Report by: Ashwini MAHAKALKAR and Veechika SHETTY
Dr. Bruno Stoufflet spoke about a futuristic topic “The challenges of technological innovation for the decarbonization of business aviation” at the Pullman Hotel, Blagnac, Toulouse on 8th December 2022.
He says, one of the developments that we carry out these days is the capacity to optimize operations. During the 2019 Paris Air show, there was a high societal pressure leading to increase of demand in environmental footprint
Dassault Aviation has planned different solutions for it. Offering flexibility, capacity to operate from small airports, develop sustainability by preserving the capacity of the customers.
He focused on the major developments like increase in flexibility for the customers, capacity to perform weather operations. Also, provide operational credits to the customers. Moreover, autonomous aircraft is a major challenge and Dassault Aviation is planning a way towards CAT 5 operations, having infrared camera, 90% safe landing system preserving the CO2 emissions.
Adding to this, Dr. Bruno posted a statement over pilot in the cockpit to take a nap and for sure, there is a need of only single pilot in cruise which in turn will reduce the crew members. But there is a difficulty in terms of certification.
Dassault Aviation wants to offer office kind of comfort to their customers which is really a great step towards the better working place and comfort.
Business Aviation can become a pioneer in the SAF and could be first aviation to have SAF, he says. The fuel costs represent 30-40% of the total cost and therefore there is a need for us to focus more on SAF.
There could be 50% benefit from the research of architecture of the aircraft. Dr. Bruno suggests revisiting the architecture of the aircraft, the Aspect Ratio of the wing, the LTI systems and this could lead a way to newer research topics.
He also focused on Micro hybridization, noise performance and spoke about optimizing the sound reduction and addressed the issue of noise caused by the aircrafts. The division of 50% of SAF and 50% of kerosene is already in usage.
Dassault Aviation desires and is working towards net zero by 2050.
The event was rightly managed for the networking. USAIRE encouraged professionals to meet and engage with one another to build valuable connections.
Lessons learned
The networking event brought awareness to different businesses
Networking is great for sharing ideas and knowledge. It helped us expand our knowledge and allowed us to see things from another and positive perspective.
The networking event resulted in opportunities. The thing you will not know is when or how they will materialize. The lesson we learnt is ‘whether it’s a referral, offer partnership or request for your service or product, it is important to be ready to seize opportunities when they come along’.
We also understood that by regularly networking and pushing yourself to talk to people you don’t know, it will help increase our confidence. The USAIRE events are truly a confidence building, helps in expanding your horizon of thoughts and is a unique experience for any professional
Main insights
Comments by Dr. Christophe Bénaroya
Business aviation is made of private aviation (owners) and business jets owned by companies (assets). There is undoubtedly a pressure regarding the environmental footprint. While Dassault Aviation is also obviously involved in defense (combat air systems), Bruno Stoufflet decided to focus more on business aviation in his address. Main customers’ benefits are flexibility (on demand flight, less constraints, flying over traffic, operations from small airports by far more numerous than airports dedicated to regular civil aviation…). What are the stakes Dassault Aviation is working on?
- Improving the flexibility and autonomy, enabling customers to use their aircraft in all weather conditions (FalconEye, safety systems to support decisions, real vision detectors, infrared electronic systems…)
- Reducing development costs and maintenance with improved detection of weak signals of degradation
- Reinforcing safety through autonomy: enabling one of the two pilots to have a nap during long duration flight thanks to a monitoring system that captures behavior of the pilots. This requires to be certified by authorities : “single pilot in cruise” is a next step
- Taking advantage of winds, temperatures… leading to intelligent flight plans to optimize the operations and have no more aire route constraints (estimates : up to 50% consumption reduction!)
- Improving cabin comfort, satcom seamless connectivity
- Developing 100% SAF aircraft, considering all the consequences of using SAF (engines, APU, restart, inerting functions…). It shall be highlighted that customers can afford this as fuel costs are lower than ownership cost (asset).
According to Mr. Soufflet owing to the feasibility perspectives on one hand and to social and environmental pressure, business aviation should achieve net zero emission before civil aviation (i.e. before 2050)
