Fuel and emission effects of vertical inefficiencies on arrival and departure operations

The vertical flight inefficiency caused by low level flight segments during arrival and departure operations has a great impact on financial cost of operators and negative environmental effects. In this regard, continuous descent and climb operations for arrival and departure phases are mostly preferred as one of the methods that reduce or eliminate the vertical inefficiencies. In this study, vertical profile analysis of arrival and departure traffics of Ankara Esenboğa Airport (ESB), Antalya Airport (AYT) and Muğla Milas-Bodrum Airport (BJV) are realized by using FDR data that taken from type of B738. By the analyse of vertical profile, potential time, fuel and emission savings achieved by replacing inefficient low level flight segments with the cruise segment of equal distance were calculated. Average savings found for a low level flight segment in arrival traffics are 65,1 s time, 27 kg fuel, 85,2 kg CO2, 33,4 kg H2O, 12,7 gr HC, 301,5 gr CO and 6,7 gr NOX for BJV; 65,4 s time, 33,4 kg fuel, 105 kg CO2, 41 kg H2O, 10,5gr HC, 239,8 gr CO and 41,6 gr NOX for AYT and 44,8 s time, 17 kg fuel, 60 kg CO2, 23,5 kg H2O, 29,4 gr HC, 865 gr CO and 7,7 gr NOX for ESB. Average savings found for a low level flight segment in departure traffics are 5,2 s time, 6,9 kg fuel, 21,7 kg CO2, 8,5 kg H2O, 0,4 gr HC, 7,5 gr CO and 72 gr NOX for BJV; 8,4 s time, 13,6 kg fuel, 43 kg CO2, 17 kg H2O, 0,7 gr HC, 13,9 gr CO and 152 gr NOX for AYT and no low level flight segment found in departure traffics of ESB.