Airlines adopt NASA technology to save fuel and time

Earlier this month, NASA announced that Alaska Airlines and Virgin America are adopting its technology in order to improve fuel consumption rates and efficiency in the air. The agency said the adoption of its Traffic Aware Planner (TAP) application will help carriers make “traffic aware strategic aircrew requests” (TASAR), allowing for changes to route plans in real-time to make flying more efficient and save on fuel. 

TAP connects to a plane’s avionics information hub, by which the software is able to read the position and altitude of the craft, planned flight route, and other data including potential hazards and obstacles. Then NASA’s software searches for a better route or altitude changes which could save both fuel and time, before sending these suggestions to the flight crew.

NASA’s software can also be connected to the plane’s Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) receiver and scan the ADS-B signals of nearby traffic to alert the crew to potential collisions or conflicts in proposed flight changes. That said, this gives air traffic controllers a better idea of what’s happening in the sky, and data in which they could either accept or deny a pilot’s route change request.

TAP can access real-time data pertinent to proposed flight changes, such as weather conditions, wind forecast updates, and restricted airspace status, if a plane is equipped with Internet connectivity.

TASAR project lead at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, David Wing, said “The system is meant to help pilots make better route requests that air traffic controllers can more often approve. This should help pilots and controllers work more effectively together and reduce workload on both sides from un-approvable requests.”

According to Wing, TASAR takes advantage of NASA's state-of-the-art TAP software, flight information directly from the aircraft, and the emerging ADS-B and Internet infrastructure to help pilots get approved to fly the most efficient or time-saving trajectory possible.

Currently the software has been piloted aboard a Piaggio P180 Avanti aircraft, and after being granted a route change request, the pilot was able to save four minutes off the flight time from Virginia to Kentucky.

If results such as these could be mimicked across a full fleet, they could save an airline in fuel costs and time.

Source: ZDNet