March 06, 2023

For more FAA news, please visit their news page at https://www.faa.gov/newsroom.

Fuel-Saving Arrival Routes
Planes heading to Orlando, Kansas City, Omaha, Reno, and six airports in South Florida can now slide down from cruising altitude to final approach saving millions of gallons of fuel and reducing greenhouse gases. The new Optimized Profile Descents (OPDs) safely eliminate the need for the fuel-consuming stair-step procedure. Under traditional procedures, aircraft repeatedly level off and power up the engines. This burns more fuel and requires air traffic controllers to issue instructions at each step. With optimized descents, aircraft descend from cruising altitude to the runway in a smooth, continuous path with the engines at near idle. Du ring 2022, the FAA implemented new OPDs for the following 11 airports: Boca Raton Airport, Fort Lauderdale Execu tive Airport, Kansas City International Airport, North Palm Beach County General Aviation Airport, Eppley Air Field, NE, Offutt Air Force Base, NE, Orlando International Air port, Palm Beach County Park Airport, Palm Beach Inter national Airport, Pompano Beach Airpark and Reno/Tahoe International Airport. With these new descents in place, the FAA estimates that the industry will save more than 90,000 gallons of fuel on average and will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 27,000 tons annually. This change is equivalent to fuel used by 62 Boeing 737 flights between New York and Cleveland. Visit https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-adds-fuel-saving-arrival-routes-11-airports to read the complete press release.

Increased Safety at Airports
A new rule from the Federal Aviation Administration will help airports detect and mitigate safety problems before they result in accidents or incidents. The final rule requires certain airports to develop and implement a safety management system (SMS). The use of SMS programs by commercial airlines and many manufacturers helped foster the safest era in commercial aviation history. Fundamental to the program is identifying risks and then taking steps to correct potential safety issues before they result in accidents or incidents. The final rule applies to more than 200 of America’s busiest commercial airports. The timeline to fully implement SMS ranges from four to five and a half years depending on the airports’ classification and operations. For more on this, please see https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-completes-rule-increase-safety-airports.

Laser Manufacturers Requested to Add Warning Label
High-powered laser pointers can incapacitate pilots flying airplanes with hundreds of passengers. To combat the threat, Acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen requested laser manufacturers add a warning label to their packaging to make consumers aware of the safety risks and federal laws when using lasers. Pilots reported 9,500 laser strikes to the FAA in 2022. Two hundred and seventy-eight pilots have reported an injury from a laser strike to the FAA since 2010. People who shine lasers at aircraft face FAA fines of up to $11,000 per violation and up to $30,800 for multiple laser incidents. The FAA issued $120,000 in fines for laser strikes in 2021. For the full release, visit https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-urges-laser-manufacturers-distributors-add-warning-label-not-shine-lasers-aircraft for more on this.