Just like flocking birds, jet planes that fly in formation save energy by surfing on air currents created by the leaders. Manually keeping the plane in the sweet spot is exhausting, however, so engineers at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, UCLA, and Boeing are developing a system that does the job automatically. "A 777 airplane flying 250 days a year, going from New York to L.A. and back once a day, would save a half a million to a million dollars in fuel," says Brent Cobleigh of Dryden, the project's chief engineer.
Photographs courtesy of NASA/Dryden Flight Research Center
The savings are made possible by the sideways mini-tornadoes, or vortices, generated by the wingtips. One half of the vortex helps lift a trailing plane, whereas the other half makes it nose-dive, so precise positioning is a must. Cobleigh and his colleagues ran 26 flights using two F/A-18 fighter jets (above) ...
