Global sustainability targets are steering the aviation sector toward practices that reach well beyond isolated environmental-impact evaluations. Community-driven insights underline the importance of embedding sustainability thinking from the earliest design sketches through to final material choices. This abstract consolidates key findings from research undertaken at the University of Patras and illustrates how a holistic sustainability perspective can be integrated across the aviation design related activities.

First, the investigations show how material selection for aircraft structures can be assessed using a sustainability framework that takes into account on structural performance, environmental performance, cost efficiency, and circular-economy potential. A dedicated decision-support tool was developed to benchmark candidate materials against these three dimensions and to flag combinations that satisfy stringent sustainability thresholds.

Second, a suite of multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) algorithms and normalization technique was systematically compared, revealing that methodological choices can significantly influence overall sustainability scores. Quantifying this sensitivity enables design teams to just the robustness of the rankings generated.

Third, the MCDM framework was scaled to whole-aircraft assessments. A hybrid analytic-hierarchy-process and weighted-addition model ranked aircraft incorporating novel fuels or propulsion concepts under varying stakeholder priorities, demonstrating how changes in weighting schemes can reorder preferred options.

Fourth, a sustainability-driven component-design workflow was formulated and validated on a composite aviation structure demonstrator. The method interweaves technological, environmental, economic, and circularity criteria into a single conceptual level, ensuring that trade-offs become visible before irreversible design commitments are made.

Collectively, the studies highlight a comprehensive yet pathway for embedding holistic sustainability assessment and design into aviation engineering, providing actionable guidance for industry as it charts a credible course toward greener flight. A composite sustainability index enables alternative designs to be optimized on this broader basis.

Main Message:

• Performance, environmental, economic, circular and social metrics merge in a n holistic framework, guiding early design teams to choose designs, materials and concepts that can meet aviation requirements.

Summary

In this work, results of a group of studies from University of Patras, relevant with the sustainability-oriented design in the aviation industry, will be presented. Sustainability definitions, assessment frameworks and practical design campaigns of aviation components will be the core results of the presented studies. Overall, our aim is to highlight the need for a holistic and comprehensive approach to sustainability assessment and sustainable design aviation with practical examples and robust proposals for the industry’s way forward.