Flying high in Europe despite Brexit vote

“I was alone, iso­lat­ed, lost in the midst of the immense sea, and I did not see any­thing on the hori­zon.” No, not Brex­it pun­dit­ry, but the words of intre­pid French avi­a­tor Louis Ble­ri­ot upon land­ing his air­craft in Dover on July 25, 1909, fol­low­ing a fog­gy 37-minute flight from Calais.

The sig­nif­i­cance of this? It was the first time the Eng­lish Chan­nel had been crossed by an aero­plane and, beyond tick­ing a box in the evo­lu­tion­ary time­line of Euro­pean avi­a­tion, Bleriot’s pio­neer­ing achieve­ment sig­ni­fied a cat­alyt­ic moment, a gen­e­sis of aer­i­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty between the UK and main­land Europe.

That air­borne link­age has mor­phed into the prime con­duit for intra-Euro­pean trade and tourism. “The UK is geo­graph­i­cal­ly very well placed, with only 11 per cent of Euro­pean air­space, but 25 per cent of its traf­fic and with some 80 per cent of transat­lantic traf­fic using our air­space to access Europe,” says Dave Cur­tis, head of future air traf­fic man­age­ment and pol­i­cy at NATS, the UK’s main air traf­fic con­trol provider.

We are Europe’s transat­lantic gate­way and we need to build on that to con­sol­i­date our posi­tion as one of the lead­ing glob­al eco­nom­ic hubs

He points out: “We are Europe’s transat­lantic gate­way and we need to build on that to con­sol­i­date our posi­tion as one of the lead­ing glob­al eco­nom­ic hubs.” More­over, a study pub­lished in April by the Inter­na­tion­al Air Trans­port Asso­ci­a­tion cor­rob­o­rates that Euro­pean air con­nec­tiv­i­ty sup­ports 11.7 mil­lion Euro­pean jobs and $860 bil­lion of Euro­pean GDP.

A history of collaboration

Not only is it a key pro­tag­o­nist in Europe’s air­space infra­struc­ture, the UK also plays a dom­i­nant role in Euro­pean aero­nau­ti­cal design, inno­va­tion, research and man­u­fac­tur­ing. Since join­ing the Euro­pean Union, or the Euro­pean Eco­nom­ic Com­mu­ni­ty as it was in 1973, the UK’s avi­a­tion exper­tise and aero-indus­tri­al resources have become deeply inter­twined with their con­ti­nen­tal coun­ter­parts.

Ini­tial­ly, this was through the design, devel­op­ment, con­struc­tion and ser­vice-entry of the Anglo-French super­son­ic air­lin­er Con­corde and sub­se­quent­ly through deep­er inte­gra­tion with main­land Europe’s avi­a­tion ecosys­tem, par­tic­u­lar­ly via the Air­bus Con­sor­tium; the UK arm builds the wings for every Air­bus air­lin­er.

As air trans­port infra­struc­ture and man­u­fac­tur­ing have flour­ished through Euro­pean col­lab­o­ra­tions, bur­geon­ing pas­sen­ger traf­fic, which is set to dou­ble by the ear­ly-2030s, con­tin­ues to raise con­cerns about aviation’s envi­ron­men­tal impact.

In uni­son with its Euro­pean col­leagues, the UK has been work­ing to address air­craft noise and emis­sions as it tack­les fuel effi­cien­cy and capac­i­ty con­cerns, using smarter air traf­fic con­trol
inno­va­tions and by intro­duc­ing green­er air­craft. And it’s an effort sup­port­ed by the air­lines that strive to facil­i­tate capac­i­ty growth while upgrad­ing to envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly planes.

A case in point is the recent $4.4‑billion order by Vir­gin Atlantic for 12 Air­bus A350-1000 air­craft. “Sus­tain­able growth and meet­ing our car­bon tar­gets is incred­i­bly impor­tant to us and the aircraft’s envi­ron­men­tal cre­den­tials were a gen­uine fac­tor in our selec­tion,” accord­ing to the airline’s pres­i­dent Sir Richard Bran­son.

The planes, pow­ered by Rolls-Royce Trent XWB engines, are designed to be 30 per cent more fuel and car­bon effi­cient than the ones they replace, while reduc­ing the airline’s noise foot­print at air­ports by more than half.

Clean Sky

Under­pin­ning Euro­pean aviation’s quest for green­er aero­nau­tics is a €4‑billion pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship called Clean Sky, fund­ed joint­ly by the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion and Europe’s main aero­space enti­ties. Air­bus and Rolls-Royce are major play­ers in this col­lab­o­ra­tion, which focus­es on devel­op­ing eco­log­i­cal tech­nolo­gies for tomorrow’s air­craft, and enabling deep­er aero-indus­try engage­ment between the UK and Europe.

Air­bus is involved in mul­ti­ple Clean Sky projects, includ­ing a new focus on advanced engine and air­craft con­fig­u­ra­tions to explore and val­i­date the inte­gra­tion of fuel-effi­cient propul­sion con­cepts for next-gen­er­a­tion short and medi­um-range air­craft, as well as new ways to inte­grate air­craft cab­ins, sys­tems and struc­tures to bring weight reduc­tions which trans­late into fuel sav­ings.

An unan­tic­i­pat­ed wall of fog between the UK and Europe has sud­den­ly obscured the flight plan

“By tak­ing part in the EU’s Clean Sky ini­tia­tive, we will not only rein­force Europe’s indus­tri­al lead­er­ship and future com­petive­ness, we will also help enhance the sus­tain­abil­i­ty and effi­cien­cy of com­mer­cial avi­a­tion,” says Axel Krein, head of research and tech­nol­o­gy at Air­bus.

Rolls-Royce, mean­while, is engaged in devel­op­ing and test­ing the next gen­er­a­tions of engine tech­nolo­gies, such as Advance, which will reach mar­ket in five years, reduc­ing emis­sions by 20 per cent, and Ultra­Fan, sched­uled for ser­vice-entry in the mid-2020s with 25 per cent less emis­sions. Increas­ing­ly, the com­pa­ny is look­ing to use addi­tive lay­er man­u­fac­tur­ing (3D print­ing) to achieve what it says is a “30 per cent like for like reduc­tion in man­u­fac­tur­ing lead time”.

Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the UK has 69 organ­i­sa­tions in the Clean Sky ecosys­tem with par­tic­i­pa­tion in 145 tech­nol­o­gy pro­grammes. But as with Bleriot’s Chan­nel cross­ing, an unan­tic­i­pat­ed wall of fog between the UK and Europe has sud­den­ly obscured the flight plan, fol­low­ing the out­come of the EU ref­er­en­dum. Could Brex­it affect the UK’s con­tin­u­ing involve­ment in Europe’s col­lab­o­ra­tive efforts for a green­er sky­scape?

“At Farn­bor­ough [Inter­na­tion­al Air­show], Clean Sky was an active exhibitor, bring­ing some 20 inno­v­a­tive pieces of hard­ware rep­re­sent­ing dif­fer­ent tech­nol­o­gy plat­forms, includ­ing engines, wings, sys­tems and eco-design with­in our research pro­gramme,” says Eric Dau­tri­at, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Clean Sky.

Accen­tu­at­ing the UK’s con­tri­bu­tion, he con­tin­ues: “We cel­e­brat­ed, in par­tic­u­lar, the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham, which has been an impor­tant play­er from the begin­ning and has recent­ly won sev­er­al large-scale research top­ics.”

With regard to the UK’s future rela­tion­ship in EU aero­space pro­grammes, green and oth­er­wise, Mr Dau­tri­at declares: “EU law con­tin­ues to apply to the full to the UK and in the UK, until it is no longer a mem­ber.” For the moment, at least, as far as Euro­pean col­lab­o­ra­tion on cre­at­ing eco-friend­ly solu­tions for air trav­el goes, it seems it’s busi­ness as usu­al.

CASE STUDY: NOTTINGHAM UNIVERSITY

A new approach to run­ways is pay­ing eco­log­i­cal div­i­dends. Reduc­ing noise and fuel-burn as planes taxi from the ter­mi­nal gate to the run­way thresh­old are major envi­ron­men­tal objec­tives at air­ports.

Air­craft usu­al­ly use thrust from their jet engines to push them­selves along the taxi­ways in readi­ness for depar­ture – a waste­ful, noisy process, espe­cial­ly when planes get stuck in a queue for take-off. Mul­ti­ply that unwant­ed envi­ron­men­tal impact by more than 100,000 glob­al dai­ly flights and the scale of the chal­lenge becomes all too appar­ent.

One of the UK’s lead­ing aero­nau­ti­cal research cen­tres, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham, has devel­oped a solu­tion in part­ner­ship with Germany’s DLR (nation­al aero­nau­tics and space research cen­tre), and France’s Safran Land­ing Sys­tems and Ade­tel Group.

Work­ing togeth­er with Clean Sky fund­ing on a pro­gramme called the Green Taxi­ing Demon­stra­tor, designed for medi­um-sized air­lin­ers such as the Air­bus A320, their solu­tion is to inte­grate an elec­tric motor into the aircraft’s land­ing gear, enabling taxi­ing with­out reliance on the aircraft’s engines.

A log­i­cal con­cept, but imple­men­ta­tion requires elab­o­rate tech­nolo­gies, after all the A320 weighs 78
tonnes. The ben­e­fits? Less fuel-burn means less car­bon and nitrous oxide emis­sions, and qui­eter air­ports too. On a two-hour flight, fuel con­sump­tion could be reduced by 5 per cent, less engine use would reduce main­te­nance costs and expen­sive car­bon brakes would no longer be required.

Now the tricky part: the sys­tem requires rev­o­lu­tion­ary new motor tech­nol­o­gy to move that kind of weight, but Not­ting­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and its col­lab­o­ra­tors have come up with a peak torque den­si­ty elec­tri­cal motor, reach­ing val­ues of 42Nm/kg and 184kNm/m³ – in plain Eng­lish it’s a par­a­digm shift in elec­tri­cal motor sci­ence.

Devel­oped to tech­nol­o­gy readi­ness lev­el 5 – indus­try jar­gon mean­ing pro­to­type test­ing has been com­plet­ed under real­is­tic con­di­tions, meet­ing envi­ron­men­tal tar­gets – Safran is now eval­u­at­ing pro­duc­tion options with a view to imple­men­ta­tion into air­craft in the near future.

Not­ting­ham Uni­ver­si­ty exhib­it­ed the Green Taxi­ing sys­tem at Farn­bor­ough Air­show and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly announced it had secured £9.5 mil­lion of Clean Sky fund­ing to devel­op fur­ther break­through aero­space tech­nolo­gies for lead­ing Euro­pean man­u­fac­tur­ers design­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of air­craft.

And Brex­it? “There is a con­tin­ued, strong appetite from indus­try and Europe for us to remain strong­ly engaged after Brex­it. At present, noth­ing has changed,” says Pro­fes­sor Hervé Mor­van, direc­tor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Nottingham’s Insti­tute for Aero­space Tech­nol­o­gy. “We encour­age indus­try and acad­e­mia glob­al­ly to con­tin­ue to see Not­ting­ham as a col­lab­o­ra­tor of choice because of our strong research, train­ing pedi­gree and inno­va­tion capa­bil­i­ties in aero­space.”