Researchers have found that for every 1 percent increase in air travel, delays are increased by 5 percent. As any traveler can attest, that often means sitting in on the tarmac in a fully loaded and fully operational plane, for hours and hours on end. Cutting out delays and idling time could make major cuts in the amount of fuel wasted during those delays, reducing the emissions from burning that fuel, and saving costs to boot (and perhaps it's not too much to hope for that it will also cutting costs for plane tickets).

The IT industry -- itself often linked with aviation, as they're both responsible for equal amounts of the world's overall greenhouse gas emissions -- has been applying itself to greening not just its own operations, but also in smoothing out inefficiencies across all types of business operations. Just yesterday, for one example, IBM announced an expansion of its already broad green IT offerings, this time into the realm of supply chain efficiency and management.

With the power of the world's machines working to cut waste in airports, maybe flying won't have to be such a headache for much longer: The four-year project begins in December, and will wrap up at the end of November 2013.

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