Towards a methodology for new technologies assessment in aircraft operating cost

Abstract

The need for a greener and competitive aircraft is leading to the use of new technologies. A thorough assessment of these technologies is mandatory from the initial phases of aircraft design to understand their feasibility and to select the most promising one both in terms of performances and in terms of costs. This paper proposes a methodology to assess the operating cost of innovative technologies for regional aircraft. In particular, two NASA studies have been adopted to determine the impact onto costs of MEA and AEA technologies and advanced ECS solutions for two innovative regional aircraft concepts developed during the European Clean Sky 2 research. The proposed methodology is able to assess the effect of on-board systems electrification level in terms of fuel and maintenance costs savings. The methodology, which allows to evaluate the effect of specific technological improvements onto costs, is applied exploiting the results provided by a reliable cost model and gives the opportunity to quantify operating cost savings for different regional aircraft. Applying the modified cost model to the reference aircraft under study, savings ranging from 1.6 to 3.1% of direct operating cost are estimated for MEA and AEA technologies. Greater savings are estimated for the individual cost items involved. More specifically, a reduction of fuel cost ranging from 6 to 14.5% is envisaged as a consequence of the lower SFC associated to innovative ECS technologies.