While flight plan

calculations are
necessary for safety and
regulatory compliance,
they also provide airlines
with an opportunity for
cost optimization.
Effective Flight Plans Can
Help Airlines Economize
By Steve Altus, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Airline Operations Product Development, Jeppesen

Every commercial airline flight begins with a flight plan. Over time, small adjustments
to each flight plan can add up to substantial savings across a fleet. Optimal overall
performance is influenced by many factors, including dynamic route optimization,
accurate flight plans, optimal use of redispatch, and dynamic airborne replanning.
While all airlines use computerized flight planning systems, investing in a higher-end
system — and in the effort to use it to its full capability — has significant impact on
both profitability and the environment.

An operational flight plan is required to This article provides a brief overview of and lost revenue from payload that can’t
ensure an airplane meets all of the flight planning and discusses ways that flight be carried. These variations are subject to
operational regulations for a specific flight, planning systems can be used to reduce airplane performance, weather, allowed
to give the flight crew information to help operational costs and help the environment. route and altitude structure, schedule
them conduct the flight safely, and to constraints, and operational constraints.
coordinate with air traffic control (ATC).
Flight planning fundamentals
Computerized systems for calculating
Optimizing flight plans
flight plans have been widely used for
A flight plan includes the route the crew will
decades, but not all systems are the
fly and specifies altitudes and speeds. It also While flight plan calculations are necessary
same. There are advantages to selecting
provides calculations for how much fuel the for safety and regulatory compliance, they
a more capable system and using all of
airplane will use and the additional fuel it also provide airlines with an opportunity for
its analytical and optimization capabilities.
will need to carry to meet various require­ cost optimization by enabling them to deter­
Using the flight planning process to reduce
ments for safety (see fig. 1). mine the optimal route, altitudes, speeds,
fuel not only saves money but also helps
By varying the route (i.e., ground track), and amount of fuel to load on an airplane.
the environment: carbon dioxide (CO2)
altitudes, speeds, and amount of departure Optimization can be challenging
emissions are directly proportional to fuel
fuel, an effective flight plan can reduce fuel because it involves a number of different
burn, with more than 20 pounds of CO2
costs, time-based costs, overflight costs, elements. An optimized flight plan must not
emitted per U.S. gallon of fuel burned.
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 Figure 1: Minimum information on an operational flight plan
By varying the parameters in a flight plan, flight planning systems can improve the efficiency of an airline’s operations.

COMPUTER FLIGHT PLAN

FUEL TIME
POA ZBAA 2 224000 10/31
ALT ZBTJ 006100 00/15 1 What speed to fly (possibly varying along
RESV 008500 00/30 the route)
CONT 011200 00/40
REQ 249800 11/56 2 How much fuel the airplane will burn
XTR 000000 00/00 (“trip fuel”)
TOT 3 249800 11/56 3 Total departure fuel, and how it is allocated –
fuel to alternate, contingency fuel, and other
KSEA..YVR J528 TRENA J488 UAB..YYD NCA34 YXY J515 FAI J502 OTZ B244 allocations that vary between airlines and
FRENK G902 ASBAT B337 URABI G212 DABMA W74 SABEM G332 GITUM GIT01A ZBAA 4 regulatory rules

FL 300/YVR 320/YYD 340/FRENK 348/BUMAT 381 5 4 What route (ground track) to fly
5 What profile (altitudes along the route) to fly

only take into account the correct physics Route Optimization that used fixed company routes in its
(i.e., airplane performance and weather) computer flight planning system. This
but also route restrictions from ATC and The best route to fly depends on the actual airline, which had 60 single-aisle airplanes,
all relevant regulatory restrictions. The conditions for each flight. These include the used fixed routes developed with historical
mathematical nature of these constraints forecast upper air winds and temperatures, winds and experience about ATC require­
and the overall size of the calculation the amount of payload, and the time-based ments. The study determined that using
combine to make it a challenging problem, costs that day. The time-based costs are routes optimized with the most recent
even by modern optimization standards. especially dynamic, driven by the value forecast winds, with numerical constraints
Some of the equations that describe the of the payload and the schedule and modeling ATC requirements, would save
behavior are nonlinear and noncontinuous, operational constraints for the crew and about 1 million U.S. gallons of fuel per year.
and the airplane state is dynamic (i.e., it the airplane. Winds can have a significant This, in turn, would reduce annual CO2
depends on how the airplane has gotten impact on the optimal route: it can be very emissions by about 20 million pounds.
to a specific point, not just where it is). As far from the great circle “direct” route (see
a result, tens to hundreds of thousands of fig. 3). Flight planning systems use wind
The importance of accuracy
individual calculations are required for a forecasts from the U.S. National Weather
single flight. Service and U.K. Meteorological Office,
Airlines can reduce fuel consumption and
An optimal flight planning scenario for updated every one to six hours, to include
costs by improving the accuracy of their
saving fuel and emissions involves calculat­ the winds in every flight plan calculation.
flight plans. The flight crew and dispatcher
ing multiple routes or operating approaches While nearly all computer flight planning
can elect to add fuel they think might be
for each flight, ranking these scenarios by systems can optimize routes, many airlines
needed to complete the flight as planned.
total cost, choosing the scenario that best still use fixed “company routes” most of the
But the heavier the airplane, the more fuel it
accomplishes the airline’s cost objectives, time. One reason adoption of dynamic
will burn, so adding extra fuel — which
and providing summaries of the other route optimization has been limited is that
adds weight — burns more fuel, increasing
scenarios for operational flexibility (see ATC organizations, overflight permissions,
both operating costs and emissions.
fig. 2). While the scenario chosen by the and company policies place restrictions on
Accurate flight plan calculations can
system might be used most of the time, rout­ing in certain areas. An effective flight
minimize the additional fuel the flight crew
dispatchers and operations managers at an planning system contains models of all
adds. Accurate calculations are the result
airline’s control center may choose another these restric­tions, which are then applied
of several factors that combine engineering
scenario to meet the airline’s operational as constraints in the numerical optimization
and information management. Some of the
goals, such as routing of airplanes, crews, process. This allows the flight plan to be
relevant factors require integration with
and passengers. Because they are often optimized with the dynamic data on winds,
other systems and data sources, both
making these decisions shortly before temperatures, and costs while still
within and outside an airline.
departure time, a user-friendly presentation complying with all restrictions.
For example, the basic airplane perfor­
of the relevant information is vital. One recent study by Boeing subsidiary
mance characteristics come directly from
Jeppesen considered the benefit of
manufacturer data, but must be modified
dynamic route optimization on an airline
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Figure 2: Optimal flight planning using
multiple routes for each flight
A user interface allows management of multiple
possible scenarios for a single flight.

1 2 3 4

1  Multiple routing scenarios displayed simultaneously  2  Scenario sort by fuel  3  Scenario sort by payload  4  Scenario sort by any computed field

by active master minimum equip­ment list/ defined by a percentage of flight time or An advanced flight planning system can
configuration deviation list data (available in planned fuel burn (varying by different reoptimize the flight plan while the airplane
an operator’s maintenance tracking sys­tem) regulators), can be reduced by splitting a is in flight. The airline’s operations center
and by measured devia­tions from base­line flight plan into two different calculations: has more information about weather and
data, available from Boeing Airplane Perfor­ one from the departure airport to an airport traffic far ahead of the airplane, as well as
mance Monitoring software. Up-to-the-minute that is closer than the intended destination, the dynamic costs associated with other
payload predictions require integration with and another from a decision point on the flights (related to crew, airplane, and
the reservation system, and time-based route of flight to the planned destination. passenger connections), so the flight
cost prediction is most accurate when it is Each calculation requires contingency fuel planning system can find better solutions
integrated with operational control and crew over its entire distance, but each is less than the flight crew working with the flight
tracking systems. Integration with convec­ than the total that would be required for the management computer (FMC) alone. The
tive weather and air traffic delay pre­dictions entire flight to the planned destination. The new route and latest forecast winds can be
helps to accurately predict possible air­borne actual flight must carry the greater of the uplinked directly to the FMC, minimizing
delays or deviations, rather than using rough contingency fuels for the two scenarios. crew workload.
guesses. Because an inte­grated, properly The optimal flight plan places the
tuned flight planning system increases the decision point in a location where the
Trends in flight planning
accuracy of calculations used to develop contingency fuels for the two scenarios are
flight plans, flight crews and dispatchers will exactly equal; moving it in either direction
Airspace design and regulations are chang­
feel confident reducing the amount of extra increases the fuel required for one scenario
ing all the time, sometimes quite rapidly.
fuel they request. or the other. While some general guidelines
Some recent innovations include continuous
Further study of the airline described in exist for a good location of the decision
descent approaches, high-altitude redesign
the “Route Optimization” section found that point, a flight planning system can calculate
in the western United States, and new U.S.
it carried an average of 300 U.S. gallons of the optimal location automatically — and it
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
extra fuel per flight. Analysis showed that can vary dramatically based on the relative
extended-range twin-engine operational
the airline could save an additional million locations of all the airports (see fig. 4).
performance standards (ETOPS) rules.
U.S. gallons of fuel per year by cutting that
(Boeing can help operators make sure
amount in half.
Dynamic Airborne Replanning they’re defining all of their ETOPS parame­
ters and fuel analyses correctly.) These are in
Optimal Redispatch Decision Point Winds, temperature, convective weather, addition to less recent changes, such as the
and ATC congestion have a sizeable introduction of a reduced vertical separation
Another way to decrease total fuel carried impact on the optimal 4D path for an minimum in different parts of the world.
is to reduce international contingency fuel airplane. Over the course of a long flight, However, not all operators can take
required by using a redispatch technique. this information can change significantly, advantage of the improvements right away
Contingency fuel (called “international and the predeparture flight plan may no because their flight planning software can­
reserve fuel” in the United States), which is longer be optimal. not be updated quickly enough. Those whose

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 Figure 4: Determining the optimal
redispatch decision point
On this flight from Denver to Tokyo, the optimal
decision point to redispatch changes based on
the relative location of all the airports. In this first
instance, the decision to turn back to Anchorage
is made after the airplane is over Russia. In the Anchorage
second instance, the redispatch decision point
occurs as the airplane approaches the coast of
Japan. The diversion city is Sapporo.
Optimum decision
point for Anchorage
Diversion Path

Diversion Cities
Sapporo Optimum decision
point for Sapporo

Denver
Tokyo

Figure 3: Forecast winds must be software is ready could take full advantage cost, however, is not independent for a
considered to find the optimal route of the innovations, immediately reducing single flight, but related to the decisions
This flight from Jakarta to Honolulu illustrates their fuel consumption and operating costs. made for all an airline’s flights because the
that a wind-optimal flight path may be far Further route, altitude, and speed cost for passengers, crew, and the airplane
from the great circle. This route is 11 percent
optimi­za­tion will be made possible by 4D itself to arrive at a specific time depends on
longer than a great circle route, but is 2 percent
faster and uses 3 percent less fuel. trajectory-based approaches, such as the when their next flights will depart — which,
Next Generation Air Transportation System, in turn, depends on when all other flights
which is the FAA’s plan to modernize the arrive. By combining the different operational
national airspace system through 2025, decisions and optimizing them together,
and the Single European Sky Air Traffic better solutions that factor in all of the dif­
Manage­ment Research Programme fer­ent costs and constraints can be attained.
(SESAR). Ongoing research goes beyond
compliance with new approaches,
Summary
identifying oppor­tunities for improved
optimization that build on the changes to
Honolulu Accurate, optimized flight plans can save
the global traffic management system.
airlines millions of gallons of fuel every
Companies such as Jeppesen are also
year — without forcing the airlines to com­
working on improved optimization scenar­
Jakarta promise their schedules or service. Airlines
ios designed to minimize fuel consumption,
can realize their benefits by investing in
operational cost, and emissions. For
a higher-end flight planning system with
instance, Jeppesen is developing a new
advanced optimization capabilities and
optimization objective function for its
then ensuring accuracy by comparing flight
flight planning system that is based on an
plan values to actual flight data, identifying
atmospheric impact metric developed by
the cause of discrepancies, and using this
Optimized Route airplane design researchers at Stanford
information to update the parameters used
Great Circle University, taking many emission products
in the flight plan calculation.
into account, rather than just minimizing
Current research in flight planning
fuel as a means to minimize CO2.
system development ensures that flight
Another future trend in flight planning
planning systems take full advantage
optimization is a close integration with
of airspace and air traffic management
other airplane operations efforts, such as
liberalization and work together with other
disruption recovery, integrated operations
airline operations systems to produce the
control, and collaborative air traffic man­
best overall solutions.
agement. Current systems can already pick
For more information, please contact
optimal cost index speeds if the cost of
Steve Altus at steve.altus@jeppesen.com. 
arriving at different times is available. This
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