Assessing National Airspace System Impact of the Hybrid Electric Turboprop Commercial Freighter

The Hybrid Electric Turboprop Commercial Freighter (HETCOF) is a large turboprop aircraft using hybrid electric propulsion designed to reduce cost and emissions for narrowbody cargo operations capable of carrying 35,000 lb up to 2,400 NM. This paper analyzes a day of high-volume traffic identifying cargo aircraft as potential candidates for replacement with HETCOF, many of which require more than one HETCOF to replace aircraft with greater payload capacity. Then NASA’s National Airspace System Digital Twin is used to perform fast-time simulations to assess the fuel and energy savings and impact to flight time and airport operations. Of three aircraft replacement groups considered, the group designed to maximize energy savings (19% compared to baseline, totaling to 6.15 GWh) also enabled the greatest percent fuel savings (36% totaling to 2.15 Mlb) without negatively impacting airport operations. This group replaced 401 existing aircraft cargo flights with 822 HETCOF flights carrying the same aggregate payload. With a long-range cruise speed roughly half that of the aircraft replaced, the HETCOF flight times are roughly double. The additional fight time required departure schedule adjustments for about a third of the replaced flights to maintain reasonable cargo aircraft turn times between flights performed by the same tail. Overall, these results support HETCOF as a promising aircraft concept for further study.