Operating Hybrid Electric Aircraft in the National Airspace System

This paper investigates the fuel burn and flight time impacts of hybrid electric aircraft operating in the National Airspace System. Future scenarios with hybrid electric flights and the same passenger travel capacity between city pairs as a baseline scenario, taken from historical data, were created. Aircraft that serviced select flights in the baseline scenario were replaced with hybrid electric aircraft based on the flight’s range and seat capacity. Additional hybrid electric flights were added to future scenarios when necessary to keep the future scenario passenger capacity equal or greater to that of the baseline scenario. The baseline and future scenarios were simulated in the NAS Digital Twin, a live, virtual, and constructive environment for building and executing simulations of the Nation Airspace System. Results showed that the future scenarios with hybrid electric flights saved fuel burn, but increased flight time. In the future scenarios, the additional hybrid electric flights did not cause any airports to exceed their operational capacity.