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Calculating block time and consumed fuel for an aircraft model

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2021

F. de Lemos Open the ORCID record for F. de Lemos [Opens in a new window]  and
J. Woodward
F. de Lemos*
Affiliation:
Operational Reasearch Group School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science Queen Mary university of London London UK
J. Woodward*
Affiliation:
Operational Reasearch Group School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science Queen Mary university of London London UK
*
f.j.r.lemos@qmul.ac.uk
j.woodward@qmul.ac.uk
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Abstract

In this paper we present a novel approach to calculate Block Time and Fuel (BTF) consumed for an aircraft model during a flight. The BTF model computes the ground distance between the origin and destination airports, derives the flight’s cruise altitude and by integrating two institutional data sets calculates the duration and the fuel consumed for the whole of taxi-out, take-off, climb, cruise, descent, approach, landing and taxi-in phases. We use the French Association for Operational Research and Decision Support (ROADEF) 2009 Challenge flight rotation to sample our model. The statistical analysis of the results consisted of comparing BTF results for the block time and those from the ROADEF Challenge 2009 with the real ones retrieved from Flightaware® for the same origin and destination airports and aircraft model. Statistical results are reported for percentile and root mean square error, and we show that, using simple calculations, the BTF computational results for block time are in a lower percentile and have lower root mean square error than the block times used by the ROADEF 2009 Challenge. To compare the fuel consumed, we used the values for the real flights published in the literature review. We were able to verify a good fit between the BTF results and those values. Since the BTF model computational results are obtained within a few seconds, we also conclude that the BTF model is suited for flight planning and disruption recovery in commercial aviation.

Keywords

Travel timeTraffic data analysisOperation models
Type
Research Article
Information
The Aeronautical Journal , Volume 125 , Issue 1287 , May 2021 , pp. 847 - 878
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Royal Aeronautical Society

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