RVSM (Reduced Vertical Separation Minimum): Applications News to Flight Levels

The imprecision of altimeter system in higher altitudes, utilized by aircrafts in past decades, although adequate for lower levels, imposed that minimum separation between flights levels FL290 (29000 feet) and above had to be 2000 feet. This higher separation limits aircraft capacity on these levels where jets are more efficient and, therefore, is undesirable to airline companies, taking account, principally, the fuel economy. The advance of electronic technology in altimetry system has permitted to obtain a better precision of altitude measurements and, thus, reducing the minimum vertical separation between these levels to 1000 feet became safer, showed by figure 1. This process is called RVSM (reduced vertical separation minimum) and presents some characteristics such as introduction of 6 news flight levels. This process defines special requirements related to airspace and it was implemented in North America and Europe in last years. In Latin America (including Brazil), the RVSM process was implemented in the beginning of this year. This objective of this work is to present and to discuss the implementation of this process in our airspace.