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Start-up Safety Line obtained a patent for its OptiDirect solution which is already operational on all Air France and Transavia flights with the aim to enable airlines to save more fuel and further reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

Airline Flight Plans are often very constrained and do not always follow the shortest or most optimal route, taking into account winds and temperatures encountered along the flight. Once the aircraft is at cruise level, pilots have the possibility to request to ATC to grant them a ‘direct route’ or shortcut to save time and fuel. However, until now, they did not really have any tools in the cockpit to know which shortcuts have been previously flown and how much fuel and time could be saved based on the weather conditions of the flight. Thanks to machine learning algorithms applied to historical flight data, OptiDirect will recommend shortcuts that have been flown before, with an indication of the time and fuel that could be saved, thereby enabling pilots to make more efficient requests to ATC. It works a bit like a “Waze” app for planes and allows the reduction of the environmental impact of air transport. The systematic exploration of trajectories also helps to reduce fuel consumption by 1%. This represents a worldwide economy of 3 million tonnes of kerosene – or 10 million tonnes of CO2”.