Enhanced Assessment of the Air Transportation System

This paper recommends an approach on how to assess the Air Transportation System (ATS) that draws on the results in [1], and considers the 3 pillars of sustainability: economy, ecology and society. A framework has been developed to conduct sustainability studies of ATS and its sub elements separately. The framework shows the combination of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Cost Assessment (LCC) and Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA). The final results of the inventory analysis will be aggregated in a single value, expressed as Socio-Eco-Efficiency Index (SEEindex). This paper does not present the inventory calculations itself, but contains a proposed description of synthesis of the inventory results using Multiple Criteria Decision Aid (MCDA) methods. Additionally a reduced structure of the ATS will be proposed, which includes the most important stakeholders. To demonstrate the proposed approach, it is applied to two new low noise aircraft configurations.