Design and evaluation of short-term realizable new noise abatement flight procedures

摘要

Aircraft noise in the vicinity of airports and its impact to residents represents a problem that isgrowing according to the increasing air traffic density. Improved and completely new designedaircraft configurations are promising approaches. But they represent only long-term solutions,whereas the application of newly designed noise abatement flight procedures (NAPs) could beable to contribute to the reduction of noise immission in a near future.The paper will describe the NAP design process and an evaluation of the results. It is basedupon several studies performed in Germany during the last 6 years.Starting from existing NAPs, new procedures were designed using performance calculations,fast time simulations, full flight simulator studies and flight tests. Assessments of noisereduction as well as assessments of safety, operational feasibility, pilot workload, passengercomfort and economic aspects were carried out.The newly designed “Segmented Continuous Descent Approach” results in a reduction of the>50 dBA maximum noise level area of about 40% and was investigated in detail by full flightsimulator research into pilot workload and flight tests including on ground noisemeasurements. Analysis of take-off procedures showed advantages and disadvantages of steepdeparture flight paths and full thrust use.