Question

write about project Green skies over Seattle > Seattle airport and Alaska airlines.

(for presentation with photo and references).

Answer 1

Project Description: Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (KSEA) serves the cities of Seattle and Tacoma, Washington, as well as the western portion of the entire state. SEA is the primary hub for Alaska Airlines and its regional subsidiary Horizon Air. SEA has service to destinations throughout North America, Europe and East Asia. In 2013, SEA served over 34.8 million passengers, making it the 16th busiest airport in the United States. It ranked 23 rd in total annual aircraft operations and 18th in total cargo volume. The top airlines operating at SEA, in terms of the percentage of passengers carried in 2013, were Alaska Airlines (52%), Delta Air Lines (12%), United Airlines (10%), and Southwest Airlines (9%)3 . In 2009, Alaska Air Group (AAG), the holding company for Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air and SeattleTacoma International Airport staff, in cooperation with The Boeing Company and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), developed a plan to evaluate new flight procedures that would utilize the latest navigational technologies and allow all appropriately equipped operators to fly optimal descent paths, while reducing their environmental impact during approaches to land at SEA. The project referred to as the “Greener Skies over Seattle” initiative is also popularly referred to as “Greener Skies”4 . In 2010, the FAA took over responsibility for completing the final design and implementation of the procedures. Since then, the preliminary designs have been finalized and a Final Environmental Assessment (FEA) was prepared to identify potential environmental effects associated with the proposed procedures and their usage. A sequence of the elements of the Proposed Action are illus

Assessment Approach: The environmental review process followed for the Greener Skies project followed the all the steps included in the Guidance on Environmental Assessment of Proposed Air Traffic Management Operational Changes (Doc10031). Figure 3 is an illustration of these steps:

Greener Skies over Seattle," the project brings together several satellite-based flight guidance technologies and new flight procedures to allow aircraft to descend more efficiently into Seattle-Tacoma Airport. This method cuts down on fuel burn, as the engines are left on low or idle power settings more often during the approach.

The procedures which have been implemented combine a set of different innovations: optimised profile descents (where the aircraft essentially glides in idle to the runway threshold); area navigation (RNAV) arrivals (which are GPS-guided arrivals); and required navigation performance (RNP) approaches (which takes RNAV to an additional level of precision).

Alaska Airlines reports that its use of the Greener Skies approach has resulted in an average nine minutes less flying time per flight and has cut 14,350 tonnes of CO2 per year. Whilst Alaska Airlines has led the way on this project, the procedures are now being used by any properly-equipped airline.

In addition to increasing the efficiency of flights in and out of the airport, Greener Skies provides opportunities for increased capacity by reducing standard separation, as the aircraft are able to be tracked precisely.

Taken on as a Next Generation project by the United States’ Federal Aviation Administration in 2010, Greener Skies was fully implemented in April 2015. The ultimate aim of the FAA is to use the reduced aircraft separation standards at 12 other airports across the United States that have similar runway configurations to Seattle-Tacoma and there is, of course, potential for the system to be repeated at airports across the world.