Did you know that every 2.7 seconds a GE flight management system is taking off somewhere in the world? Now, GE has pushed this technology even further and developed a new, optimized descent Flight Management System (FMS) — which is GE Aviation’s latest ecomagination product and is at the heart of taking air traffic management to the next level of capabilities.


Smooth moves: Currently aircraft landings are done in stages. The aircraft — show by the blue line — descends in a stair-step approach by descending to a certain altitude, holding, and then repeating the steps until it nears the airport final approach. With an optimized descent — shown with the green line — via our Flight Management System (FMS), the aircraft would perform a continuous descent into the airport — which is a more direct path to landing that saves fuel.

This year’s Paris Air Show attendees can jump into our integrated cockpit on display and fly the FMS optimized descent while viewing their route on the integrated cockpit display suite with new 15.4-inch widescreen displays. The primary flight displays are designed to control the aircraft track to an accuracy of 10 meters and the time of arrival to within 7 seconds of any point in the flight plan.

“With the FMS optimized descent, we can save between 6-12 percent fuel burn for our customers and corresponding CO2 and NOx emissions reductions. Thanks to these types of efficiencies, Southwest Airlines has become an early adopter of a fleet-wide, integrated solution from GE,” said Lorraine Bolsinger, president and CEO of GE Aviation Systems.


Thank you for flying Air GE! Lorraine Bolsinger, president and CEO of GE Aviation Systems, and Frederic Daubas, chief marketing officer for GE Aviation Systems, try out the new system in GE’s simulator at the Paris Air Show.

Through our work with Scandinavian Airlines, our FMS optimized descent was able to significantly reduce their operating costs and help to reduce the aviation industry’s carbon footprint. In more than 4,000 such approaches into Stockholm, the airline recorded an average fuel savings of 240,000 kg, CO2 reduction of 756 metric tons, NOx (nitrogen oxide) reduction of 2,640 kg annually and noise reduction by 50 percent (65db) for the exposed area.

Instead of the traditional stepped-down approach, our FMS allows pilots to fly an optimized descent, coming in on an idle approach without their engines cycling. This means they’re using less fuel, producing fewer emissions, making less noise, and they’re not jockeying as much on the engine –- all of which results in less maintenance.

While at the Paris Air Show, GE engineer Brian Pfeiffer recorded a video blog with his flip cam. In his video below, meet part of the GE team behind the simulator and the new flight management system.



* Read “GE’s FMS optimizes approaches” in Aviation International News
* Learn more about GE’s integrated cockpit
* Read our coverage of the Paris Air Show
* Follow Twitter updates on the Paris Show
* Read about GE’s deal with Mubadala to service GEnx engines
* Read about GE’s $4.5 billion deal with Etihad Airways