AVTECH Sweden likens flying to competition sailing: it is all about using good winds and avoiding unfavorable air currents. The company says allowing airlines to fully use the favorable winds they are offering a new weather optimization service. The service shows exactly how the wind blows and where there is bad weather in the atmosphere.
The best feature of the new optimization service, according to AVTECH Sweden, is that airlines don’t have to make any investments to use it. All heavy calculations are made on the ground and just a small amount of data is uploaded to already existing onboard equipment.
Low cost airline Norwegian, acknowledged as one of the most fuel-efficient airlines in the world and is one of the early adopters of AVTECH’s services, including tools to optimize the climb, cruise and descent phases for any single aircraft.
“By optimizing the different phases of a flight, we can easily avoid unnecessary use of the engines, which means fuel savings,” says Norwegian pilot and project manager Stig Patey. “Just by flying smarter, we have counted an average fuel saving of 22 kg per flight in the descent phase and about 1.6 % in the cruise phase.”
Multiplied by the 4.4 billion passenger flights that operated worldwide during 2018 pre-covid-19 and the overall fuel savings in the aviation industry in a normal year without a pandemic could be 1.24 million tonnes per year. A saving that corresponds to the yearly CO2 emissions of around 300,000 Swedish households.
Airlines have been forced to heavily reduce their operation due to the pandemic and thus, for these companies, survival is paramount. With these potential savings in mind, when the travel situation begins to return to normal, AVTECH says their Cruise Profile Optimizer will be a great tool to return as a smarter and greener airline, by both saving money on fuel and heavily reducing emissions is achieved with very little effort from the airlines’ side.
“The savings we have achieved is good business for us and good news for the environment,” Patey says. “The best thing is that we did not have to invest in any new onboard equipment to achieve the reductions, since all calculations are delivered as a service individually to all aircraft.”
Among AVTECH’s other customers, are Southwest Airlines, Easyjet and Eurowings. David Rytter, CEO of AVTECH, believes more airlines will sign up for the services now that the portfolio has expanded to cover all phases of flight and been proven.
“The cost per flight for the weather service is about the price of a cup of coffee, while the saving is far greater, so the price tag should not be an obstacle,” Rytter says. “I am confident that our services will be seen as a simple way for airlines to be more efficient and environmentally conscious. To further lower the threshold, AVTECH also offers a free trial period with a performance guarantee. As we have access to this data through a unique API, we are the only optimization service that can offer a four-dimensional weather forecast with an accuracy of 10 km, compared to the normal global aviation weather grid of 140 km,” Rytter says.