Originally Posted by
Empty Cruise
...and think that the majority of the pilot fraternity strive to fly CDAs whenever possible, wether the practise is formalised at the given airport or not - especially with todays fuel prices
Pheighdough - I believe that there is a bit more to it than keeping the aircraft as high as possible for as long as possible
...or is that the reason all arrivals into LBA are kept so high that we rely on high speed below 100??? Anyway, the result is far from what you could term CDA, and far from fuel & noise efficient
Empty
Don't know what your referring to, in your last comment, but CDA has proven noise and fuel reduction benefits. Off the top of my head I think for a 744 its upto -4dB on the ground, and from 6000ft a 1t savign in fuel burn for the same a/c type.
In many ways CDA is simply "higher for longer" but not so high that the situation you appear to be in occurs. An ideal CDA is a constant 3 deg descent to touchdown. The eary morning P-RNAV arrivals into LHR have all achieved this, going out to about 35 miles, which is as far as our monitoring system lets us go.
The existing Code of Practice doc can be downloaded here;
http://www.caa.co.uk/default.aspx?ca...87&groupid=321
Its towards the bottom of the page.
I believe the revised code will be available in 4 - 6 weeks.