Visitors who arrived at this year’s NBAA Convention on a commercial flight into Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson International Airport might have noticed a much longer glide on the approach and less noise in the cabin. As part of an initiative called AIRE (Atlantic Interoperability Initiative To Reduce Emissions), formally launched at the Paris Air Show in June, the airport has started testing “trajectory-based operations” including continuous-descent approaches (CDAs) aimed at reducing fuel burn, CO2 emissions and noise.
The practice calls for aircraft to begin their descents closer to the airport, with their engines near idle almost all the way to touchdown. Atlanta-based Delta Airlines is a key participant in the testing. Joseph Kolshak, the airline’s vice president of operations, described the procedure as “a no-brainer. It’s essentially flying the airplane the way the airplane wants to be flown,” he said. “Stay up at altitude until such time that you can start a continual descent almost all the way to the runway instead of doing step descents.”
More In ATC
