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Course correction

SkyEurope to use next-gen navigation to save airspace, fuel

By Victor Velek
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
February 20th, 2008 issue

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With cheaper flights making passenger and cargo air transportation a common activity across the globe, the sky has become a busy highway, its lanes jammed up with planes.
Over the past decade, air traffic over Europe has expanded by half. On its busiest days, the European sky sees up to 33,000 flights. By 2020, the number of flights is expected to double, according to the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation, or Eurocontrol.

This ballooning traffic has raised the issue of how Europe can ensure that air traffic remains safe and environmentally friendly.

The Slovak airline SkyEurope thinks it has one solution. The low-cost carrier has recently embraced the use of a sophisticated satellite-based navigation method, called Required Navigation Performance (RNP), which will allow it to use airspace more effectively, cutting fuel use and emissions by eliminating detours from ideal flight paths.
SkyEurope is the second European airline to use RNP, joining Austrian Airlines, which celebrated its debut RNP flight in 2005. The Slovak airline, which operates heavily out of Prague, plans to complete the RNP certification process for its fleet of 14 Boeing 737 aircrafts later this year.
The installation will cost the airline some $200,000 (3.5 million Kč) per plane, estimated SkyEurope’s CEO, Jason Bitter. But the precise approach paths SkyEurope will gain to airports in its network will save the airline a lot of money in the end.
“On approaches coming from the west or north of Bratislava, we save 12 nautical miles on every approach,” Bitter said. “That’s going to be about 200 kilos of fuel, every flight.”
Besides, the boosted navigation performance should make flights safer. “It enhances safety and gives your operation more predictability,” Bitter added.
Zigzagging flights
Before hybrid systems using satellite guidance like the Global Positioning System (GPS) came into broader use, most aircraft relied solely on ground-based navigation aids, such as radios or radar beacons. The planes would fly to their final destination by zigzagging from one point to the next. Most aircraft guidance systems and airlines retain the jagged flight paths of previous decades.
RNP looks to shrug off this legacy by using GPS and modern avionics loaded with preprogrammed flight paths to facilitate landings and takeoffs. It is among the most advanced air-guidance procedures currently available.
“In contrast with Austrian Airlines, we will be able to achieve the best possible precision — RNP 0.1,” said SkyEurope spokesman Tomáš Kika. This means the aircraft’s deviation from the required flight path will not exceed 0.1 nautical miles.
According to Naverus, an RNP solutions provider and SkyEurope’s main partner in the project, experiences from implementations throughout the world suggest flights using RNP save between 10 and 40 nautical miles.
“Those savings equate to three to 12 minutes of flight time, or $80 to $320 in fuel,” said Eric Nordling, Naverus’ vice president of marketing.
Pioneered in the mid-1990s by Alaska Airlines to facilitate landings at mountainous airports during capricious weather, RNP procedures are now used by air carriers throughout the world and are considered as the future standard of navigation.
In North America, it is used for airport approaches and departures by Alaska Airlines, Horizon Air and WestJet, while some other companies — including Southwest Airlines, one of the world’s largest carriers — have made major commitments to RNP.
The system has been also embraced by Air New Zealand, Air China and Australia’s Qantas. But, overall, it is an aviation novelty still gaining momentum.
“There are more than 1,100 airports used by airlines globally. Of those, RNP is being used in only approximately 75,” Nordling said.
The navigation precision of RNP procedures should help push forward Europe’s Area Navigation standards, or RNAV, which are now being implemented in Europe under the coordination of Eurocontrol. But building a next-generation navigation environment over Europe will be a long haul. 
“In the Czech Republic, this navigation precision will start to be implemented after 2010 or more likely after 2015, according to European Union requirements,” said Richard Klíma of the Czech Air Navigation Services (ŘLP), the country’s air traffic management agency.
In contrast with the United States, European airspace is fragmented into “national skies.” As a result, Europe’s growing air traffic has been plagued by impediments. 
The Single European Sky, an initiative of the European Commission, should merge the Continent’s skies and lay foundations for effective and safe air traffic management.
“In combination with efforts to streamline air traffic management and strive for a single European sky, RNP will become more widespread,” Nordling said.
 

Victor Velek can be reached at vvelek@praguepost.com


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