Investigation on the benefit of formation flight with a focus on the leading and trailing aircraft rotation

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the potential advantages of aircraft formation flight (FF) and to exploit further benefits through exchanging the leading positions. Design/methodology/approach The detailed and robust methodologies concerning FF mission analysis including the leading aircraft rotation strategies are developed in this paper to study the fuel burn benefit and the additional bonus of formation rotation. Findings Switch of FF leading positions can offset the undesired weight ratios between the leading and trailing aircraft within FF missions, which further alleviates the deviations from design flight conditions. The case studies on two long-range civil transport aircraft in FF show that the leading and trailing aircraft can achieve almost equal fuel benefit through rotations. As compared to FF without rotation, the fuel efficiency can be improved by more than 11 per cent. Research limitations/implications The work can bring benefit the research communities as a fundamental basis for operational studies of FF, such as FF airspace management in the future, which is significant for a future real-world implementation of FFs. Practical implications According to the authors’ study, equal or quasi-equal fuel savings can be achieved if the rotation is properly arranged. For the real-world FF application, fuel consumption (FC) or cost redistribution problem for leading and trailing aircraft belonging to two different operating airlines can therefore be resolved through the concept proposed by the paper. Originality/value The methods developed in the paper have the advantage to give more reliable estimations of the achievable fuel burn savings of FF. The concept proposed in the paper has significant meaning with respect to offset the undesired weight ratios between the leading and trailing aircraft within FF missions and redistributing FC or cost redistribution of different operating airlines.