Air traffic management performance assessment using flight inefficiency metrics

Air traffic management has a fundamentally important role in reducing the environmental impacts of air transportation by reducing the inefficiencies in the paths flown by aircraft. The potential causes of flight inefficiency are discussed in this paper, followed by the development of flight inefficiency metrics to quantify the performance of the system. Metrics based on track extensions and fuel inefficiency are used with operational data to illustrate how quantifying inefficiencies in different flight phases can be used to indicate where the largest potential scope exists for improving the system and hence can be used to guide policy-makers as they evolve the air traffic management system. For example, the analyses presented here highlight the relative importance of allowing aircraft to fly closer to their optimal four-dimensional trajectories and reducing inefficiencies in high fuel burn phases of flight. It also discusses what operational and technical enablers might be appropriate to help achieve fuel burn and environmental impact reduction.