| Resumo : |
Improvements in air traffic management and aircraft operations can have significant impacts on reducing jet fuel consumption. Different stakeholders of the aviation industry are interested in the benefits of improved fuel efficiency, especially airline companies, as fuel usually represents the largest of their operating costs. Encouraged by environmental and financial factors and the emergence of new technologies, numerous studies have been developed to quantify this benefit pool. However, this potential still seems uncertain as it depends on numerous factors such as available technologies and the composition of the aircraft fleet. Also, the literature has shown different results according to the methods used, sample size, and data availability. In this context, the present study proposes a methodology to estimate potential reductions in fuel consumption through more efficient air traffic. For that, air traffic inefficiency metrics based on the amount of level flight inside origin and destination terminal areas and path stretch were employed in a linear regression model of fuel consumption. The impact of the Performance-Based Navigation implementation in the south of Brazil (PBN-Sul) is also analyzed. The data set consists of airline operating data obtained from the National Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC), and flight tracks from FlightRadar24, covering 44 days in 2017 and 60 days in 2019. Results indicate significant levels of extra fuel consumption due to inefficiencies in air traffic, especially in the horizontal flight profiles of descents. Estimates suggest that around 300 liters of extra fuel are consumed per flight, on average, due to the inefficiencies in air traffic analyzed. |