The aviation industry faces various challenges in meeting long-term sustainability goals amidst surging demand for air travel and growing environmental concerns of the general public. The year 2050 is set as an ambitious goal for net zero emissions, a substantial reduction in carbon dioxide emissions per passenger kilometer flown, major improvements in aircraft energy efficiency, and a development towards autonomous, intelligent operations. This review explores the pivotal role of advancements in engineering for achieving sustainability in aviation. Through a comprehensive review of existing literature and case studies, our work highlights how innovations in all aspects of aircraft engineering coupled with operations-related technologies, offer promising solutions to mitigate environmental impact, enhance efficiency, and ensure long-term sustainability in aviation operations. To discuss the necessary advances, we promote the so-called ‘DESIGN and be SMART’ framework, consisting of eleven complementary engineering challenges towards reaching sustainability. To address the high safety levels reached in air transportation, our DESIGN and be SMART framework also addresses the safety assurance challenge that is overarching each of the eleven engineering challenges. We believe that through an orchestrated integration of hardware advancements with innovative software solutions, and novel safety assurance methods, the aviation industry can realize synergistic benefits that drive sustainable growth of air transportation. Our review contributes to such an orchestration by describing the status quo and research challenges ahead.

Introducing electric vehicles that tow aircraft during taxiing is an emerging technology aimed at supporting climate neutrality for aviation. Planning electric towing operations is, however, impeded by the high uncertainty in aircraft arrival and departure times. We address the question of how to plan the operation of a fleet of Electric Towing Vehicles (ETVs) to maximize environmental benefits, given the uncertainty in aircraft arrival/departure times. For this, we propose a stochastic and dynamic planning framework for ETVs, where stochastic aircraft arrival and departure times are updated during the day. With this, the assignment of the ETVs-to-aircraft to replace conventional taxiing, and ETV battery charging times are planned such that the fuel savings are maximized. At the same time, we ensure that aircraft delays induced by the use of ETVs are minimized. We illustrate our framework for a large European airport. The results show that our framework achieves 79.5% of the highest possible cost reduction (fuel and ETV-induced delay), which is obtained when full knowledge of the arrival/departure times is available in advance. Furthermore, we show that considering the uncertainty in the arrival/departure times, rather than using point estimates of these times, leads to a 17.7% additional cost reduction. Overall, our framework supports the implementation of electric aircraft towing with maximum environmental benefits while considering the dynamic, uncertain arrival and departure times of aircraft.

System resilience characterizes the capability of maintaining the required functionality under disruptions, which is of great significance in evaluating the productivity and safety of complex engineered systems. Although most studies conduct resilience assessment from qualitative and quantitative perspectives, system functionality that reflects functional requirements for complex engineered systems needs to be elaborated. In addition, given that complex engineered systems achieve dynamic performance during disruptions, measuring the actual performance under uncertainty is imperative. To this end, this paper develops a quantitative framework to assess the resilience of complex engineered systems. The developed framework comprises three phases, functionality analysis, performance evaluation, and resilience assessment. Firstly, system functionality is analyzed using a functional tree illustrating the relationship between functions. The overall objective, primary functions, and sub-functions are identified according to task requirements. Secondly, system performance is quantified considering uncertain factors through Graphical Evaluation and Review Technique (GERT). Probabilistic branches and network logic are employed to represent the implementation of various functions. Finally, resilience assessment is carried out from the perspectives of anticipation, absorption, adaptation, and restoration abilities. A case study on the satellite network shows the effectiveness of the developed framework. The developed framework determines system functionality based on task requirements, evaluates system performance with limited information, and accurately assesses system resilience.