The mission of making air travel more sustainable is a shared goal between SynTrac and the broader aviation community. This commitment naturally extended to Prof. Stephan Staudacher, co-spokesperson of the TRR364 SynTrac, mentoring a group of highly motivated aerospace engineering students from the University of Stuttgart as they took on an industry challenge centered on sustainability. His guidance drew from the latest SynTrac research findings, providing the team with a solid scientific foundation.

The InnovAero Competition 2024 — an international student competition organized by Lufthansa Technik — focused on harnessing aircraft systems to contribute to modern weather forecasting and sustainable flight route optimization. Lufthansa Technik emphasized the need for a holistic approach, combining climate protection, technological development, aircraft design, and route planning, while considering both ecological and socio-economic factors.

The competition began with 44 teams from 19 countries across five continents. By mid-December 2024, the top 50 most talented students, representing eleven finalist teams, gathered in Hamburg — home to Lufthansa Technik — to present their innovative solutions. The event fostered an environment of creativity, collaboration, and global scientific exchange.

A team from the University of Stuttgart, led by Martin Daskalov and composed of members from Faculty 06, successfully advanced to the final round of 11 teams.

The challenge presented to the students focused on contrails — ice clouds formed by aircraft exhaust. Beyond emissions, contrails are a significant contributor to the environmental impact of air travel. Reducing contrails and their climatic effects is a critical issue, relevant not only to optimizing current flight operations but also to shaping the design of future aircraft in projects such as SynTrac.

As such contrail mitigation is a dedicated research focus in SynTrac. The project investigates advanced aircraft technologies, such as optimizing exhaust gas treatment for water recovery through porous media — explored in B04 and C02 sub-projects — to reduce contrail formation at its source. While SynTrac focuses on technological innovations for future aircraft and explores synergies of highly integrated aircraft, the Lufthansa challenge aimed at optimizing the operation of existing fleets.

Given a realistic flight scenario and access to relevant data, the University of Stuttgart team proposed a solution that emphasized pre-flight route planning to minimize contrail formation. Their approach integrated emerging technologies, including the IAGOS Capacitive Hygrometer (ICH) for in-situ humidity measurements, and leveraged satellite data to improve meteorological forecasting accuracy. This combination aimed to enhance the precision of identifying atmospheric conditions prone to contrail formation, allowing for more effective mitigation strategies.