CANSO News April 2009

1 April 2009

CANSO has joined with industry partners at the Aviation Environment Summit in Geneva (31/3 – 1/4) to commit to two new initiatives designed to cut fuel burn and emissions from aircraft. On Tuesday, the CDA Action Plan, launched by ACI Europe, CANSO, EUROCONTROL and IATA, was launched. Designed to cut 500,000 tons of CO2 per year by accelerating the take up of Continuous Descent Approaches at European Airports, the plan requires the close cooperation of airports, airlines, EUROCONTROL, and CANSO European members. The plan calls for CDA’s to be in place at up to 100 airports by 2013 – the widest ever rollout of the technique, which involves bringing aircraft in on a much smoother approach path. You can see more information on the CDA Action Plan here.

The second programme was the Declaration in support of Performance Based Navigation. CANSO Secretary-General Alexander ter Kuile introduced the Declaration, endorsed by a video presentation from the President of the ICAO Council, Roberto Kobeh González. PBN takes the best that aircraft flight management systems and global navigation satellite systems, such as GPS, have to offer – and bundles these capabilities into a global set of navigation standards called PBN.

“From the perspective of air navigation services, it does not get any better than this” said Ter Kuile. “With PBN we can develop an arrival and departure procedure that offers a better service, with enhanced safety, that is environmentally friendly, and with a lower cost than what we have today.”

ICAO and IATA along with some key industry partners such as CANSO, have established a Global PBN Task Force that is looking at how to implement PBN quickly and safely throughout the world. But implementation requires commitment from across the industry and that is why the task force developed the Industry Declaration in support of PBN. Alexander’s speech on PBN to the Environmental Summit, the ICAO press release, and the Declaration itself, can be viewed on this site.