Airline Tests “Green” Flight Procedures

This summer, Alaska Airlines is the first airline at Sea-Tac Airport to test flight procedures that will allow Alaska and sister carrier Horizon Air to reduce their environmental impacts during approaches while staying within existing noise abatement corridors.

Alaska, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Boeing and the Port of Seattle have been developing the improved procedures over the past year.

This “Greener Skies” project focuses on using satellite-based flight guidance technology called Required Navigation Performance (RNP) to descend more efficiently and reduce fuel consumption, emissions and noise. The airline is seeking FAA approval for the procedures, hopefully by next year. The Port’s goal is for this procedure to ultimately be used by all properly equipped carriers at Sea-Tac.

Alaska estimates the procedures will cut fuel consumption by 2.1 million gallons a year and reduce carbon emissions by 22,000 metric tons, the equivalent of taking 4,100 cars off the road every year. In addition, the procedures could reduce aircraft over-flight exposure for some communities.

Typically, commercial aircraft follow a lengthy approach pattern and series of stair-step descents before landing. Using RNP technology and continuous descent, also called an optimized profile descent, aircraft can descend from cruise altitude to a runway along a shorter, more direct flight path at low power.

Alaska pioneered RNP precision flight-guidance technology to help its planes land at remote and geographically challenging airports in Alaska.