Novair – First in world to have ‘green’ descents!

Once more Novair is a forerunner in the industry with measures to minimize the environmental impact of its flights. We are now taking the next step and will be the first charter airline in the world to test green flight descents in order to save fuel and further reduce emissions into the air.

Test flights are part of a European project called SESAR Joint Undertaking which includes flight and ground operators, airline traffic coordinators and other actors that are involved in flight traffic. For some time now, Novair has had its own project in place for decreasing the environmental impact of flights and in 2007 Novair introduced its environmentally-friendly flights.

The project aims at trimming down the entire chain of flight traffic from all activities starting from the airport at take-off, to the actual flight and landing in order to decrease emissions from flights. The goal is to be able to reduce emissions by ten percent.

For Novair this entails the introduction of a number of ’green’ descent flights to Arlanda during 2009, among other things in collaboration with air traffic control at Arlanda and with Airbus. This gives us the opportunity to save even more fuel and thereby further reduce emissions into the environment.

Green arrival flights, or CDAs (Continuous Descent Approaches), mean that flight controls at the airports in question plan the arriving flights in a different way compared to today. Today planes arrive at an airport from varying directions at varying speeds, altitudes and propeller planes are mixed with jets. These means that queues are often formed, forcing air traffic controls to give airlines orders not to land directly but to wait and circle at low altitudes.

This means that we often have to fly longer lengths at the same time as we use more fuel at lower altitudes and this is the worse thing we can do for our environment. However, if we were, much earlier, to receive an exact time for when the plane can arrive at the airport we can prepare at an early stage by adapting the speed and slowing and continuously descend on idle. In order for this to b e put into practice we need coordination between flight traffic control and the plane’s computers so that the plane can be in the right place at the right time.

Calculations have shown that if we are able to improve planning for flight descents in this manner it would be possible to save up to 100 kilos of fuel per descent. One kilo of saved fuel in turn reduces emissions of carbon dioxide by 3,16 kilos!