Green air transport system: An overview of issues, strategies and challenges

Globally, the environmental sustainability of air transport is receiving greater concern nowadays owing to its critical impact on climate change. This paper provides an overview of the environmental (green) issues in relation to aviation activities, focusing on aircraft emission and noise. The influential factors of the respective green issue (including aircraft characteristics and operations) as well as the relevant mitigation strategies, ranges from the technological innovation, operational strategy, fleet planning to the policies, rules and regulations are discussed accordingly. Besides, mathematical modeling, statistical analysis and survey which emerge to be the main methodologies adopted to alleviate the green issues are also discussed in detailed. Concisely, the literatures reveal that there is no single strategy or approach that can be implemented to ease the green issue. Thus, integrated effort and commitment from the relevant parties are required to yield a greener system. By identifying the literature gaps and also the potential rooms for improvement under uncertainty, it is anticipated that this paper could provide some useful insights to the relevant parties in charting the effective strategies to attain a green air transport system.