EUROCONTROL is a pan-European, civil-military organisation dedicated to supporting European aviation. Their expertise spans research, development, operations and performance monitoring.They are committed to the European Union's vision for a Single European Sky. They support their Member States and their stakeholders (including air navigation service providers, civil and military airspace users, airports and aircraft/equipment manufacturers) in a joint effort to make aviation in Europe safer, more efficient, more cost-effective and with a minimal environmental impact.
In the field of sustainable aviation operations, Eurocontrol has established a Continuous Climb and Descent Operations (CCOs / CDOs) Task Force. The work of the Task Force focuses on ensuring a flexible, optimum flight path that delivers environmental and economic benefits.
The Task Force has developed the CCO / CDO Tool Kit to support CCO / CDO implementation in Europe, consisting of the European CCO / CDO Action Plan, the CCO / CDO performance dashboard and the resources available on this webpage.
EUROCONTROL has worked with a large number of stakeholders, including airlines, airports and air navigation service providers, to produce the European CCO/CDO Action Plan. This includes practical advice on how to make CCO/CDO work, with examples of best practices and how constraints can be overcome, building on the extensive experience Europe already has on optimising the efficiency of vertical flight profiles.
Improved vertical flight efficiency during climb (CCO) and descent (CDO) can save substantial amounts of fuel and CO2 and also reduce noise levels in the vicinity of airports. Together with interested stakeholders and EUROCONTROL's Aviation Sustainability Unit, the PRC has developed a methodology to compute level off segments during climb and descent at airports. The results are shown in a dashboard to better track flight efficiency.
To support its stakeholders, EUROCONTROL has also created a training for flight crews and pilots who would like to become more familiar with continuous descent operations (and to a lesser extent continuous climb operations), why CDO matters and how ATC instructions affects a flight crew's ability to carry out CDOs. This course provides the theoretical basis for understanding CDO and acts as an enabler for flight crews to facilitate more CDOs, and CDOs from higher levels, to the extent possible in their operational environment.
A video is also available on EUROCONTROL Youtube Channel demonstrating the harmonised CCO / CDO definitions agreed by European stakeholders.
