The aviation industry continues to grow at a steady annual rate of approximately 4.4%, intensifying global environmental concerns in light of international climate goals. In response, airlines are under increasing pressure to adopt sustainable innovations, with electrified aviati
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The aviation industry continues to grow at a steady annual rate of approximately 4.4%, intensifying global environmental concerns in light of international climate goals. In response, airlines are under increasing pressure to adopt sustainable innovations, with electrified aviation emerging as a promising pathway. One of the main challenges in electrified aviation is planning profitable flight schedules despite long turnaround times for battery recharging. To address this, a Flight Scheduling and Electrified Aircraft Routing (FSEAR) model was developed, advancing beyond models assuming full recharging or battery swaps. It integrates partial recharging through a recursive three-dimensional time-space-energy dynamic programming framework, combining multi-label dominance on profit and energy with a CO2 tax penalty for climate optimization. Based on the KLM Cityhopper network, three case studies with varying demand and distance profiles were developed. Results show that partial recharging increases profit by 22.5% to 27.8% compared to limiting operations to full recharging constraints. Emission reductions of 45.1% and 48.9% were achieved in close-range cases, while the long-range case showed a modest increase of 4.66%, reflecting a trade-off for enabling more profitable
operations with higher flight frequency and greater demand coverage. A consistent reduction in fleet size and a shift to fully all-electric compositions were also observed. This study demonstrates that partial recharging significantly enhances both the operational efficiency and environmental performance of electrified aviation, supporting lower-emission fleet compositions and enabling a more sustainable, cost-effective alternative to regional air transport.
