JAN 12

Southwest Airlines has rolled out a new set of guidelines for flight paths and landings for its aircraft at 11 airports that has resulted in fuel savings of five to 15 percent per flight.  The new guidelines called Required Navigation Performance (RNP) could be introduced to all airports and airlines in the coming years.

The RNP procedures change flight patterns in two major ways:  they allow aircraft to track much tighter flight paths than current traffic control systems require and they also call for a continuous glide down to landing opposed to the punctuated, step-down approach mainly used.  These seemingly small tweaks have added up to major fuel savings -- already saving Southwest $11 million in fuel costs a year just at the initial 11 airports and could save up to $60 million a year when extended to all of its airports.

In an industry that accounts for two percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, those fuel savings will also amount to a nice reduction in emissions.

GE Aviation has been testing RNP technology for airplanes and Boeing has outfitted 345 of its 737-700s with the technology supporting those flight patterns.  The Federal Aviation Administration is hoping to get RNP procedures, as well as other efficiency measures, into all of the country's airports soon, although the upgrade and requisite training will likely cost $6 billion - $7 billion.

via Earth2Tech

Comments (3)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

...
written by g2environmental, January 15, 2011

Aircraft accounts to as little as 2% of total smoke emissions. I like the fact that airlines are still open for areas of improvement and continuously try other efficiency measures. These new set of guidelines are of great to airline companies because it can lead to fuel savings. Plus, we can expect a cleaner atmosphere.

Tags: environment, oil, lubricant, engine, energy, technology, industrial lubricants

• 
• +0
• 
• 

...
written by sarah, January 28, 2011

seriously... cant they just have less flights but direct flights? all that starting and stopping has got to take up literal tons of fuel with each flight...and makes us loose our luggage too. so often I fly way north or east to travel west. It's ridiculous to fly to Atlanta from Columbus to get to San Francisco....at least go in the right direction... like a stop along the way...that would have to save fuel billions of dollars of fuel.

• 
• -2
• 
• 

...
written by Cheryl Williams, February 04, 2013

The tweaking of flight paths for flights eastbound into Burbank Airport is a disaster waiting to happen! Southwest comes in too low over multi family buildings on a very narrow street in North Hollywood on their way into Burbank, putting lives in danger just to save themselves a little fuel so they can make even bigger profits. Fuel savings in this manner aren't the least bit eco friendly. They need to be on their original path over the boulevards no matter how much extra fuel it costs them...there was a reason that the FAA assigned that path to them. They would be better off using biofuel than putting people in harms way.

• 
• +0
• 
• 

Name

Email

Website

Title

Comment

smaller | bigger

Subscribe via email (registered users only)

Write the displayed characters

Add Comment