Word.ws English Dictionary

cruise-climb

cruise-climb verb: 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).

Verb

cruise-climb (third-person singular simple present cruise-climbs, present participle cruise-climbing, simple past and past participle cruise-climbed)

  1. (intransitive, usually) 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).
    • 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.

Noun

cruise-climb (plural cruise-climbs)

  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.

Forms of cruise-climb

Verb
third-person singular presentcruise-climbs
present participlecruise-climbing
past participlecruise-climbed
pastcruise-climbed
alternative formcruise climb
Noun
pluralcruise-climbs

Questions about cruise-climb

What does cruise-climb mean?
Cruise-climb means 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).
What part of speech is cruise-climb?
Cruise-climb can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of cruise-climb?
The past tense of cruise-climb is cruise-climbed.

Words near cruise-climb in the dictionary

  1. cruise missile
  2. cruise missiles
  3. cruise missle
  4. cruise ship
  5. cruise ships
  6. cruise-climb
  7. cruise-climbed
  8. cruise-climbing
  9. cruise-climbs
  10. cruised
  11. cruiseferries

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cruise-climb (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “cruise-climb.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cruise-climb. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.