Advanced Noise Abatement Departure Procedures: Custom Optimized Departure Profiles

This paper presents the concept of custom optimized departure profiles, as an advanced form of noise abatement departure procedures. This concept relies on fixed routes in combination with individually optimized vertical de parture profiles. Although some environmental performance is lost by fixing the gro und track, an increase in complexity associated with free routing is eliminated as well, leading to a concept that does not seem to be incompatible with today’s Air Traffic Control pr inciples. By using a primitive form of trajectory negotiation between airline and ATC, sel ected flights can be allowed to perform an optimized departure without interfering with non-participating traffic. Apart from the concept itself, this paper also describes the depar ture profile optimization tool, which is based on a previously developed trajectory optimiza tion tool called NOISHHH. Finally -in a numerical example- a current standard ICAO-A procedure is compared with two optimized profiles for a Boeing 737 departure from Amsterdam Airport. Fuel burn, noise impact and the required time to a specified point are compared for the three departure profiles.