According to ICAO Doc 9931, a Continuous Descent Operation is an operation, enabled by airspace design, procedure design and ATC facilitation, in which an arriving aircraft descends continuously, to the greatest extent possible, by employing minimum engine thrust, ideally in a low drag configuration, prior to the final approach fix.

One of the main drawbacks of CDOs is their negative impact in airport/airspace capacity if current separation procedures are used. Thus, at present CDOs are usually flown during hours of low traffic demand in order to minimize ATC instructions leading to trajectory deviations and consequently to non-optimal operations. The Multi Parameter Guidance with Time and Energy Managed Operations (MPG-TEMO) is a novel Flight Management System (FMS) function developed in the framework of CleanSky that proposes to introduce strict time constraints in the CDO trajectory in order to give the ATC a powerful tool to cope with separation issues.

As stated in the call for tenders, the aim of this activity was to help define, prepare, perform and analyse two flight simulator experiments, which were a prerequisite to the Flight-Test. Furthermore, the partner was supposed to support the a7c integration process prior to the Flight Test and with the final test result analyis.

One of the key aspects of the proposed solution was to focus first efforts of the project in identifying the main changes that bring MTG TEMO to the CDO standard procedure, in order to early draft the main operational, safety and certification issues that must be taken into account during the project. To do so, the leader of this consortium had sought the participation of the UPC Department that had been involved in the previous MTG TEMO projects for the CSJU.

Extensive background of proposed engineers, researchers, as well as, Pilot Manager and flight crew ensured early identification of problems and valuable solutions proposition while fulfilling CSJU project objectives.