If you’re at ATRS 2025, look out for two talks showcasing the latest ATSLab research. Dr. Lynnette Dray will present at 2pm on Thursday on modelling airline competition in transatlantic markets, and Boning Yang will be presenting at 9am on Friday on estimating route relocation costs for profit optimising airlines. Full program available here.
Prof. Andreas W. Schäfer presented most recent ATSlab research at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) Workshop on Aviation and Climate Change in Toronto, May 28-30. His talk “Decarbonising Aviation under Consideration of Airline and Passenger Behaviour” illustrated how full service carriers and low cost carriers respond to and are affected by climate policy.
ATSlab’s Prof. Andreas W. Schäfer delivered a keynote address at the Swiss Transport Research Conference in Ascona, Switzerland, 14-16 May 2025. In his presentation “Decarbonising aviation”, he outlined the opportunities and challenges for mitigation aviation’s climate impact and presented most recent ATSlab integrated modelling results.
How can modelling and data analysis best support government and industry decisions towards aviation net zero in an uncertain world? It’s a topic we’ve been thinking about a lot of late. Dr. Lynnette Dray was able to share some of our thinking on a panel on data-driven decisions at the Sustainable Skies World Summit 2025 in Farnborough on the 15th of May. See here for more information on the conference.
ATSlab’s Prof. Andreas W. Schäfer delivered a keynote address at the 6th Symposium on Aviation Research at the University of Bari, 20-21 March 2025. In his presentation “Towards net-zero carbon aviation”, he presented most recent ATSlab modelling results on the consequences of mitigating the aviation climate impact for consumers and the aviation industry.
Dr. Lynnette Dray was interviewed by the London Evening Standard for their Tech & Science Daily podcast about the impact of the Heathrow Airport closure on global aviation systems – listen to the podcast here.
The UCL ATSLab is a partner in two new NERC-funded projects to study aviation’s non-CO2 impacts. MAGICA, led by the University of Leeds, aims to reduce the uncertainty in climate impacts from contrails and aerosol-cloud interactions, using current and future gridded projections of aviation emissions generated by the ATSLab. Contrails from SAF and H2 Combustion: from Lab Experiments to Global Mitigation Policy, led by Imperial College London, aims to to research the entire pathway from the combustion of different aviation fuels to contrail formation to global mitigation measures and policy recommendations. For this project, the ATSLab will be modelling global aviation system scenarios under different CO2 and non-CO2 related policies to better understand the strategic use of synthetic, low-carbon fuels.
ATSlab’s Prof. Andreas W. Schäfer was quoted in a feature article on “Greener skies? The quest for sustainable flying” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The article describes the challenges of eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from the aviation sector. Click here to read the article.
ATSLab’s Prof. Brian Pearce was asked to give evidence to the Transport Select Committee on the Government’s recent proposal to go ahead with building a third runway at Heathrow Airport, including its impact on economic growth and the NetZero target. The committee session can be seen here.
ATSLab’s Prof. Brian Pearce has been appointed as a member of the Civil Aviation Authority’s Sustainability Panel. See more on the panel and its role here.
Following Rachel Reeves’ announcement about London airport expansion, Dr. Lynnette Dray was interviewed on ITV London about the potential consequences of adding capacity at Heathrow.
Last week, the ATSLab’s Boning Yang presented his recent work on airport competition at the European Aviation Conference in Antwerp – see here and on our publications page for his poster. Next week, watch out for two presentations with ATSLab involvement at the 2024 American Geophysical Union annual meeting in Washington DC – Weiyu Zhang will be presenting a poster on ToZCA project work to model the climate impacts of future aviation decarbonization pathways, and Roger Teoh will be presenting on global aviation emissions inventories using ATSlab inputs.
On 2 December, ATSlab’s Prof. Andreas W. Schäfer presented at the IMPACT Aviation Stocktake Forum, WTW London, on “The emissions challenge”. This two-day event consisted of presentations, expert panels, and roundtable discussions with representatives from the aviation, finance, and insurance industry, government, and academia, with the objective of decarbonising aviation.
The ATSlab’s Dr. Lynnette Dray was interviewed by National Geographic for an article on private jet emissions – read it here.
The lack of data available on air freight is a key barrier to incorporating freight into aviation policy modelling, so we have been looking as part of the ATSlab’s ToZCA project at how this can be overcome. By combining global and regional data sources, including ADS-B, fleet, schedule and trade data, we’ve been able to generate an integrated global database of air freight supply and demand – see our new paper here (or on our publications page). The data show that freight journeys are complex and diverse, covering longer distances with more stops than the typical passenger journey, with strongly different mixes of commodities carried on different route groups – all things that will affect how freight responds to policy and to the net zero transition. This is an active area of ATSlab research, so watch this space for more!.
Peggy Li presented on her modelling of airline and passenger responses to new aircraft technology availability in China at the ATRS conference last week – see our publications page for the full presentation.
Prof. Brian Pearce debated, with Dan Elliot of Frontier Economics, the economic issues around the proposed reform in the UK of the way in which airport take-off and landing slots at congested airports are allocated. This webinar was one of a series produced by the European Aviation Conference Institute and the German Aviation Research Society, and was chaired by Andrew Charlton. Watch here.
IATA’s new comparison of net zero roadmaps, a study which was carried out in collaboration with the UCL ATSLab and other major producers of aviation net zero roadmaps, has just been released – see IATA’s website for details and the report. As well as the ATSLab helping to generate the report, our net zero roadmaps paper is also used extensively for comparisons throughout.
Prof. Brian Pearce has recently co-authored Air Transport Economics: From Theory to Applications, published by Routledge. Aimed as a textbook for undergraduate and postgraduate students of the aviation industry, this fourth edition has been extensively updated and includes a new chapter on aviation’s climate impacts and the policy impact on air transport economics.
ATSlab presenters showcased two studies at TRB this year: Dr. Yagmur Gök presented a poster on the effect of airline business model on projected new technology uptake, and Dr. Khan Doyme presented research on how airline competition modelling can be used to estimate the value of an airport slot. Both presentations are now available from our publications page.
Dr. Lynnette Dray gave an invited presentation on “The Role of Sustainable Aviation Fuels and Liquid Hydrogen in the Path towards Climate Neutrality” at Bauhaus Luftfahrt’s symposium on climate-neutral aviation in Berlin on the 12-13th March. See our publications page to access the slides.
ATSLab members will be presenting on exciting new work at two upcoming conferences: the US Transportation Research Board (TRB) conference in Washington in January, and the European Aviation Conference (EAC) in Luxembourg in December. At TRB, we will be showcasing our work on airline competition modelling, with Dr. Khan Doyme presenting on how airline compatition modelling can be used to find the value of an airport slot, and Dr. Yagmur Gök presenting on how it can be used to identify who the early adopters of hydrogen aircraft might be. At EAC, Dr. Lynnette Dray will be giving an update on our air freight data and modelling work.
Brian Pearce, who was awarded a Honorary Professorship at UCL, has joined the ATSlab as its Executive Director. In this role, Brian will contribute to ATSlab research and manage the laboratory’s stakeholder relationships. Brian brings a wealth of aviation industry experience to the lab. In one of his previous roles, he was the Chief Economist of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) for nearly two decades.
The latest issue of NPR’s Outside/In podcast, "Do airports dream of electric planes", includes an interview with the ATSlab’s Dr. Lynnette Dray on aviation emissions and electric aircraft. Available to listen to for free here.
After a successful ATRS, we’re pleased to add two new presentations to our online library of ATSlab publications: “Modeling Consumer Preferences for Low-CO2 Emissions Aircraft in China” (Li et al, presentation here) and “Global air freight flow data for aviation policy modelling” (Dray et al., prsentation here).
Dr. Lynnette Dray presented on recent UCL ATSlab, MIT and Imperial College research on aviation pathways to net zero at the US Federal Aviation Authority’s New and Emerging Aviation Technologies seminar series on June 28th. See our presentations page or click here for the presentation.
ATSlab members are presenting two talks on new research at ATRS 2023 in Kobe. PhD student Peggy Li is presenting on her survey work on passenger acceptance of alternative fuel aircraft in China on Saturday July 1, and Dr. Lynnette Dray is presenting on work for the ToZCA project on air freight supply and demand estimates on Monday July 3. After the conference, we’ll add the slides to our publications page for download – watch this space!
Prof. Andreas W. Schäfer participated in the Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything podcast on “Greener Planes Are Taking Flight That Could Change How We Travel.” Other participants included industry leaders Paul Eremenko (Universal Hydrogen), Kyle Clark (Beta Technologies), Glenn Llewellyn (Airbus), Christopher Raymond (Boeing) and Prof. Jacqueline O’Connor (Penn State University). Click the link to podcast here.
The ATSlab Aviation Integrated Model (AIM) forms a key part of the new IATA net zero roadmaps, available from IATA’s website here.
On 16 May 2023, Prof. Andreas W. Schäfer gave a plenary talk at the IATA Aviation Energy Forum in Seattle, USA. His talk, titled “Energy Requirements for the Energy Transition” included recent ATSlab modelling outcomes on the energy infrastructure implications of aviation sector decarbonisation.
The first open source version of the Airline Behaviour Model (ABM) is now available. Find it here: ABM Open Source v1.0
On 2 February 2023, the ATSlab hosted a one-day workshop in Central London on how aviation can transition towards net-zero climate impacts. The event, which was co-organized with Norway’s leading climate science institute “Center for International Climate Research” (CICERO), included key stakeholders of the aviation value chain, i.e., airlines, airports, fuel producers, manufacturers, finance and insurance industry, and government, complemented by academic researchers. The 44 participants represented institutions in the UK, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, Germany, the US, and Japan.
Prof. Andreas W. Schäfer spoke to MIT Technology Review on the prospects of using hydrogen as an aircraft fuel. Link to the published article.
Prof. Andreas W. Schäfer spoke to the New York Times on the challenges of reducing aviation’s climate impact. Link to the published article.
Applications are now open for a fully funded DTP PhD studentship in the ATSlab (deadline January 26th)! See here for more details. We’re looking for someone to work on how the choices of different types of air passenger affect airline decarbonisation decisions and aviation policy outcomes, in the context of our ToZCA project looking at pathways towards net zero for global aviation.
On 30 November 2022, Prof. Andreas W. Schäfer gave a seminar on “Managing the Transition to a Net Zero-Carbon Aviation System” as part of the WTW Aerospace Roundtable at Willis Towers Watson in London.
On 29 November, Prof. Andreas W. Schäfer gave a talk titled ‘Total Energy Required – Kjoules per passenger Km for all modes and where will it come from?’ at the Royal Aeronautical Society Conference ‘A Bright Future or Fighting for Survival – Where will Aerospace be in 2035 and Beyond?’ from 29-30 November 2022 in London.
The final reports of the NAPKIN project are out now – see here. NAPKIN was a Future Flight Programme funded collaboration between a range of UK airports, manufacturers and universities, looking at the scope for small hydrogen aircraft to help the UK reach it’s domestic net zero aviation 2040 target. UCL carried out the market modelling in this project using our Airline Behaviour Model.
We have a new paper out today in Nature Climate Change in collaboration with MIT and Imperial College, looking at how we can move towards a net zero climate impact global aviation system by 2050, and the costs and emissions trajectories associated with such transitions. See here for the paper itself and here to download additional supporting information, data and figures.
On 22 September, Prof. Andreas W. Schäfer gave a talk titled ‘Challenges and Cost-effective Transition towards a net Zero-Carbon Aviation System’ at the WTW Airport Conference from 21-23 September 2022 in Cascais, Portugal.
On 21 September, Prof. Andreas W. Schäfer gave a talk titled ‘Towards Net Zero: Cost and Emissions Pathways to 2050’ at the Royal Aeronautical Society Conference ‘The Non-CO2 Climate Effects of Aviation’ from 20-21 September 2022 in London.
Prof. Andreas W. Schäfer spoke to MIT Technology Review on the challenges of electrifying air transportation. Link to the published article: click here.
The UCL ATSlab recently carried out a study looking at the market feasibility of UK domestic hydrogen aircraft operations as part of the NAPKIN project (led by Heathrow Airport, with Rolls Royce as a partner). This work, which demonstrated the conditions under which airlines can cost-effectively operate small hydrogen aircraft, was cited by Rolls Royce in its recent announcement at Farnborough Airshow of a new hydrogen programme. The NAPKIN final report is due to be released soon – watch this space!
Dr. Lynnette Dray was interviewed by MIT Technology Review for a piece on aviation pathways towards net zero. For the published, article, see here.
Prof. Andreas W. Schäfer participated in the plenary session “Big Think Panel: Meeting the Net Zero Target – What Building Blocks to Reduced Emissions?” at the Future Aviation Forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from 9-11 May 2022.
Prof. Andreas W. Schäfer spoke with CNN on the challenges of increasing the supply of sustainable aviation fuels, see here.
Dr. Lynnette Dray gave a talk on global aircraft fleets, and how fleet-related policy can be used to address emissions, at the AirNeth seminar on aircraft fleets in the Hague on the 14th of April.
Prof. Andreas W. Schäfer gave a seminar on “The Opportunities and Risks in Transitioning to a Net Zero-Carbon Aviation System” as part of the WTW Emerging & Strategic Risk Series at Willis Towers Watson in London, on 15 March 2022.
Dr. Lynnette Dray gave a seminar on aviation’s path to net zero climate impact as part of the International Energy Agency’s internal seminar series on the 9th of March.
The first advisory board meeting of the UK Research Council-funded “Towards Zero-Carbon Aviation (TOZCA)” project was held on Tuesday, 30 November, in London. The advisory board consists of expert representatives from the entire value chain of the aviation industry, government, NGOs, academia, and the UK Research Councils. The objective of the £2.7 mln (FEC) project is to develop a comprehensive tool suite to simulate the most cost-effective transition towards a net zero-carbon aviation system by 2050, through changes in technology, fuels, operations, consumer behaviour and use of competing modes. TOZCA is a collaborative project between UCL, the University of Leeds, and the University of Southampton.
Prof. Andreas W. Schäfer spoke with BBC News on the challenges of decarbonising aviation, see here.
The UCL ATSlab is looking to hire a post-doctoral researcher. Full details below:
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow: Airline Behaviour Modelling
Full time, fixed term for 24 months – further funding may become available
Grade 7 (£36,770- £44,388, inclusive of London Allowance)
Start date: as soon as possible
Location: London (UK)
The Air Transportation Systems Laboratory (ATSlab) at University College London
(UCL) explores the interaction
between air transportation, the economy, and the environment. An increasingly
important ATSlab tool for exploring
aviation system responses to changes in policy, technology, capacity and passenger
behaviour is an airline behaviour
model which simulates airline competition by sequentially optimising network-level
airline profits for competing
airlines, using itinerary airfare, route flight frequency and aircraft type
deployment as decision variables.
The researcher will be a core member of the Air Transportation Systems Laboratory
(ATSLab), strengthen its modelling
capabilities and
• Be responsible for the further development of the ATSLab’s airline
behaviour model
• Closely collaborate with academic and industry partners in the UK and
abroad
• Assist in the expansion of ATSLab’s research portfolio by contributing
to national and international grant
applications and to scientific paper publications
• Present ATSLab’s research outputs at national and international
conferences
• Contribute to PhD and MSc student supervision and teaching as required.
Essential requirements include a PhD in a related field, experience in optimisation
and econometrics and excellent
knowledge of solvers/software and packages/programming languages, e.g., CPLEX, R,
Python.
For further details and information on how to apply, see here.
Personal inquiries can be sent to Prof.
Andreas W. Schäfer (a.schafer@ucl.ac.uk)
Prof. Andreas W. Schäfer presented a talk on ‘Global Sources and Uses of Renewable Energy’ to the Royal Aeronautical Society on the 20th October. This talk was part of the RAeS’s 2021 conference on cutting aviation’s climate change impact – see the conference website for more information.
The ATSlab has a new paper out on how COVID19 impacts on aviation climate policy – see here and on our publications page (open access).
The ATSlab as a new paper out in the Journal of Transport Economics and Policy looking at capacity constraints at airports and how these affect airline behaviour – for example, whether airlines operating at constrained airports make larger profits and how much capacity constraints affect airline decisions on whether to pass cost increases through onto ticket price. See the publications page for more details.
November 2020 marks the start of the NAPKIN project, an exciting new collaboration between UK-based aviation industry and academic stakeholders to investigate the potential for low-emissions regional aviation. UCL will be contributing to project NAPKIN using our unique Airline Behaviour Model to assess the commercial and operational feasibility of new aircraft concepts – see the projects page for more information.
Dr. Lynnette Dray gave an invited talk on ‘Deep decarbonisation in aviation’ for the US Clean Air Task Force (CATF)’s workshop on Deep Decarbonisation in Transportation, held virtually in Washington DC on November 9-11, 2020.
Prof Andreas W. Schäfer spoke with Bloomberg UK on the challenges of greening air freight. Link to the article: click here.
Prof Andreas W. Schäfer spoke to The Guardian on the challenges faced by the aviation industry of reducing CO2 emissions, see here.
The International Energy Agency’s latest edition of the flagship Energy Technology Perspectives report has been released. This report uses the UCL ATSlab’s Aviation Integrated Model in investigating the opportunities and challenges for how long-distance transport can contribute to net zero.
The ATSlab has a new (open access) paper out on airport capacity expansion. 55 of the world’s busiest 150 airports added runways or were replaced with higher-capacity new airports between 2000 and 2016. We looked at what happened next – for example, the airports tended to add longer-haul flights than those they already had, and over half of the expanded airports either didn’t use the new capacity or rapidly became congested again over the time period we looked at.
On 24 February 2020, Prof Andreas W. Schäfer gave a presentation on “Technological, Economic and Market Prospects of All-Electric Aircraft” at the ITF/OECD Expert Workshop on Decarbonising Air Transport at the OECD in Paris. See here for the full presentation.
Another presentation on ATSlab work this week – this time, Dr. Lynnette Dray presenting our aviation system modelling work at the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) seminar near Southampton. See here for the full presentation!
On 6 November 2019, Prof Andreas W. Schäfer will give a seminar on “Decarbonizing Aviation” at UC San Diego’s Deep Decarbonization Initiative.
On 29 October 2019, Prof Andreas W. Schäfer will give a seminar on “Aviation in a Greenhouse Gas-Constrained World” at the lecture series on Future Transport Research at the Department of Transport and Regional Economics.
On 14 October 2019, Prof Andreas W. Schäfer gave a keynote presentation on “Decarbonizing Aviation” at the ETH Workshop: Initiative on Decarbonizing Aviation.
On 24 September 2019, a new ATSlab paper on carbon leakage in aviation policy was published in Climate Policy. This paper, based on work the authors carried out for the Department for Transport, shows that carbon leakage (i.e., the impact on carbon emissions outside an area where a carbon-reduction policy is applied compared to the impact on emissions inside the policy area) can be very large for aviation policies applied at the single-country level, and depends strongly on the type of policy and the scope the policy is evaluated on. This arises naturally from the global, interconnected nature of aviation systems.
On 14 October 2019, Prof Andreas W. Schäfer spoke to The Times on the challenges of developing all-electric aircraft, see here.
On 10 December 2018, a new ATSlab research article on the “Technological, Economic and Environmental Prospects of All-Electric Aircraft” was published by Nature Energy. The article summarizes joint research with the MIT Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment and the Institute for Sound and Vibration Research at the University of Southampton.
On 20 November 2018, Prof Andreas W. Schäfer will speak at the Greener By Design Conference “Impact of Electric and Hybrid Propulsion in Aviation” at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London. His talk is titled ‘Air Transportation Systems Perspective of Electric Aircraft’.
Dr. Khan Doyme and Dr. Lynnette Dray from ATSLab were interviewed by CNN Travel about Istanbul’s new airport officially inaugurated on 31 Oct 2018. Their talks provide insights on Turkey’s rapidly growing aviation demand and potential of the new airport in competing with existing hub airports in the Middle East. The article can be found here.
On 6 November 2018, Prof Andreas W. Schäfer will present at the International EV Batteries 2018: Cost-Effective Engineering for Hybrid and Electric Vehicles Conference at Twickenham Stadium, London. His talk is titled ‘Energy, Economic and Environmental Prospects of All-Electric Aircraft’.
Both ATSLab submissions to the 98th Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting in Washington, DC (January 2019) were accepted. The papers are “Simulating Airline Behavior: An Application for the Australian Domestic Market” by Khan Doyme et al. and “Assessing the Impact of High-Speed Rail on Domestic Aviation CO2 Emissions in China” by Bojun Wang et al.
The UCL Air Transportation Systems Lab is conducting a market study on hybrid-electric aircraft for the Airspace Technology Institute (ATI). More details can soon be found under Projects page.
On 28 December, Dr. Lynnette Dray was invited to talk about future aircraft technologies on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme. A link to the the episode is available here.
On 22 May 2018, Professor Andreas W. Schäfer will give a lecture on Systems Aspects of Electric Commercial Aircraft – Researching the Challenges to Introduction at the IMechE in London.
On 17 May 2018, Dr. Lynnette Dray will present at the 6th UTIAS International Workshop on Aviation and Climate Change in Toronto. The title of her talk is ‘Modelling the transition to a more-electric aviation system’.
Dr. Lynnette Dray presented the ATS Lab work on integrated aviation modelling at the International Transport Analysis Conference (ITAC) at the Department for Transport on 16 Feb 2018.
Dr. Lynnette Dray and Mr. Bojun Wang presented their papers at the 97th Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, on 8 and 11 Jan 2018. Both papers were also accepted for publication in TRB’s Transportation Research Record journal. See our journal papers page for more details.
Both ATSLab submissions to the 97th Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting in Washington, DC (January 2018) were accepted. The papers are “Modelling Airline Cost Pass-through within Regional Aviation Markets” by Bojun Wang et al. and “The Global Potential for CO2 Emissions Reduction from Jet Engine Passenger Aircraft” by Lynnette Dray et al.
Work from the ATS lab will be presented at the 2017 Air Transport Research Society conference in Antwerp in July 2017. The ATS lab will be showcasing some of it’s recent research on airfare modelling, direct operating cost modelling and also the new Aviation Integrated Model which is to be released as open source software.
On 10 Jan 2017, Professor Andreas W. Schäfer will present on London Air Traffic Forecasts at the TRB Conference session on Strategic Airport Planning for the London Region.