Are 'Flocks' of Airplanes in Our Fuel-Strapped Future?

Oct. 3, 2005 — -- As airline companies struggle with skyrocketing fuel prices in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, some scientists believe one solution has literally been flying in front of our eyes for millennia.

Migrating birds, including geese, pelicans and gulls, have long demonstrated the art of efficient flight by positioning themselves in a V formation. This allows each trailing bird within in the V to coast in the wake of the bird just ahead.

If birds can do it, researchers have asked, then why not planes?

"There is a lot of energy generated by aircraft that is literally dumped overboard," said Gerard Schkolnik of NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif.

Schkolnik estimates that V-formation flying can save up to 12 percent in fuel costs. Those savings could jump as high as 20 percent if airplanes are designed specifically for formation flying.

"If you can find where that upward wind is and put your airplane in it, you are essentially riding a wave," Dick Ewers, a retired Marine Corps pilot, explained in a 2001 NASA press release on the developing technology.

While flying planes in a V may seem like a simple way to ease the punch of rising fuel prices, research has shown that birds such as geese make it look easy.

The wake of a large plane can be a tricky field for a pilot to navigate. The November 2001 crash of American Airlines Flight 587 in Queens, N.Y., demonstrated just how deadly a large plane's vortex can be.

Investigators determined the plane had entered the wake turbulence of a jet that had just taken off from the same runway. Despite the pilot's efforts to navigate the currents, the turbulence proved too powerful and Flight 587 was thrown out of control. The Airbus A-300 crashed to the ground, killing all on board.

Still, given the right technology, engineers believe pilots could adopt the agility of geese in flight.

In fact, a team of engineers at Dryden, the University of California at Los Angeles, Boeing, NASA Ames and NASA Langley began developing technology in the late 1990s that would allow pilots to safely lock into the draft of a plane in front of them and hitch a virtually fuel-free ride.