A major announcement has just been made at the Summit - a group of four industry associations have got together and agreed to the largest implementation of continuous descent approaches (CDA) ever deployed. CDA, for those who want to know, is when aircraft descend from their cruising altitude to landing in a smooth, continuous approach (green path), rather than the stepped approach (blue path) that they usually use.
It sounds simple, but the new technology in both aircraft and air traffic control now being used has only just made these types of landings efficient enough to use at a lot of airports. There have been trials in place and a few airports have been using them here and there, but with today's announcement by ACI Europe, CANSO, Eurocontrol and IATA, over 100 airports across Europe will be implementing these landing approaches by 2013. It is estimated that this will save over 500,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year in Europe alone. For more information check out the press release.
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