In the face of global climate change and steadily increasing energy prices, various private and public stakeholders of the commercial aviation industry have proclaimed ambitious goals aimed at reducing the global fuel consumption and thus mitigating the future environmental impact of aviation. From today’s viewpoint, these goals can only be reached if substantial technological progress is achieved in the various fields of air transportation. Here, the progress in aircraft technologies represents one major enabler. Estimating the impact of next- generation aircraft types on the future fuel demand of the global commercial air transport fleet, and analyzing the remaining carbon-emissions reduction gap relative to aviation’s climate goals, are the objectives of this paper. To handle the uncertainty about the future technological progress that affects the global fleet performance, multiple technology- improvement scenarios are investigated. A numerical model of the global air transport fleet is employed to quantify the fleet-wide fuel demand and carbon-emissions reduction impact and conduct sensitivity analyses. The results obtained clearly indicate that the climate goals of the mid-term future cannot be reached solely by integrating next-generation aircraft types into the fleet. Further measures such as the use of biofuels will equally be required.      «

In the face of global climate change and steadily increasing energy prices, various private and public stakeholders of the commercial aviation industry have proclaimed ambitious goals aimed at reducing the global fuel consumption and thus mitigating the future environmental impact of aviation. From today’s viewpoint, these goals can only be reached if substantial technological progress is achieved in the various fields of air transportation. Here, the progress in aircraft technologie...     »