A few weeks ago, the LDE Thesis Lab Sustainable Aviation: Wings of the Future held its final event, marking the close of this year's programme.
The transition toward net-zero aviation is one of the most complex sustainability challenges of our time. Aviation's CO2 emissions have more than doubled since the mid-1990s, and no single technology, policy, or innovation can address that growth alone. Much like the broader climate transition, it calls for a systemic approach, cross-sector collaboration, and a willingness to rethink existing assumptions. It is within this landscape of complexity that the LDE Thesis Lab Sustainable Aviation invited master students from Leiden University, TU Delft, and Erasmus University to contribute, examining how design, innovation, and policy can together chart a more sustainable course for flight.
The lab was embedded within the Flying Vision Accelerator, part of the Dutch Growth Fund's Aviation in Transition programme. Over the past six months, students worked on individual thesis assignments set by Flying Vision, Airbus, and NLR, addressing questions across a wide range of areas: reducing the energy demand of aircraft, rethinking aircraft and airport design, exploring new business models and regulatory approaches for a decarbonizing sector, and imagining what air travel might look like by 2050. Alongside their individual research, students took part in the lab's shared programme of masterclasses, expert sessions, and site visits, engaging directly with professionals working across the aviation and aerospace sector.
At their closing event, students translated six months of research into something interactive: a simulator game built on their own findings, echoing the En-ROADS model by Climate Interactive that they had encountered at the start of the programme. Presenting and playing the simulator together with their audience, students turned a set of research outcomes into a shared exploration of possible futures for the sector.
The student's findings are collected in the lab's booklet.
Read more about the lab here.
