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The scientists had analyzed more than 35,000 flights
Photo: Rori Palazzo / Getty Images
Driven by a hurricane, a Boeing crossed the Atlantic at record speed last year.
The passengers flew from New York to London in less than five hours.
Usually the flight takes an hour and a half longer.
Now, a hurricane of this magnitude doesn't happen every day.
However, other winches can also be used to save fuel and thus emissions, a British research team is now calculating.
In the ideal case, this would result in up to 16.4 percent less CO₂ being emitted.
For the analysis, researchers led by Cathie Wells from the University of Reading in Great Britain analyzed 35,000 flights between London and New York that took off from December 2019 to February 2020.
So even before global air traffic collapsed drastically due to the corona crisis.
6.7 million kilograms of CO₂ saved
How much fuel the planes consumed also depended on how well they used the so-called jet stream - a band of strong winds nine to 12 kilometers high, the usual cruising altitude of transatlantic flights.
These winds are already being taken into account when planning the flight route, although further savings are apparently possible.
For each flight, the researchers calculated a route that was optimized for the winds that occurred.
For flights from New York to London this meant using the jet stream flowing in an easterly direction as a tailwind as possible.
Conversely, the direct headwind of the jet stream should be avoided as far as possible on flights from London to New York.
For flights from New York to London, the scientists calculated an average CO2 saving of 2.5 percent per flight.
Compared to the most unfavorable of the flight routes used, the savings even amounted to 16.4 percent.
On flights from London to New York, the researchers came up with an average CO2 saving of 1.7 percent.
The calculations are based on the assumption of a constant airspeed of 864 kilometers per hour.
Fuel could have been saved for around 200 kilometers per flight.
In total, the emission of 6.7 million kilograms of CO₂ could have been avoided, report the scientists in the journal "Environmental Research Letters".
That doesn't sound like much when extrapolated to total emissions.
However, that's the savings in just three months.
A new network of satellites with low earth orbit, which is currently being tested, could also make it easier to calculate the optimal flight path in the future, the scientists report.
Because this enables the location of the individual aircraft over the Atlantic to be determined much more precisely than before.
British scientists are by no means the only ones who want to make global air travel more climate-friendly.
Another analysis shows that optimized flight routes could also minimize the occurrence of climate-damaging contrails.
Research is also being carried out into more efficient drives and environmentally friendly alternatives to kerosene.
The team of authors of the current study sees their method as an alternative or a supplement to other measures to reduce CO2 emissions from aircraft: "Upgrading to more efficient aircraft or switching to biofuels or batteries could significantly reduce emissions," says co-author Paul Williams .
"However, it is expensive and can take decades."
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koe / dpa