EcoJet and Airbus to Cut Airline Carbon by Half

Written by A Siegel

Friday, 15 June 2007

British low cost carrier easyJet has unveiled a new aircraft design dubbed the "ecoJet" as part of a comprehensive plan to cut air-travel related carbon emissions in half by 2015. CEO of easyJet Andy Harrison reports that Boeing and Airbus are both interested in producing it.

"This is not Star Trek. This is the future," Harrison said. "If it were to be made available today, we would order hundreds of them for fleett replacement. We are currently spending 4 billion pounds (USD $7.88 billion) on aircraft -- they are listening to us."

Similar in design to the ultra-efficient Piaggio Avanti and the Boeing "Fozzie", the rear-mount "push style" placement of the engines improves the efficiency of the wings by removing them from the engine's wake. A combination of lightweight materials, smaller and more aerodynamic designs, and fuel sipping external rotor engines - capable of today's outputs but consuming 25% less fuel - all add up to savings of about 40%. Additional efficiencies are expected to come from "air traffic control improvements". This comes on the same day Airbus announced green targets for a 50% reduction in CO2 emissions for their aircraft and a 30% decrease in company-wide energy consumption by 2020.

via MSNBC and Airwise News

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written by Adam , June 17, 2007

I actually worked on a similar program for McDonnell-Douglas, nearly 20 years ago. At the time it was called UHB, for ultra-high bypass engine propulsion. We had a prototype running in a test program, with a normal engine on one side of the plane, and a UHB pusher on the other side. The UHB had great fuel economy, and lower noise output as well. The noise was even a better quality (at least subjectively to me), as it more propellor sound, and less screaming than a typical jet.

It was a great program, but the price of aviation kerosene was too low at the time to generate sufficient interest from the airlines. It was cancelled sometime in 1988 or 1989. The commercial division of McDonnell-Douglas has since disappeared as well.

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