Word.ws English Dictionary

step climb

step climb verb: to periodically climb to higher and higher altitudes during cruise flight, as the aircraft becomes lighter from fuel burnoff, to take advantage of the reduced drag at higher altitudes; like cruise-climbing, but with the aircraft climbing in discrete steps instead of continuously.

Verb

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

  1. (intransitive, usually) To periodically climb to higher and higher altitudes during cruise flight, as the aircraft becomes lighter from fuel burnoff, to take advantage of the reduced drag at higher altitudes; like cruise-climbing, but with the aircraft climbing in discrete steps instead of continuously.
    • The flight plan called for step climbing from an initial cruising altitude of FL330 to the final altitude of FL350 halfway through the flight.

Noun

step climb (plural step climbs)

  1. An instance of step climbing.
    • The step climb from FL340 through FL360 and FL380 to FL400 will reduce our fuel burn compared to if we cruised at FL340 for the whole flight.

Forms of step climb

Verb
third-person singular presentstep climbs
present participlestep climbing
past participlestep climbed
paststep climbed
alternative formstep-climb
Noun
pluralstep climbs

Questions about step climb

What does step climb mean?
Step climb means to periodically climb to higher and higher altitudes during cruise flight, as the aircraft becomes lighter from fuel burnoff, to take advantage of the reduced drag at higher altitudes; like cruise-climbing, but with the aircraft climbing in discrete steps instead of continuously.
What part of speech is step climb?
Step climb can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of step climb?
The past tense of step climb is step climbed.

Words near step climb in the dictionary

  1. step chairs
  2. step change
  3. step changes
  4. step chart
  5. step charts
  6. step climb
  7. step climbed
  8. step climbing
  9. step climbs
  10. step dance
  11. step danced

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: step 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: “step climb.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/step_climb. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.