Aviation going green will take time, but will be massive, says Professor Ricky Curran

Professor Ricky Curran is an academic at City St George’s, University of London whose research and teaching focuses on aviation management and sustainable aviation.

The environmental harms of aviation include contributing to climate change through high-altitude emissions, impacting local air quality and health from noise and pollutants, and damaging habitats from airport expansion.

However, while air travel is responsible for hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon emissions annually, it connects families and friends and significantly contributes to the global economy by creating millions of jobs, supporting gross domestic product (GDP) and enabling business, tourism, and cultural exchange.

Ricky and his team at the Sustainable Operations Aviation Research (SOAR) group provide an eclectic, combined expertise of aviation systems and management across both flight and maintenance operations, which is geared toward finding sustainable solutions to the industry’s problems.

Ricky recently sat down with our Research Spotlight team to talk about how his team are asking the tough questions about the fundamentals of aviation systems, and how thy can be improved to support the industry reach its goal of net zero on carbon emissions by 2050.

Watch the video:

We have a focus on very  obvious things like fuel burn and trying to make that more efficient – a with a very large focus now on sustainable aviation fuels. We also do a lot of work on the training level – so we have our simulators, an A320 flight deck, and augmented reality and virtual reality equipment in the lab. We use all this to train people to operate in a more efficient and more effective culture.