Direct Routes and Wind Updates – Boeing Tools to Improve Flight Efficiency
On 12-12-2011, in The future is now, by steve
For air traffic controllers, giving a “direct” to a flight is a good feeling. They have, after all, probably shortened the track to be flown and this saves fuel. A good thing, right? Well, yes and no.
In the legacy environment where aircraft are made to fly routes that are usually much longer than they need to be, a direct is almost always a welcome intervention. In the upcoming SESAR and NextGen 4D trajectory environment, a direct might be seen as a distortion of the carefully crafted business trajectory. The aircraft arrives early, impacting other trajectories and upsetting the balance that had been worked out to provide maximum efficiency.
Of course the SESAR/NextGen 4D environment is some way off and in the meantime Boeing is providing two new tools that go a long way towards optimizing the way aircraft fly. The beauty of it all is that these tools do not require extra hardware on the aircraft using them. Any reasonably modern aircraft can play.
So, what is Direct Route?
This is an application that is managed by Boeing InFlight Optimization Services and which is able to figure out how to optimize the trajectory of individual flights.
The system continuously scans traffic, weather and wind conditions and when an opportunity is found to improve a trajectory, the information is passed to the Airline Operational Control Centre. It is up to the airline to decide whether they take the opportunity or not. If they do, the request to be made is passed to the flight crew via ACARS who in turn will request ATC for a change to their trajectory. Pilots did ask such things also in the past but the scope of the information on which they based their request was very limited. Requests generated on the basis of the Boeing tool’s advice have a much better chance of being both approvable by ATC and also to deliver the efficiency improvement being sought.
The idea of course is not really new, AOCs have monitored the situation in the past also and have initiated trajectory changes. The big difference is in the scope of the information supplied by Boeing. This expanded scope, which includes also traffic information with a 12 second update rate, represents the real added value compared to legacy systems.
Because of data availability limitations, the service is being offered initially only in the US but there is no reason why it should not be available also in other parts of the world. In any case, introducing this in Europe will be a nice test of ANSPs claimed commitment to CDM and SWIM when they will be asked to share their real-time traffic data.
The other tool, Wind Updates, aims to rectify the often hopelessly outdated wind and temperature data stored in the aircraft flight management systems. The Wind Updates data come from the latest meteorological forecasts and the aircraft platforms reporting actual wind observations. In its current phase improved temperature and wind data are used to generate improved descent profiles but the intention is to extend the optimization to all flight phases.
So what are the actual savings that can be achieved by the use of these tools? Not surprisingly, the potential saving on a per flight basis is not spectacular. For Direct Route a minute or a minute and a half is typical while the Wind Updates profile might yield a fuel saving of up to 200 pounds per operation, depending on aircraft type. Of course if you multiply these figures with the number of flights an airline has, the total benefit over a year is substantial especially if one considers the limited investment involved.
Closer cooperation between air traffic management and airline operational control even in the tactical phase of operations has been described in the SESAR Concept of Operations and these Boeing tools certainly fit in that picture by making the AOC that much more “intelligent”. It will be interesting to see how ATM will cope with those AOCs once they start optimizing things en-masse… in real time.
