Quantifying the relationship between air traffic management inefficiency, fuel burn and air pollutant emissions

Worldwide air travel demand has increased significantly over the past 30 years, leading to an increased number of flights, associated delays, fuel consumption, and aircraft air pollutant emissions. Demand for aviation is expected to grow three-fold over the next two decades and could potentially lead to an increase in aviation related emissions of air pollutants. This study quantifies the contribution of aircraft emissions at 148 airports that lie within the air quality non-attainment or maintenance areas to the county-level emissions inventories. We also quantify how inefficiency in air traffic management contributes to increased aircraft-related fuel burn and emissions. A baseline fuel burn and emission inventory is presented, consisting of realistic aircraft operations and including delays due to air traffic management inefficiencies. At most of the evaluated airports (~52%), aircraft emissions are a relatively small contributor (<1%) to county level emissions of the criteria pollutants considered in this analysis. Reducing ground delays can significantly impact those airports with high taxi times, leading to potential airport reductions of between 10% and 25% in fuel burn and emissions. A sample efficiency initiative is used to demonstrate the potential reduction in delays, and hence, in fuel burn and emissions.