• Journal of the Korean Society for Aviation and Aeronautics
• /
• v.22 no.4
• /
• pp.25-33
• /
• 2014

As global warming becoming an environmentally serious issue, more attention is drawn to fuel consumption which is the direct source of green house gas emission. The fuel consumption by aircraft operation is not an exception. Motivated by the societal and environmental context, this paper explains a method for estimation of aircraft fuel consumed during their flights as well as the computational process using real flight track data. Applying so-called 'Total Energy Model' along with aircraft specific parameters provided in EUROCONTROL's Base of Aircraft Data (BADA) to aircraft radar track data, we estimate fuel consumption of individual aircraft flown between Gimpo and Jeju airports. We then assess the estimation accuracy by comparing the estimated fuel consumption with the actual one collected from an airline. The computational results are quite encouraging in that the method is able to estimate the actual fuel consumption within ${\pm}6{\sim}11%$ of error margin. The limitations and possible enhancements of the method are also discussed.