Summary:

With a view to more cost-effective control of inbound traffic, every endeavour was made to (a) obtain reliable fuel consumption estimates for actual flights as observed by ground-based surveillance systems and (b) investigate the potential effect of alternative control procedures.

The work fell into four parts:

(a) comparison of cruise/descent speed profile control with the usual delay control techniques.

(b) real time application of cruise/descent speed profile control in the case of a flight path extending over some 200 nm.

(c) development of a method to derive information on consumption under actual operating conditions from data available to the ATC authorities and validation of the model using airline flight simulators.

(d) estimates of realistic fuel savings in actual extended terminals including and surrounding medium and high-density airports based on real traffic data collected in the Brussels and London areas in cooperation with the national authorities.

This paper summarizes these developments, investigations and conclusions and refers to the detailed reports for further information.

https://atmrt.org/wp-content/uploads/1983-832004-Potential-fuel-consuption-savings-in-medium-to-high-density-extended-TMAs.pdf