American and European aviation officials pledged to extend the flight demonstrations conducted under the Atlantic Interoperability Initiative to Reduce Emissions (AIRE) into regular, daily operations.
“We will perform new trials in 2010, and the intent there is to move from trials to day-to-day operations,” said Carey J. Fagan, director of International Strategy & Performance with FAA’s Air Traffic Organization.
The latest results of AIRE, an agreement between FAA and the European Commission launched at the Paris Air Show in June 2007, were presented March 9 at the ATC Global conference in Amsterdam. Last year in Europe, officials said, 1,152 flight trials took place in five locations, involving 18 industry partners. The trials practiced operational procedures including minimum power taxiing, rolling takeoffs, optimized flight paths and continuous descent approaches.
Europe’s Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) program Joint Undertaking has issued a call for tenders for additional industry partners to extend the program. Thien Ngo, AIRE program manager with FAA, said demonstrations in the next year will focus on east-bound flights, gate-to-gate operations and the involvement of air navigation service providers, airports and city pairs.