Quovadis, the flight operations services company of Airbus, has been chosen by Tibet Airlines to implement Required Navigation Performance (RNP) procedures for its operations using the Airbus A319. Tibet Airlines, which will fly to the highest airports in the world including Bangda and Ali, will fly RNP-AR (Authorisation Required) procedures to and from Lhasa, Ali, Bangda, Shigatse and Linzhi.
The airline will operate the RNP network beginning this summer, Quovadis said. Quovadis will provide procedure designs, operational approval support as well as a navigation database validation and “Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring” prediction. In this project, all five Tibetan RNP-AR airports are interconnected by RNP routes, the companies said.
“Flying RNP-AR is very important for Tibet Airlines as we are planning to fly to high-elevation airports located in mountainous areas. We therefore wanted to work with a performance-based navigation consulting company who could not only assist us in PBN, but also support our start of operations and entry-into-service of our A319s,” says Wu Gang, vice president of planning and finance at Tibet Airlines.
Tibet Airlines has acquired three Airbus A319s and plans to increase its fleet to 20 aircraft over the next five years in order to respond to the growing air transport demand in the region.
GE Aviation on May 10 released its “Highways in the Sky” study, which outlined potential benefits to airlines of flying RNP approaches. GE’s study of the 46 mid-size U.S. airports concludes that deployment of RNP instrument arrivals would annually save 12.9 million gallons of jet fuel; $65.6 million; 274.6 million pounds of C02; and 747 days of flight time.
Earlier this month, GE Aviation’s PBN Services division said it deployed the first public-use Required Navigation Performance (RNP) procedure in Alaska at Deadhorse. The Deadhorse procedures became available for public use four months after GE submitted documentation to the FAA for processing, transmittal and publication. Last August, with the publication of an RNP instrument approach at Bradley Intl. Airport at Windsor Locks, Conn., GE became the first commercial third-party to deploy a public instrument flight procedure in the United States.