مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

There was a time when aircraft fuel availability and extraction cost had almost no effect over aviation industry growth. Today, however, the aviation industry is facing a lot of challenges which demands the need for conservation of aviation fuel. Commercial airliners are facing aviation fuel cost as a major expenditure out of their total operational cost. Airline fuel bills have crossed the previously highest labor cost to become 34% of the total operating cost (Lawrence, 2009). The early 1970s made it clear that the time of abundance and cheap fossil fuels was facing its end. Economies of aviation sector started to get affected significantly by fuel prices. After 1973 Arab oil embargo, market prices of fuel spiked, resulted in a prompt 400% increase in fuel price (ICAO, 2009). Over the next few decades, prices of aircraft fuel fluctuated a lot, raising concerns over aviation industry’s profitability and sustainability. The increase in the cost of fuel forces airlines to go for higher ticket prices, resulting in pressure on the customer’s wallet. Again in 2011, fuel prices severely spiked and reached an all-time high of 140 dollars per barrel in March 2011. Between March 2011, and March 2016, huge instability in aircraft fuel prices was seen in the global market as fuel prices shrunk to almost three times. Though, prices of aircraft fuel dropped from the level of 140 dollars in 2011 to today’s level, which is close to 40 dollars per barrel (IATA, 2016). Airbus (2015) suggested prices of fuel will swell to a much higher level considering mid-to-long-term effects. After many consistent efforts by airliners, they are still facing huge difficulties to produce an increase in efficiency and revenue matching instability of fuel price. Top producers of fuel are oversupplying and oil demand of world aviation increased from 1.18 MB/day in 1971 to 4.9 MB/day in 2006 and it’s about 11.2% of worldwide overall fuel demand (Mazraati, 2010). Additionally, CO2 emissions are directly proportional to aviation fuel burning (Airbus, 2015). Concerns related to environmental degradation have increased over rapid escalation in the growth of air traffic. All initiatives and policies have failed to control a net increase of fuel utilization, and this leads to an increase in emissions with environmental impacts (Lee et al., 2001).

Studies by (Drake, 1974; Linz, 2012; Barros and Wanke, 2015) suggest that the key steps towards this goal would be through socio-economic and political changes, improving alternative fuels (Alonso et al., 2014), improvising technological innovations and change in designs of aircraft (Dray, 2013). But, surprisingly previous studies have always subdued a key element like aviation infrastructure and its detailed impact on aviation fuel consumption. Lack of infrastructure and its operational efficiency leads to delays with congestions (this also works vice-versa). These delays and congestions increase fuel consumption and emissions. According to Eurocontrol (2013) delays at airports will rise from 1 min in 2012 to 5e6 min per flight by 2035, and this is considered a substantial increase and needs to be controlled. ICC (1992) strongly urged airport authorities and governments to make a timely and adequate amount of investment in airports, which is a portion of aviation infrastructure. Failing to do so would result in severe airspace and airport congestions. Large investments by developing nations in aviation infrastructures portray the importance of aviation infrastructure. Sarkar (2012) suggested that by improving the efficiency of aviation infrastructure, we can additionally reduce 4% emissions globally by 2020. This reduction could also be close to 10% for certain regions. Previous studies always lagged behind the precise solo collective effort of all the factors and sub-factors of aviation infrastructure over AFCR. This study attempts to touch almost all the sub-areas of aviation infrastructure in detail. In this article effort had been invested to connect all research gaps for a definitive conclusion regarding the options in the field of aviation infrastructure for aviation fuel consumption reduction.