Air France Airbus A380s will take part in ‘green flight’ revenue flight trials between New York and Paris during the fourth quarter of 2010 to test procedures similar to those used during the ASPIRE trial flights between Australia and the US conducted last year.
The Transatlantic Green Flight (TGF) trials are being led by Airbus in partnership with air navigation service providers from the UK, US and Canada as part of the second wave of the Atlantic Interoperability Initiative to reduce Emissions. The flights will take place over a six to eight week period and see each trial start with a taxi from the gate to the runway at New York’s JFK airport using only two engines. Meanwhile the ANSPs will facilitate the Atlantic portion of the flight which will reduce CO2 emissions through an optimised trajectory where more flexibility will be arranged for speed, altitude and lateral routing.
“These transatlantic flight trials will help to move the industry towards more efficient operational concepts and sustainable growth over the longer term,” said Charles Champion, executive vice president of engineering at Airbus. “What we trial today with the A380 will contribute to setting tomorrow’s standards, thanks to system-wide air traffic management improvements prepared by programmes like SESAR and NextGen.”
The trial is similar to flights conducted during 2009 and early 2010 involving a number of airlines and ANSPs under the auspices of the Asia & South Pacific Initiative to Reduce Emissions (ASPIRE). The demonstration flights showed that by utilising a number of new air traffic management technologies and ground procedures that fuel burn and emissions could be cut significantly.
