Assessing National Airspace System Impact of Transonic Truss-Braced Wing Aircraft

The Transonic Trussed-Braced Wing (TTBW) is a new highly fuel-efficient airplane concept designed to support narrowbody flights with a 3400NM range. This paper analyzes a day of high-volume traffic identifying aging midsize narrowbody passenger aircraft as early candidates for replacement with TTBW. Then NASA’s National Airspace System Digital Twin is used to perform fast-time simulations to assess the fuel burn savings and encounter reductions impact. Replacing tails with TTBW supporting 4,954 flights out of 41,451 total, resulted in an average 39.08% fuel savings per flight among replaced tails (4.44% savings with respect to fuel burned by all flights) and a 30% reduction in pairwise aircraft encounters as proxy for airspace complexity (9% reduction with respect to all flights). TTBW aircraft also started decent 51.7 NM farther from the arrival airport. Overall, these results support TTBW as a promising aircraft concept for further study.