Operational and Environmental Assessment of Electric Taxi Based on Fast-Time Simulation

Abstract

Economic pressure and increasing environmental awareness stimulate the development of new taxi operation technologies and procedures. One of the most promising developments is the use of electrically powered landing gear for medium-size aircraft in civil aviation. If the prerequisite that the weight of the new equipment and the weight of the saved fuel be approximately balanced is met, operational as well as economic and environmental benefits can be achieved. This paper describes a method of assessing these benefits by means of a fast-time simulation model and presents the findings for two airports. The first, Frankfurt am Main Airport, is one of the major European hub airports. Because of the higher share of heavy aircraft, which are assumed not to be equipped with an electric taxi system, the relative benefit of almost 20% fuel savings is lower than at the second airport in the study, Berlin Brandenburg Willy Brandt Airport, which is still under construction and estimated to open in 2014 at the earliest. Because the share of medium-size aircraft is expected to be higher, relative fuel savings of more than 36% can be achieved there. Besides these economic and environmental impacts, operational benefits can also be observed as the aircraft can back out from their parking stands autonomously. With this maneuver, the time-consuming coupling and decoupling of a pushback vehicle can be eliminated.