{"id":2369,"date":"2022-06-15T15:26:20","date_gmt":"2022-06-15T14:26:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/engagement-and-impact\/?p=2369"},"modified":"2025-09-04T11:15:54","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T10:15:54","slug":"greener-flights-across-the-atlantic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/engagement-and-impact\/greener-flights-across-the-atlantic\/","title":{"rendered":"Greener flights across the Atlantic"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n<\/strong><\/span>Winner of<\/strong><\/span> Research Project of the Year: STEM \u2013 Times Higher Education Awards 2022<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Research led by Professor Paul Williams revealed that transatlantic flights could cut fuel consumption and emissions by hitching a better ride on the jet stream. The findings directly led to the scrapping of an inefficient and outdated flight corridor system in March 2022, delivering immediate environmental benefits.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Aviation is currently responsible for around 2.4% of all human-caused carbon dioxide emissions, and this figure is growing rapidly. Until recently, transatlantic aircraft were forced to fly along the same routes, whether flying from London to New York, or from Barcelona to Chicago, or between any other airport pair. This system, known as the North Atlantic organised track system (OTS), routed transatlantic flights along an invisible multi-lane motorway across the busiest piece of oceanic airspace in the world and had changed little since its inception in 1961. However, forcing each aircraft along the same route meant they were burning more fuel and emitting more carbon dioxide than needed. The route that burns the least fuel, minimises the CO2 (and other) emissions, and results in the quickest journey is different for each airport pair.<\/p>\n

Researchers led by Professor Paul Williams<\/strong> with PhD student Cathie Wells<\/strong> analysed around 35,000 transatlantic flights over the period from 1 December 2019 to 29 February 2020 to quantify these inefficiencies. Each day, a mathematical algorithm was used to calculate the optimised routes: routes which are better at tracking the beneficial winds \u2013 or “hitching a better ride on the jet stream” \u2013 and thereby boosting the groundspeed without changing the airspeed. The team found that taking better advantage of the winds would have saved around 200 kilometres worth of fuel per flight on average. They found that the OTS routes were typically hundreds of kilometres longer than the optimised routes: the average eastbound track was 232\u00a0km (4.7%) longer, and the worst eastbound track was 931\u00a0km (16.2%) longer. For flights between London Heathrow and New York JFK airports alone, this resulted in 6.7 million kg of unnecessary CO2 emissions in total over the period.<\/p>\n