airBaltic and consortium partners Quovadis and Latvijas Gaisa Satiksme launched a project under the Atlantic Interoperability Initiative to Reduce Emissions (AIRE) to operate Europe’s first green flights for turboprops. The AMBER (Arrival Modernization for Better Efficiency in Riga) project will establish new arrival procedures for Riga Airport that will shorten distances flown, improve flight trajectories to avoid residential areas and reduce community noise exposure , as well as cut fuel consumption and emissions.
With this project, SESAR will demonstrate that the entire commercial aviation community, including regional aircraft, can change and reduce its impact on the environment.
The new flight trajectory will be up to 30 nautical miles shorter than what is being flown today, and will reduce CO2 emissions by up to 300 kg on every Q400 flight. Initial design and simulator testing of the AMBER project will be carried out through spring 2013. Pilots and ATC will be trained on simulators for the new procedures. A target of 100 trial flights will be carried out, during summer 2013, and the CO2 savings will be analyzed and published as a baseline for green turboprop operations.
The airline even produced a video to demonstrate what they have in mind.
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You might want to look at the Swedish initiative “Green Approaches” or “Gröna Inflygningar”, they have been looking at similar things for some years now:
http://www.swedavia.com/arlanda/about-stockholm-arlanda-airport-/about-stockholm-arlanda-airport/environment/carbon-dioxide-emissions/air-traffic-/green-approaches/
Swedavia has had a project for a number of years and several scientific papers should been published afaik. I suggest you search for the author “Henrik Ekstrand”, who was both a phd student and pilot involved. He was on loan from his airline to Swedavia for the project I believe. I think he has published at both the ISABE and ASME Turboexpo conferences since about 2007 (I know there one from the 2007 ISABE, I have that paper somewhere).
Here is more details on Henrik:
http://www.chalmers.se/en/news/Pages/green-flights.aspx
And while reading I found references to a project called “Vinga” at Gothenburg Airport, where also Quovadis seemed to be involved:
http://www.lfv.se/en/News/News-2012/Major-environmental-benefits-with-new-aviation-methods/
(Note: LFV changed name to Swedavia).
I am so curling you 😉