OPTI CLIMB

Recommendations

Info

OptiClimb At the beginning there was this idea that climb phase has been largely ignored by fuel conservation programs. At most, some airlines are using the cost index to minimize the climb fuel, but the whole industry has never challenged that climb is always flown at constant speed or Mach, whatever the weight of the aircraft, Outside Air Temperature or Cruise level. Obviously, there is a margin for optimization, but how to achieve it with certainty? This is where the help of data analytics steps in and opens brand new avenues. Thanks to a partnership, started several years ago with world class Research Centers in Mathematics and Optimization (INRIA), and based on the finding that there was not a single performance set for an aircraft type (after leaving the assembly line, each aircraft will have its When Big Data meets fuel savings A fruitful cooperation between aviation experts and data scientists « Data analytics opens brand new avenues » own “life” and thus performances will vary through time), it was sought to take advantage of flight data in order to update aircraft performances and in turn use those performances to optimize the Climb phase. The work carried out with flight data allowed to create individual aircraft models to replace standard aircraft dataset used by the FMS. With those models in one hand, and using dynamic optimization on the other one, it was possible to reconsider the climb phase by giving the freedom to change the speeds several times during the climb. Doing so, a very significant reduction in fuel consumption was observed and OptiClimb was born. Now, every airline can easily and without trouble use OptiClimb for all their flights and save 10% of the fuel burnt during this phase. Climbing with OptiClimb: 2 speed changes One of the difficulty when dealing with fuel efficiency is that it is hard to know if fuel has actually been saved, as there is no precise reference to compare the results with. Here, we know for each flight the amount of fuel that was burnt and can compare with the fuel that would have been needed to climb at constant speed (this information is available at the same time from performance data and from flight data). A dedicated interface is provided to the Fuel Manager so that he can check the results of the savings. It is thus possible for the Airline to measure the advantages to use this solution. The information can also be presented in all other fuel monitoring interfaces available on the market. OptiClimb is indeed a new best practice that introduces fuel saving opportunities during the climb phase. It comes on top of any other fuel saving initiative and provides very significant results as soon as it is introduced in the Operations.
« Minor changes can bring significant effects ... » Results During the climb phase engines run at nearly full power. Reducing fuel consumption during this phase is a real opportunity. The average fuel saving achieved with our method is 10%. For 100 flights a day on single-aisle aircraft, it is more than 10t of fuel each day. At the end of the year, the economy will be of more than 3M€. -10t -31t 3M€ fuel per day CO2 per day per year How it works OptiClimb uses data specific to each aircraft to generate precise individual flight instructions. 1 2 3 Flight data collection Flight data processing Flight preparation The solution proposed by Safety Line is seamless: we only need one source of data and provide accurate guidance with guaranteed results. The only source of data needed is QAR data without any information about flight date, origin and destination flight number, so there is no confidentiality issue. All we need to know about is the aircraft itself and its characteristics. In order to have a good coverage of the flight envelope, a few hundreds flights for each tail are needed. Raw data or engineering parameters format can be used and the required parameters include pressure altitude, airspeed, Mach, temperature, engine power. With the collected data, Safety Line will run machine learning algorithm to extract the aerodynamic and thrust characteristics from the flight data. It will create an individual model of the aircraft that will be used later in the process. Before each flight, Safety Line will use the Operational Flight Plan to retrieve the necessary parameters (tail number, temperature, wind, TOC, Cost Index) for the optimization. It is an automated process and the results are pushed just a couple of minutes after a new OFP is available. The crews then receive the climb schedule page at the same time as the OFP (either a page attached to the OFP, or if they use an EFB, the information can also be inserted into the briefing package). 4 Flying with OptiClimb is just like standard flights. Indeed, during preflight preparation the crew simply needs to introduce the first IAS (IAS #1) and the final Fuel savings follow-up Mach computed in the climb schedule into the Performance page of the FMS. This way the autopilot will fly automatically at the recommended speeds. The only action required during the flight will be to enter the second IAS (IAS #2) in the FMS when reaching the speed change altitude. If anything happens that prevent to use those speeds, the crew just has to revert to normal climb speeds. <strong>OPTI</strong>MIZATION OPERATIONAL PROCESS
Page 1: OPTI CLIMB More savings, less CO 2

OPTI CLIMB

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?