Engineering Commons^™

Aircraft Route Optimization For Heterogeneous Formation Flight, Jia Xu, Andrew Ning, Geoffrey Bower, Ilan Kroo

Faculty Publications

We examine the value of extended formation flight in the context of airline operations. The study is based on a bi-level route optimization framework. The aircraft performance model includes the effects of rolled-up wakes, formation heterogeneity, and formation-induced compressibility effects. We incorporate airline economics to understand the trade-off between speed and drag savings in the context of formation flight. The application of formation flight to a representative South African Airlines (SAA) long-haul route network can reduce fuel burn by over 4.6% or reduce direct operating cost by 2.1%. The savings increase to 6.8% in fuel or 2.4% in cost when …