TRAVELLERS on selected flights between Singapore and at least nine cities in Australia and New Zealand may benefit from shorter flight times, under a three-month trial to test a different way of routing international flights that also includes Indonesia.
Traditionally, to get from one point to another, aircraft use a fixed network of airways, which are like invisible highways in the sky, and they are required to follow prescribed routes through this network.
However, since Aug 5, pilots on selected flight routes have been given the flexibility to choose the most direct and efficient paths across the airspaces of the four countries involved.
This air traffic management concept is called user-preferred routing, and the hope is that aircraft will be able to make better use of airspace, cutting travel time, fuel burn and carbon emissions, said the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS).
The trial is being conducted on 38 flight routes operated by national flag carriers Singapore Airlines (SIA), Garuda, Qantas and Air New Zealand.
The routes include those from Singapore to Auckland, Adelaide, Brisbane, Cairns, Christchurch, Darwin, Melbourne and Perth, as well as the Sydney to Singapore route.
User-preferred routing has been trialled as far back as 2008 and the practice already exists in places like Australia. But its use on international routes has been limited due to the complexity of coordinating routes across international airspace boundaries.
CAAS said airlines can potentially save up to 1,700kg of fuel for a flight between Singapore and Melbourne, and cut more than 1,960 tonnes of carbon emissions for a year of daily flights on that route. — The Straits Times/ANN
