Besides CO2, the climate impact of commercial aviation is strongly influenced by non-CO2 effects, which are highly sensitive to meteorological conditions and their spatial variations. To assess the cost-benefit potential (climate impact mitigation vs. cost increase) of climate and weather optimized flight trajectories in the North Atlantic flight corridor, optimal control techniques are applied. However, the execution of multi-criteria route optimizations for an intercontinental route network and various weather patterns is computationally highly intensive. Since computational resources are limited, a reduced surrogate route network is generated and evaluated first with regard to the computational effort, the coverage in terms of available seat kilometers, as well as the accuracy of reproducing the original route network with regard to climate impact. The proposed reduced route network consists of 40 routes (original network: 1,359) and is able to reproduce the climate impact of the original route network with reasonable climate impact deviations of 2.5%. The evaluation of climate and weather optimized trajectories is performed for the top route of the surrogate network. The maximum climate impact reduction potential is differing strongly from 9% up to 60% for varying North Atlantic weather patterns. Averaged over the weather patterns, a maximum climate impact mitigation potential of about 32%, going along with a cost increase of about 8% has been estimated. However, at a cost penalty of 1%, a potential climate impact reduction of 24% has been observed

Within this study, the lack of incentivizing airlines to internalize their climate costs is tried to be closed by the introduction of climate-charged airspaces, as non-CO2 emissions have locationand time-dependent effects upon the climate. In order to create an incentive for airlines to minimize flight time and emissions in highly climatesensitive regions, a climate charge is imposed for airlines when operating in these areas. Costminimizing airlines are expected to re-route their flights to reduce their climate charges and hence cash operating costs. Accordingly, this leads to the desired outcome of incentivizing climate mitigation and even of driving technological innovation towards cleaner technologies. The evaluation of the climate impact mitigation potential of climate-charged airspaces is performed based on optimal control techniques. Climate sensitivities are expressed by climate change functions characterizing the climate impact caused by an emission at a certain location and time. The cost-benefit potential (climate impact mitigation vs. rise in operating costs) is investigated for a Transatlantic route and benchmarked against climate-optimized trajectories.