Speaking to the forum’s 250+ participants, he declared the Initiative will bring much needed help for airspace users operating in a complex continental environment.
For the airlines, with the airlines
The Flight Efficiency Initiative establishes mutual coordination and consultation processes between aircraft operators, computer flight plan service providers (CFSPs), Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) and the Network Manager.
It responds to the need to help meet the environment and flight efficiency targets set in the Performance Framework of the Single European Sky (SESII) on a network level and to support airspace users in operating more efficient routes.
Concretely, the objective of the Flight Efficiency Initiative is to offer aircraft operators the most efficient routes on the day of the operations.
With thorough, accurate and detailed knowledge of the route network capacity, the Network Manager is ideally placed to promote flight efficiency. It has access to the most recent weather reports, the latest updates on the ATFCM situation (military activities, last-minute openings ad closure of routes) as well as information on aircraft operators’ flight planning policies and operating procedures.
As it is able to make highly dynamic use of the network, the Network Manager can offer users routing proposals which have the potential to make significant operational gains and fuel savings which in turn contribute to environmental gains.
The Flight Efficiency Initiative also contributes to strategic and continuous improvement of the airline operator’s route catalogue. As operational improvements emerge, flight plans can be adapted to make use of them.
These flight efficiency procedures and functionalities are part of the Network Manager’s operational systems which support the automatic processing of re-routing proposals for the airspace users.
The Flight Efficiency Initiative is technically enabled by a dynamic route generator and an automatically maintained catalogue of past flown routes. The routes are evaluated according to subjective cost criteria provided by the airline operators - such as flying time costs, fuel costs and the cost of ATFCM delays.