Comparative Analysis of Wide-Body Aircraft Optimized in Short-Medium Range Missions for Sustainable Operations

This paper presents a comparative assessment of medium-range wide-body aircraft design and mission performance under configurations optimized for minimum CO2 emissions operations on a 2000 nautical miles mission profile. The Airbus A330‑200 and Boeing 767‑300ER are the baseline aircraft investigated and optimized using an integrated conceptual design and optimization framework derived from the methodology originally proposed by Fregnani and Mattos [3][11]. Aerodynamic, structural, and propulsion parameters are refined to explicitly account preserve operational realism, including maximum passenger capacity and representative airline mission profiles. The results indicate systematic efficiency improvements, with mission fuel consumption reductions of up to 14% and carbon dioxide emissions per passenger‑kilometer reduced by up to 23% relative to baseline legacy configurations. The analysis demonstrates that the optimization at the conceptual design stage can substantially enhance environmental performance for medium-range wide-body operations without compromising payload capability, mission feasibility, or operational relevance.