Cruise-climb
noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 An instance of cruise-climbing.
"A cruise-climb is more efficient than the standard step climb, but is rarely used since it's much harder for ATC to manage."
- 1 To slowly but continuously climb during cruise flight as the aircraft's weight decreases due to fuel burnoff (done because flight at higher altitudes is more efficient but requires a lighter aircraft). intransitive, usually
"For a transatlantic crossing, the Concorde would be assigned a ~15,000-foot block of altitude; it started out at flight level 450 and gradually cruise-climbed up to between FL570 and FL600 over the mid-Atlantic before beginning to descend."
Example
More examples"For a transatlantic crossing, the Concorde would be assigned a ~15,000-foot block of altitude; it started out at flight level 450 and gradually cruise-climbed up to between FL570 and FL600 over the mid-Atlantic before beginning to descend."
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.