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.

Cost-Cutting, But Potentially Dangerous

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.

The technology borrowed from a NASA project using the global positioning system that allows pilots to identify the position of aircraft relative to each other in real time. Using the new technology, if a plane maneuvers slightly out of formation, a computer algorithm quickly calculates how to restore the correct position.

"The idea was to wrap this up with automation and do formation flight safely," said Schkolnik. "It was thought that commercial cargo carriers would benefit the most -- FedEx and UPS were interested."

Technology on the Brink Before Attacks

After a few years of development, the technology seemed nearly ready. NASA conducted test flights using smoke streams showing that the innovation was almost ready for use. Then the attacks of Sept. 11 happened and priorities shifted quickly.

"Suddenly, people were less interested in saving gas and more interested in defense," said Schkolnik.

The formation flight program was redirected to develop refueling strategies for Unmanned Air Vehicles in flight. This is critical since the aircraft sometimes hover for up to 12 hours in enemy territory.

But as fuel prices continue to hammer the airlines, is it time to revisit the formation flight technology?

For now, Donna Barrett of UPS says the company is pursuing other ways of saving on fuel, from strictly limiting the taxi times of its airline fleet to installing a technology in package centers that calculates the most direct routes for mailings and cuts down on incorrect deliveries.

Despite such measures, UPS and other commercial cargo carriers have had to increase a fuel surcharge on their air deliveries. UPS increased its surcharge this month from 9.5 percent to 12.5 percent.

"Jet fuel prices have increased 60 percent since January," she said. "This obviously affects our bottom line. The surcharge protects us from spikes in prices."

Formation Flying in Crowded Skies

Schkolnik believes eventually the V-formation technology will take off, not only to address ever-increasing fuel prices, but also to deal with increasingly heavy traffic in the skies.

"Instead of air traffic controllers directing individual planes, they could monitor formations of airplanes," he said. "Just doing that could pack more traffic into airspace."

There will, of course, be hurdles in adjusting Federal Aviation Administration guidelines to allow such close flying, but, in the end, he believes flying in a V would be worth all the effort.

If it does happen, that could mean someday it might require a double take to determine whether it's a flock of geese -- or planes -- flying overhead.