In our work in airspace and air traffic management, we typically refer to the value of saving 1% of flight time, which also covers taxi time. Normalising to cruise or total fuel burn also helps keep the numbers comparable.
The basic calculation
In the following table we step through a calculation, assuming we have a technology that can improve flight efficiency by 1%. At the UK level this equates to saving £24M and 113,000 tonnes CO2 per year. This calculation is minimalist, excluding a range of other costs that would be in a typical cost benefit analysis. For example, average crew and maintenance costs for a 737 could add £9.6 per minute of saved flight time and add £8.1M to the annual savings, increasing the total savings to £31.8M a year.
| Calculation step | Value [Ref] |
| Annual flight hours | 1.4M [1] |
| Flight minutes (x 60) | 84M |
| Saving | 1% |
| Flight minutes saved | 0.8M |
| Fuel burn per minute (kg/min) | 43 [2] |
| Fuel burn saved (kg) | 36M |
| Cost of fuel per litre | £0.53 [3] |
| Litres of fuel to kg | 0.8 |
| Fuel saved in L | 45M |
| Cost of fuel saved | £23.8M |
| Fuel burn saved (tonnes) | 36,000 |
| CO2 saved (tonnes) | 113,000 [4] |
Conclusions
Over 10 years the benefits of a 1% improvement in operational efficiency in the UK could be £318M.
What if we could reach 5% efficiency savings? That is £1.5B.
What if we applied the full economic costs of flights? This could be twice or more of these savings.
This is just the UK. Extrapolating to the European level, we could save £450M fuel and maintenance costs and 1.5Mt CO2 per year.
In aviation carbon roadmaps, for some reason, operational efficiency benefits have been positioned as long-term actions, with small improvements every year. For example, the UK’s Net Zero carbon roadmap, assumes that improvements grow slowly from 2020 to 2050.
What if operational efficiency improvements were prioritised now? This could be a strategic play -achievable short-term gains to fuel long-term solutions with two important impacts:
- Early cost savings would help airlines’ bottom lines, making other initiatives like SAF and other fuels more affordable.
- Carbon savings are cumulative – a tonne saved in 2025 is worth 25 tonnes by the end of 2050.
References
- Eurocontrol ACE Benchmarking Report 2019 Table 0.6: Operational data at ANSP level. 2019 chosen as flights have not recovered yet from Covid in 2020.
- Calculated weighted average (49kg/min) from 2015 standard inputs (where source = BADA) modified by 1.5% per year efficiency improvement over 9 years.
- Platts Jet Fuel Prices microsite. https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/oil/refined-products/jetfuel. Bbl/L = 158.987, $:£ = 0.84
- Multiply by 3.15 as a standard conversion between Kerosene and CO2.