Identifying Economically Optimal Flight Techniques of Transport Aircraft

A treatment of identifying optimal flight techniques for transport aircraft with respect to direct operating cost and profit or return on investment is derived for given sector mission criteria and assumed reference time frame utilisation. A series of models used to accurately simulate maintenance and materiel costs, block fuel expenditure and revenue have been introduced in order to force the direct operating cost, and, profit or return on investment expressions as continuous functions allowing for determination of their respective minima and maxima. The selection of utilisation (hourly or fixed number of sectors) per reference time frame was found to be an important precursor to what type of flight technique is to be expected. An hourly-based utilisation results in faster block speeds tending towards the minimum block time threshold of a given vehicle and sector mission, whilst, the fixed departures scenario yields a slower yet congruous flight technique optima requirement for direct operating cost and profit or return on investment objectives. Details are given to show how the methodology may be integrated for the purpose of conducting competitor reviews during fleet planning exercises, and also, how one may facilitate the optimisation of conceptual aircraft designs via inspection of some useful merit parameters.