Computer Controlled Direct Descent

Sammanfattning: How an aircraft performs its approach and descent towards an airport today has got big potential for improvements. It's mainly the environmental impact and safety that can, and must, be improved for a sustainable future in aviation. "Green Approaches" is a small, yet relatively well-known, optimized approach system mainly used by Scandinavian Airlines on Arlanda airport. Unfortunately "Green Approaches" aren't used often enough, due to the simple reason that it doesn't work very well during heavy traffic. Luckily further research is being done in this field to further optimize an aircraft’s approach. As of today, the most forward going research is being done by the FAA and NASA, and their new system is called NextGen OPD. The system is not fully developed yet but their goals are, as previously mentioned, to optimize today's aircraft approach. In this report the focus will also be set on improving aircraft approaches, although not by optimizing today’s system like the FAA and NASA. Instead, a whole new concept of how aircraft approach airports will be developed. The reason that a brand new concept will be developed is simple, optimizing today's aging system will not be sustainable for the future. Also, optimizing an aging system has its limits. By designing a whole new concept, a steady ground will be laid and it shall be sustainable for the coming century's technology. The new concept will be called ”C.C.D.D.”, Computer Controlled Direct Descent, and will have a lot of goals and expectations to fulfill. As hinted in the name, the new concept is built on the idea that a computer will be controlling the whole approach, and therefore the "Human factor" will more or less be eliminated. Although the main purpose of a new approach system is to decrease the negative environmental impact, by decreasing the fuel consumption during the approach. The new concept will also decrease the noise an aircraft makes during the descent and increase the possibility for a greater traffic flow in the airport’s airspace. The end result will be a "win-win" for everyone involved. An environmentally friendly aircraft approach is necessary for a sustainable future in aviation. C.C.D.D. is a system that will pay for itself with time, because of the decreased fuel consumption for airliners. The system also has the ability to be expanded to computer control departing aircrafts, due to the systems highly computerized structure and integration with airplanes autopilot.