GE Builds “Highways in the Sky!”

August 28th, 2010 - 3:20 pm ICT by Sampurn Wire  

August 28, 2010 (Sampurn Wire): Tired of airline delays? Feeling frustrated and outrageous about their inefficiency? Relax! Breathe easy. GE is coming to rescue!

In an effort to reduce airline delays, improve their efficiency and reduce CO2 emission by aircrafts, GE inaugurated its new publicly available, commercially designed instrument Flight Path, specifically designed to create the “highways in the sky” – Required Navigation Performance Technology (RNP). This new technology is developed by Naverus – a GE Aviation subsidiary. The system allows pilots to use onboard technology to follow a precise track, and enable them to select pre-designated arrival times at runways and even at exact points along the route. They will not have to rely any more on age-old ground-based navigation devises that limit where an aircraft can go!

American Airlines Flight 1916 was the first one to use this Flight Path technology for the first time today and marked a significant milestone for the flying public around the world and the beginning of a NextGen era in the U.S. airspace modernization.

The officials at GE believe that RNP paths can be custom-tailored to reduce congestion at the airports- which has be a constant nightmare for air traffic controllers at the major airports around the world. Airlines can benefit by shortening the trip distance and aircraft’s time in flight, thereby improving their efficiency and customer satisfaction. Also, by shortening the trip distance, they can save on the sky-rocketing costs of aircraft fuel and improve their bottom-line. RNP paths can help create community-friendly trajectories and lessen the effect of aircraft noise.

It is estimated that air traffic – passengers traveling by air and airplanes shuffling them around - is expected to increase by 50% in a decade, and current system is not be able to handle the air traffic by 2015. New RNP approach will provide pilots and the air traffic controllers with additional navigation flexibility during periods of adverse weather and winds and improve the utility of the airport runways.

– Sampurn Wire

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