Two minutes longer to Spain in 2010?

Extract from Typically Spanish online newspaper:
Airline approaches to Spanish airports are set to change in 2010

It’s hard to be green at the best of times, but even more so during a recession.

I imagine that few expats, booking their Christmas flights online, are currently ticking the carbon offset box, to clear their conscience about the size of their footprint.
And maybe that the box to pay is no longer there anyway, some airlines have recently removed it.

The Dutch Government too has cancelled its ecotax on airlines using its airports, as it says it is keen to remove as many ‘obstacles’ as it can against travel, for both tourists and businessmen.

While society considers things green as an obstacle as opposed to a necessity, little will be achieved.

There are two ‘uncomfortable truths’ here – Firstly that there is no doubt that we are slowly, or even not so slowly, destroying the planet, and secondly none of us have any intentions of stopping those flights back ‘home’ to see family and friends.

We are hopeless as individuals it seems. The reality is that being green has to be done for us; the decisions have to be taken by authorities and organizations and then we will just fall in line.

Well, shortly we can feel just a little bit better about getting on a plane, as the Ministry for Development has this week announced that from next year, airlines will have to adopt the ‘green landing’ system at Spanish airports.

In simple terms it’s an end to those twists and turns and rapid changes in altitude ahead of landing, and means that a longer and gentler approach to the runway is taken. In effect the plane glides down to land and starts the approach from as far as 180 kilometres away.

Passengers will probably only notice that it seems to be taking a long time to land. We will be blissfully unaware that between 300 and 480 kilos of carbon emissions along with 100 to 160 kilos of aviation fuel are being saved every flight, and also that the whole process means we are in the air for a full two minutes more than before.

Those who live below the flight path will perhaps notice a 4-6 decibel reduction in noise if they live more than 18 kilometres from the runway.

France and Sweden are testing similar systems, but José Blanco and his Development Ministry in Spain are to be congratulated for making the move now and re-arranging the flight paths as needed. In some cases airspace previously reserved for the military will have to be used.

It’s one of those things which makes you ask ‘Why haven’t we done this before?’, and ‘Why isn’t everyone doing it?’.
Does this mean that all airline SOPs will have to be changed?
Will the fuel savings be passed on to the customers?;)