Awards

Awards of the Institute of Air Transport
Credit:

kasto – stock.adobe.com

January 2026

EREA Best Paper Award 2025

Researchers from the DLR Institute of Air Transport were awarded 3rd place in the EREA Best Paper Award at the EREA Annual Event 2025 in Brussels. The award recognised a scientific paper by Katrin Kölker, Dr. Zarah Lea Zengerling, Dr. Markus Kühlen, Klaus Lütjens, and Dr. Florian Linke, which examined the operational and network-wide effects of contrail avoidance in air transport through flight rescheduling.

September 2025

DLR Wins SMBR Global Aviation Award 2025

The German Aerospace Center (DLR) received first place in the “Research Institutions” category of the Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum (SMBR) Global Aviation Award during the evening reception hosted by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as part of the 42nd ICAO Assembly. The award recognises DLR’s research on the targeted use of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) at Copenhagen Airport conducted within the EU-funded project ALIGHT. The SMBR Award Programme honours outstanding contributions to aviation, with a particular focus on sustainability and innovation.

June 2024

2023 AIAA Aircraft Operations Best Paper Award

The authors from the Institute of Air Transport at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and Institute of Air Transportation Systems at Hamburg University of Technology were awarded the 2023 AIAA Aircraft Operations Best Paper Award at the 2023 AIAA Aviation Forum in San Diego, California, for their research on reducing the climate impact of aviation. The award-winning paper, titled "Trajectory-related measures to mitigate the climate impact of aviation: A comparative study," was authored by Dr. Zarah Lea Zengerling, Dr Florian Linke, Benjamin Lührs, Christian Martin Weder (DLR Institute of Air Transport), and Prof Dr Volker Gollnick (Hamburg University of Technology). Learn more...