Abstracts Transportation

Environmental cost of different unit rates

by David Ngo

Flight planning is a large part of the air traffic operations that are presently being conducted. Airlines strive to achieve the cheapest and most cost effective routes for their flights, resulting in aircraft sometimes flying longer routes in order to avoid expensive airspaces with high unit rates. This issue has been an ongoing obstacle for the Swedish air navigation provider, LFV, as some airlines tend to fly over the Baltic Sea, through the Baltic countries, instead of the shorter route through Swedish airspace. These protracted routes result in extra kilometers being flown yearly,consuming extra fuel, as well as imply a revenue loss to LFV and Sweden. The conclusions of this study is that the airspace dodging behavior generate a revenue loss to LFV, totaling approximately €5 032 354 million per year. Should these flights fly the shortest route between their origin and destination, the before mentioned sum would mean an increase in LFV’s reported revenue from air traffic control services by 2%. Airspace dodging also results in roughly 380 408 superfluous kilometers being flown and 1 874 486 liters of additional fuel being consumed every year.