any airport that wants to take action to tackle this fuel burn issue, we could provide a real-time and predictive solution to monitor this, ensuring the airports would know the pain points to address when introducing initiatives to combat the issue. Reach out to learn more and see a demonstration of our solution.
Contact us:
Behind this analysis
Plane Finder
Thank you to Plane Finder for providing the data to underpin the analysis presented in this paper. Plane Finder is a leader and trusted source of precision live flight tracking data to industries around the world via their surveillance APIs, historical data archive, and global network of high-performance, low latency, ADS-B receivers.
Emu Analytics
Emu Analytics is a UK-based SME that offer software solutions for analysing and visualising real-time geospatial data. Their innovative software solutions enable Digital Twin and Smart Cities initiatives and help organisations across multiple sectors benefit from actionable insights from big, fast, and often real-time, location data. Their UK clients include International Airlines Group, Ferrovial, and the UK's Civil Aviation Authority amongst others.
Learn more about Emu's Digital Twin Software Solution Flo.w:
Airline technology, digital tools, product leadership, biometrics, AI at British Airways
2 年Very interesting Emu Analytics. Paul Dixon worth a read
Sr Program Manager | Logistics Specialist | Innovator
2 年I’d be interested to see the outcome at military establishments . Blythe Crawford CBE Tom Cousins MSc BSc (Hons) RAF Tom Walker