Green operations with GEometric altitude, Advanced separation and Route charging Solutions

Since the early days of aviation, barometric pressure measurements have been a simple and robust method for altimetry. Two drawbacks exist though: there is no direct reference to terrain, and the limited accuracy requires separations restricting capacity unnecessarily in today’s high traffic density. One goal of Green-GEAR thus is to investigate the environmental potential of geometric altimetry enabled by satellite navigation, increasing safety and eliminating waste of airspace by removal of the transition layer and supporting more environmentally friendly climb and descent operations. With the safety case for the change of separation definition already open, not only integration of manned aviation with drones (that are already using geometric altimetry in current operations) can be addressed but Green-GEAR will also look at the potential for increasing capacity through reduced (namely vertical) separations enabled by geometric altimetry. Last but not least the project will investigate the potential of environmentally driven route charging. The avoidance of volumes of airspace with a high climate impact and the allocation of the limited capacity in crowded sectors and flight altitudes to those airspace users gaining the biggest environmental benefit is promoted through financial incentivisation. As it is not the aim to increase cost to airspace users and passengers but to reduce aviation’s environmental impact, added capacity in the “green” zones enabled by reduced separations furthers acceptance of the approach. The combination of these three topics in Green-GEAR not only raises substantial synergies and ensures a harmonised approach; it also allows to identify and solve possible interoperability issues quickly and to mature the interdependent solutions in sync, reducing time to market for any and all of them.

Since the early days of aviation, barometric pressure measurements have been a simple and robust method for altimetry. Two drawbacks exist though: there is no direct reference to terrain, and the limited accuracy requires separations restricting capacity unnecessarily in today’s high traffic density. One goal of Green-GEAR thus is to investigate the environmental potential of geometric altimetry enabled by satellite navigation, increasing safety and eliminating waste of airspace by removal of the transition layer and supporting more environmentally friendly climb and descent operations. With the safety case for the change of separation definition already open, not only integration of manned aviation with drones (that are already using geometric altimetry in current operations) can be addressed but Green-GEAR will also look at the potential for increasing capacity through reduced (namely vertical) separations enabled by geometric altimetry. Last but not least the project will investigate the potential of environmentally driven route charging. The avoidance of volumes of airspace with a high climate impact and the allocation of the limited capacity in crowded sectors and flight altitudes to those airspace users gaining the biggest environmental benefit is promoted through financial incentivisation. As it is not the aim to increase cost to airspace users and passengers but to reduce aviation’s environmental impact, added capacity in the “green” zones enabled by reduced separations furthers acceptance of the approach. The combination of these three topics in Green-GEAR not only raises substantial synergies and ensures a harmonised approach; it also allows to identify and solve possible interoperability issues quickly and to mature the interdependent solutions in sync, reducing time to market for any and all of them.