Panasonic Avionics Corporation (Panasonic) and Safety Line recently announced an agreement to provide fuel saving solutions for Air Austral’s narrowbody and widebody aircraft. The tools could enable fuel savings of up to €50,000 (£43,200/ $61,830) per aircraft, per year.

As a first step, Air Austral will implement Safety Line’s OptiClimb solution on all aircraft in its fleet. The partners say the move will allow the carrier to save up to 6% of fuel during ascent by delivering optimised climb profiles to pilots ahead of each flight.

The optimisation process leverages historical flight data and combines machine learning performance models for each aircraft together with accurate 4D weather gradients throughout the climb.

Real-time recommendations

In parallel to implementing OptiClimb, Air Austral has also agreed to test Safety Line’s OptiCruise and OptiDescent solutions. They use Safety Line’s on-board OptiFlight App together with Panasonic’s connectivity to provide real-time flight recommendations, taking into account factors such as the latest weather forecasts.

“Air Austral looks forward to saving fuel and reducing the carbon footprint of both our narrow-body and wide-body operations. We are also very excited in partnering with Panasonic Avionics and Safety Line to test and validate innovative fuel saving solutions that will benefit the industry as a whole,” said Olivier Jay, Head of Flight Operations at Air Austral.

In our video, François Chazelle, Chief Commercial Officer, Safety Line, explains more about how the systems work, and how the savings add up.

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