Optimum Strategies for Selecting Descent Flight-Path Angles

Efficient and safe arrival operations under challenging traffic conditions are a key objective for air transportation modernization efforts taking place throughout the world. However, trajectory predictability issues often prevent Air Traffic Control (ATC) from allowing continuous descent approaches in congested airspace. An arrival procedure with a specific descent profile, such as a fixed-flight-path angle, provides high trajectory predictability for air-traffic management. Accordingly, it can enable ATC to increase the use of continuous descent approaches, thereby increasing the throughput of arrival operations and reducing fuel burn and other direct operating costs in the process. Moreover, such a procedure is already supported by current avionics in almost all small (regional, business, and light) jets and a fraction of large jets, including Boeing and Airbus.