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Fuel efficiency and digital flight operations

How airlines cut fuel burn and errors with better planning, procedures and digital tools, and where flight operations are heading. Part 4 of the Performance and dispatch series.

By Aerospace Garage Desk · What's next · 50 minutes · 24 narrated pages

  1. Part 1 · Basics

    Mass and balance: loading an aircraft safely

  2. Part 2 · In practice

    Aircraft performance: take-off, climb and landing

  3. Part 3 · Managing it

    Flight planning and fuel policy

  4. Part 4 · What's next

    Fuel efficiency and digital flight operationsYou are here

Performance and dispatch · all 4 parts US$59 (save US$17) · See the Flight Path →

What you will be able to do

  • ✓ Explain why fuel is an airline's most watched number and how fuel efficiency is measured and reported.
  • ✓ Judge fuel-saving planning choices: cost index, data-driven contingency fuel and tankering.
  • ✓ Assess on-the-day procedures that save fuel, with their safety limits.
  • ✓ Explain how electronic flight bags and performance tools are approved, and how data-entry errors are caught.
  • ✓ Use flight data and analytics to find savings, and judge when they can be trusted.
  • ✓ Describe how new airspace concepts, new fuels and new aircraft will change dispatch.

Course content

Session 1 · Why fuel is the number that matters

1.1

  1. Fuel as cost and as emissions · free preview
  2. Where fuel is lost, gate to gate
  3. Measuring efficiency: per seat, per tonne-kilometre, and CORSIA reporting
  4. Worked example: reading a fuel-efficiency dashboard
Session 2 · Planning that saves fuel

1.2

  1. Cost index: trading time against fuel
  2. From fixed to data-driven contingency fuel
  3. Tankering: when carrying extra fuel pays, and its emissions cost
  4. From the investigation file: LaMia Flight 2933, fuel exhaustion near Medellín
Session 3 · Procedures on the day

1.3

  1. Single-engine taxi and reduced APU use
  2. Continuous climb and descent operations
  3. Weight, centre of gravity and fuel
  4. Worked example: the business case for a fuel-saving programme
Session 4 · Digital tools on the flight deck

1.4

  1. Electronic flight bags and performance apps: how they are approved
  2. Data-entry errors and the cross-checks that catch them
  3. Connected aircraft and in-flight route updates
  4. Worked example: cross-checking a take-off performance calculation
Session 5 · Flight operations by data

1.5

  1. Flight data monitoring for fuel
  2. Analytics and AI for route and fuel optimisation
  3. Trusting the numbers: data quality and governance
  4. Worked example: spotting outliers in a fleet fuel report
Session 6 · The horizon

1.6

  1. Sustainable fuels and what they change for dispatch
  2. Trajectory-based operations and free-route airspace
  3. Contrail avoidance, and dispatch for electric and hydrogen aircraft
  4. Worked example: building a 2030 fuel roadmap for an airline

Upskill courses are for professional development and are not approved by any aviation authority. Learner Terms

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