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Why Airliners Could Soon Fly in Formation, Just Like a Flock of Birds
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Why Airliners Could Soon Fly in Formation, Just Like a Flock of Birds

This makes too much sense not to try.

International

An experimental Airbus concept shows airplanes flying in formation to save fuel.

This concept carefully capitalizes on wake turbulence, which engineers have fought against for more than a century.

Birds are hard to study, and we still don't understand their flight formations well.

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Could passenger planes begin flying in formation to draft each other’s wingtip vortex effects? One Airbus-based startup concept thinks so. The concept uses a formation idea inspired by birds, who commute north to south and back in large V shapes to capitalize on the updraft generated by the birds in front.

When airplanes push through the air at high speeds, they generate something called wingtip vortex, also called wake turbulence, even though it’s not true turbulence at all. True turbulence is more like the way fall leaves follow and swirl in circles after a car passes through, because cars are not as aerodynamic and are usually interacting with more complex surroundings. Wingtip vortex is so uniform and predictable that it lingers in the air for minutes and can even work to pull on the airplane, which is called vortex drag.

In the concept pushed by the Airbus incubator, appropriately named “fello’fly,” planes line up over a mile apart, which is still close enough to benefit from the wingtip vortices generated on either side of the lead plane.