CCO high altitude SIDs

Design options for Continuous Climb procedures

The national airspace redesign program aims to design the Schiphol departure and arrival routes to reduce noise and emissions and to maintain capacity. The KDC has supported the national airspace redesign program (programma luchtvaartherziening) with a study into the effects of various design options for continuous climb procedures (CCO). With the help of To70,  departure design choices were analyzed and their effects on the noise footprint and the capacity. The research focused on both the lateral and vertical design choices.

The goal of the airspace redesign program is to find optimum departure procedures, i.e. to climb to 6000 ft with minimum aircraft noise and a minimal impact on the capacity. Furthermore the effect of late departure route split was studied (i.e. combining the Standard Instrument Departure routes (SIDs) into a common leg up to 6000 ft). A late split in the SIDs tends to negatively affect capacity. To mitigate this effect, the consequence of a prescribed speed bracket during climb was studied.

SID Design options

The following design options were taken into account in the study:

• Aircraft climb as quickly as possible to minimize noise, emissions and fuel burn
• Aircraft climb with a common denominator climb rate
• Aircraft turn toward the destination as soon as possible to fly the minimum distance for minimum emissions and fuel burn
• Aircraft are kept on a common leg as long as possible, in any case to 6000 ft, to minimize the geographical area affected by noise
• Aircraft adhere to a climb speed that is within a pre-defined bracket

These options have different effects on noise, emissions and capacity and trade-off will have to be made by the airspace redesign program. According to the Luchtvaart Nota the following guiding principle applies: above 6000ft, emission performance is preferent. Below 6000ft, noise performance is preferent.

This research indicated the following effects of climb thrust setting options:

• to climb as fast as possible results in more noise close to the airport, in particular on the part of the SID that is below 6000 ft.
• to climb with less power results in less noise close to the airport, but more noise on the part of the SID that is above 6000 ft.

The KDC has reported the results to the airspace redesign program, which uses the results in their design activities.