A couple of press releases involving Air New Zealnd came out yesterday. The first was one announcing that five 767-300s will be fitted with blended winglets. That isn’t too shocking because this is a popular option for many airlines, and there was another press release on it from last week.
That press release also mentioned that Air New Zealand has been participating in a special progam in San Francisco. Lo and behold, I just completely missed the press release. The airline is testing out a special kind of approach there. Basically, instead of the typical approach that is full of descending and leveling off, the aircraft starts descending at a gradual pace far away from the airport, without ATC directing them too much. I’m not sure if this is the same thing, but it seems quite similar to a program at LAX that Cranky describes
Then there is the airline’s biofuel effort, which I hope we will hear more about soon.
Finally, back to yesterday’s press releases. The second one anounced that dryers will be installed on a combination of 737, 767, 777, and A320 aircraft for a total of 42 installations. Apparently moisture is often trapped between the insulation of the aircraft and the skin, which increases the weight of the aircraft by about 200 kg, according to the press release. The airline hopes to save 500,000 gallons of fuel a year with this move. I’m not sure if I understand too well how the whole process works, so look over to the press release for their explanation.
I really have to give credit to Air New Zealand. They have certainly worked on a plenty of projects to help reduce their fuel bill, and I hope their efforts to find an alternative fuel find success.
The fuel savings in the descent is something that’s been around for quite some time. At the airline I flew for, we called it PPAS which involved steeper and later descent profiles and slower cruise speeds to reduce fuel burn. The slower cruise speeds led us to affectionately refer to the acronym as the Pilot Pay Augmentation System (To be honest, I’ve forgotten what it actually stood for).
Essentially, the driving philosophy behind the updated descent profiles is that since the aircraft burn less fuel at higher altitudes, keep it at the higher altitude longer. The ultimate goal is to keep cruise altitude until the latest possible moment where engines can be reduced to and kept at idle until final approach. Of course ATC and any number of factors affect this on an operational level, but the fuel savings are significant across a carrier’s network.
Wow, Court, thanks very much for sharing your insight in such detail. Always nice to get a pilot’s perspective on things like this!
Qantas and Air New Zealand have been doing the continuous descent approaches on early morning longhaul arrivals into Auckland for quite some time. These flights are given priority over other flights (not that there is many shorthaul arrivals at that hour of day).