Passenger Flight to San Francisco Used RNP Satellite-Based Precision Approach

Alaska Airlines has operated the first passenger flight to make a precision approach at San Francisco International Airport using a Required Navigational Performance satellite-based navigation system.

The flight, Alaska Flight 592, departed Seattle on Thursday, January 23, at 5:55 p.m. and arrived on schedule in San Francisco at 8:04 p.m.

Unlike a regular approach using ground-based navigational aids, the flight relied on a precision guidance approach using RNP, which draws data from the network of satellites known as the Global Positioning System and an onboard navigation database to guide the aircraft along a precisely defined, computer-plotted flight path.

"This represents a significant step toward the use of an RNP guidance approach in San Francisco to help improve traffic flow when operations ordinarily would be restricted to just one runway," said Kevin Finan, Alaska's vice president of flight operations. "It also represents a truly cooperative effort between the FAA, the airport, the airlines, the Air Line Pilots Association, and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, all of whom have worked hard over many years to make this first step possible."

This marks a new milestone for enhanced use of RNP on commercial passenger flights in the Lower 48. Alaska pioneered the use of RNP in 1996 in Juneau, Alaska, where weather can limit access to the airport located at one end of a narrow mountain channel. Since then, the airline has expanded its use to six other airports in rural Alaska, where similar weather conditions and geography are present.

In San Francisco, the RNP approach is being developed to allow RNP-equipped aircraft to land on the airport's second runway under conditions that currently limit airport operations to just one runway. The airport is also introducing an enhanced radar system to provide a similar capability for simultaneous landings in certain conditions for non-RNP-equipped aircraft.

FMI: www.alaskaairlines.com