AirOpt - optimisation of airspace to save 2MT CO2 a year

Airspace Unlimited has been established to innovate in how airspace is shared between military and civil users. Increasingly this is managed through a concept of the 'flexible use of airspace'. The more flexibility that can be achieved, the more we can reduce fuel burn and greenhouse gas emissions.

Our aim is to reduce aviation greenhouse gas emissions through a daily 'big data' optimisation of multiple flight trajectories and multiple military airspace reservations. This will enable airlines to optimise their routes on a daily basis, potentially saving 2Mt of CO2 a year in Europe. We have already developed a tool to do this, 'AirOpt', which was funded by a DfT T-TRIG grant, and have been working with the University of Stirling to improve the computational efficiency.

Throughout most of the world airspace is shared between civil and military users. Airlines fly between airports typically several hundred miles apart, whereas the military conduct training exercises in predominantly fixed airspace volumes that are close to military airfields. For civil users, the military airspace is something that must be avoided, for obvious safety reasons.

In recent years, civil and military authorities have increasingly worked together to optimise the use of the airspace, under the principles of the 'Flexible Use of Airspace' (FUA), which is defined as strategic, pre-tactical and tactical. Tactical denotes the day of operation, pre-tactical up to three days before while strategic is anything more than that. Military airspace use is generally determined at the pre-tactical level so that airlines can subsequently flight-plan with knowledge of what airspace is available. The processes that support this system are currently being modernised, with the adoption of digital tools and electronic communication. This modernisation presents an opportunity to introduce data analytics and gain small but significant improvements in fuel consumption.

Eurocontrol (Sep 2019) estimates that air traffic management can influence ~6% of aviation emissions in Europe and improvements are underway: 'Free route airspace', which has saved 2.6Mt CO2 over 5 years (2014-19); and 'Continuous climb and descent' operations, estimated to save 1.1Mt CO2 per year. Conservatively, our concept has the prospect to reduce aviation fuel burn by 1%, equivalent to 2Mt CO2 per year across Europe.

Not only do these gains add value in their own right, they act as multipliers for decarbonisation. This is because operational improvements are very low cost compared to the costs of carbon capture (~€24 per tCO2) and Synthetic Aviation Fuels (~€120 per tCO2). Sustainable aviation fuels will not solve the problem before 2050, therefore near term operational improvements are essential over the next 30-50 years.

In 2019 we commercialised the work and vested our IP in 'Airspace Unlimited Scotland' Ltd. With this 'static' model we are now embedded in two projects in the Middle East and have three commercial proposals in our pipeline. We have been operating in stealth mode since our developments began in 2018 under a DFT T-TRIG project. We are about to submit a patent application.