Estimation of Fuel Consumption of Commercial Jet Aircraft from Path Profile Data

Increases in fuel prices over the last several years have presented the designers and operators of the Air Traffic Control (ATC) System with a unique challenge to provide a fuel efficient operating environment. After safety of flight, fuel conservation has become the next critical design requirement. This paper describes the development and validation of a capability for assessing the fuel consumption performance of existing and proposed changes to the ATC system. The capability makes use of the basic equations of conservation of energy, thereby permitting optimization analysis by the application of standard techniques.