SWBKCB
That’s great if you are the only aircraft in a block of sky…you get your optimum level.
What we already know is that in the real world with multiple flights operating RVSM (1000’ vertical separation) combined with quite possibly tight horizontal separation it’s often not possible for everybody to be at their optimum level because somebody adjacent will have already got it…now at worse you might only be a few thousand feet off your optimum so it’s hopefully not a major problem…
However now chuck in this new idea that involves avoiding the trail levels - which might (and this is one for a met person) be a block of airspace thousands of feet thick- and it’s IMHO going to get much much more difficult to manage.
Who goes above the block? who goes below? …What happens in a few hundred or thousand miles when the contrail levels change and everybody wants or needs to shift up or down to avoid? In busy areas (e.g. States/Europe/North Atlantic Tracks once they really busy again) is there actually enough volume available to sanitise an entire block of airspace to avoid contrails and also still have the required separation between traffic?
Not saying it can’t be done but at a first glance there’s probably a bit more to it than simply saying just avoid certain levels and then coming up with procedures to avoid uncomfortable climbs and descents….
Last edited by wiggy; 23rd Oct 2021 at 19:04.