Out in the Swiss countryside last week the Solar Impulse made its virgin voyage, where it cruised for 87 minutes at an altitude of 1,200 metres, demonstrating conclusive proof that an airplane can fly without any emissions. This solar-powered airplane is designed to fly day and night without fuel or emissions as it relies solely on the energy absorbed from 12,000 solar cells, built into its wings of the aircraft. The energy absorbed is saved in high-performance batteries and is used to power the four electric engines the plane runs on. Key to the design of this zero-emission aircraft is its weight – the body is made from carbon fibre meaning in total it weighs just 1,600 kilograms- that’s about the same as a mid-sized car!

The objective of this particular mission was to verify that the plane’s flight behaviour is in line with the calculations and simulations done using the flight simulator. Given that such a large and light plane had never been flown before, the behavior of the plane under real flying conditions remained unexplored, yet the test showed extremely positive results. The test pilot, Markus Scherdel, reported a stable and controllable ride from the outset and project leaders confirmed that all objectives had been reached. The Solar Impulse project, initiated by Bertrand Piccard in 2004, had been designed as a prototype for an aircraft intended to fly around the world without fuel in 2012. Of course this plane is not the passenger-carrying type, yet the model has proved very useful for testing new technologies that could potentially be used for driving some aircraft systems in the future.

Last week was also witness to two successful test flights coordinated by AIRE (the Atlantic, Interoperability Initiative to Reduce Emissions). The door to door flights were undertaken by Air France and American Airlines on the Paris – Miami route, and represented the first ever transatlantic flights whose objective was focused entirely around the reduction of greenhouse gas emission and noise pollution. The flights involved the cooperation of the air traffic control centres of France (DSNA), the UK (NATS), Portugal (Nav-Portugal) and the USA (FAA) along the route. Procedures adopted by Air France included shorter taxiing times at both airports, continuous climb, optimum altitude and speed during the cruise phase, and a continuous descent approach on arrival into Miami. The American Airlines’ flight included single-engine taxiing, continuous climb-out and descent, optimized routing over water and a tailored arrival. The results announced showed CO2 emissions reductions of 6-9 metric tons and fuel savings of 2-3 metric tons!

Heathrow airport has been working on their latest initiative designed to cut emissions at the same time as improving the comfort and convenience at the airport. This initiative comes in the form of the Urban Light Transport (ULTra) – “a personal rapid transit” system in the form of driverless, electrically-powered "taxi pods" which transport people and their luggage to Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5. The ULTra taxi pods run on their own infrastructure, similar to that of a monorail system and have impressive environmental credentials, offering low emissions, a high level of service, efficient use of space and good value for money. But they do not only sound like something from the future, they actually look like something from a science fiction film. The idea being, to a certain extent, that if the ULTra is going to be around for years to come, its design will have to withstand the test of time!!

Elsewhere at Swansea University scientists have been researching into the aviation fuel of the future – microalgae. These scientists are undertaking a project using algae to create oil from seaweed, and have found that one particular type of algae, a microalgae named Botryococcus braunii algae, can produce particularly high levels of oil – around 50 to 140 tonnes of oil per hectare, compared to biofuel ethanol, which produces about 0.2 tonnes of oil equivalent, and rapeseed which generates around 1.2 tonnes. They are hoping that with their developments, the commercialization of biofuel across Wales will pick-up, especially as businesses become increasingly aware of the problems of relying on our resources of fossil fuels which are rapidly running-out and are known to contribute substantially to global warming.

And finally, to the air traffic management of the future… at ATC Global in Amsterdam on Wednesday, the SESAR Joint Undertaking (SJU) presented results from the European flight demonstrations performed in the framework of the Atlantic Interoperability Initiative to Reduce Emissions (AIRE). The AIRE project looked at inexpensive ways in which airlines, airports and aviation regulators in the U.S. and Europe can cut fuel consumption, carbon emissions and flight times by cooperating more effectively on air traffic management. Whilst undertaking this project, which was designed essentially to test the feasibility of implementing such procedures, engineers were also able to measure concrete fuel and CO2 savings from these procedures. And the results…? Pretty promising! The improvements show savings of more than 400 tons of CO2 on the test flights, which is about the equivalent of the annual CO2 emission of 100 passenger cars!

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You may have (or, let's face it, may not have) heard about the project called Single European Sky. It is a project to streamline the current national airspace boundries that have the skies over Europe split into some 30 different blocks. Currently, flights crossing the European continent have to zig-zag across a number of different control zones. With a single European control zone, millions of tonnes of carbon emissions could be reduced (not to mention time saved) by flying straighter and smarter routes.

One of the major projects that is underway to enable a single European sky is called SESAR - this is a joint European Commission and Eurocontrol effort to produce the technical capability required. And it is here that we get on to another project (and more acronyms).

SESAR has joined with the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration - the US Government's aviation regulator) to run the AIRE programme (for more information on this - including what AIRE stands for - check out the video below). Today, SESAR and the FAA announced in Amsterdam the results of a year-long set of trails looking at different areas of flight operations and working with an impressive array of industry stakeholders.

Six projects were initiated, taking place in Paris (ground movements, green arrivals and departures), Madrid and Stockholm (green approaches and climbs), Portugal and Iceland (oceanic flight optimisation). In total, 1,152 flights took place during the AIRE trials in 2009. Analysis of the data collected show that 400 tonnes of CO2 could be saved by implementing these new techniques.

The Executive Director of SESAR, Patrick Ky had this to say: “The AIRE activities performed in 2009 have shown encouraging results. It is now essential that we transform them from ‘flight trials’ to ‘day-to-day operations’, in order to realise the full benefits of SESAR."

Almost as impressive as the fuel savings and all the acronyms are the group of people working on the project - over 1,400 engineers from organisations across Europe are working on various SESAR projects. In fact, over 300 projects are getting started. Collaborating on the AIRE project alone were the following industry partners: ADACEL, AENA, Aéroports de Paris, Airbus, Air France, AVTECH, DSNA, Egis Avia, Iberia, Icelandair, INECO, Isavia, LFV, Nav Portugal, Novair, TAP Portugal, TERN Systems and Thales. Just another example of impressive aviation industry coordination!