ENAIRE, the Spanish company in charge of airspace management in the country, was placed at the top of the podium for handling continuous descent operations.
ENAIRE belongs to the Ministry of Transport, Mobility, and Urban Agenda. It provides en-route control services for all operations to and from Spain, as well as for overflights through the country’s five control centers: Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Gran Canaria, and Palma de Mallorca.
In 2021, ENAIRE authorized 36% of the approaches to be by continuous descent operations. The European average, according to EUROCONTROL data, is 18%. Specifically, the airport of Málaga-Costa del Sol was the first in the ranking with 47%, followed by Gran Canaria with 43%. The airports of Palma (38%), Barcelona-El Prat (36%), and Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas (28%) are among the top 8 in the European ranking.
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Continuous descent operation is a type of approach where aircraft descends from its cruising altitude at a more or less continuous rate. Thanks to this operation -which must be coordinated with traffic control and, in addition, must be permitted by the airspace design- aircraft descend using a profile similar to a continuous slope, thus using the least amount of thrust and, therefore, saving fuel and emissions.
Continuous descent operations not only save costs but also have a smaller noise footprint in the vicinity of airports, which is crucial during night flights.
In addition to these advantages, continuous descent also allows optimization of traffic flow, leading to less airspace congestion, less need to send aircraft to standby circuits, and fewer delays for passengers, which is crucial, especially during the summer season, which always brings a traffic peak, making delays commonplace.
