Aircraft pairing procedure successfully demonstrated
Last year Airbus, in partnership with airlines and Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs), successfully completed a new phase of trials for the SESAR Joint Undertaking (JU) GEESE project.
GEESE stands for "Gain Environmental Efficiency by Saving Energy" and was launched in 2023. Co-funded by the European Union (EU), it aims to map out how to enable and scale Wake Energy Retrieval (WER) operations across Europe.
How does Wake Energy Retrieval save fuel?
The “WER” technique sees a pair of airliners flying in formation, allowing the trailing aircraft to benefit from the uplift generated by the preceding aircraft’s vortices, reducing the thrust required from its engines. Once operational, wake energy retrieval has the potential to make fuel savings of up to 5% on long-haul flights. GEESE, which is part of the EU’s SESAR initiative, aims to map out how to enable and scale WER operations across Europe. WER was explored by Airbus, as part of its fello’fly concept and later adopted by Europe’s SESAR. Both “fello’fly” and “GEESE” are a ‘nod’ to the ability of migrating geese to efficiently fly in formation. (....)