Digital Winglets™
Crowded skies, convective weather, winds aloft, preferred routing and latent data—the list of flight constraints is almost endless. But despite these obstacles, APiJET’s Digital Winglets™ software enables the next breakthrough in airline emissions, fuel and flight time savings demonstrated through actual commercial flights at over 1.75% on average.
Today’s Issue
Airline flight plans are generated using the best information available, but static flight plan data can quickly become stale by departure time since the operating environment is complex and dynamic. Weather, winds, turbulence, conflicting traffic, etc. are constantly changing and with limited tools to assess these changes in real-time, pilots and dispatchers can lose sight of operational efficiency opportunities.
Our Solution
Digital Winglets™ is a flight optimization application that presents alternate route options to pilots for maximizing fuel and time savings during a flight. The application identifies changing operating constraints in real time, while a NASA-developed algorithm scans 500-800 routes per minute, enabling Digital Winglets to provide its optimized options with the highest probability of Air Traffic Control (ATC) acceptance.
APiJET’s Digital Winglets™ software automatically ingests real-time data including aircraft state, weather, winds aloft, airspace constraints, traffic, and high-resolution aircraft performance models. Using these inputs, Digital Winglets™ actively searches hundreds of new trajectories utilizing actual conditions and recommends the most optimal route to pilots, directly resulting in fuel and/or flight time savings. These recommendations have the highest probability of Air Traffic Control (ATC) acceptance and yield the largest savings. The resulting most efficient routing is displayed on the pilot EFBs.
Aircraft Data
Acquires and incorporates state data from the aircraft data buses using the APiJET’s Smart Aircraft System
Polygons
Digital Winglets constructs polygons and treat these polygons as trajectory constraints avoiding areas such as convective weather, turbulence, special use airspace, or flight hazard areas that can be customer defined
Ground-Based Data Sources
Air Traffic Controller & Dispatch
Deconflicted Digital Winglets route recommendations coordinated with Dispatch have the greatest likelihood of ATC approval
Flight Deck – EFB interface example
Key Features
Data consolidation
Represents the most advanced, real-time trajectory optimization solution in existence; multiple data feeds are ingested and incorporated into new trajectory solutions driving new levels of efficiency
Weather Layers
While Digital Winglets™ is constantly updating and incorporating weather updates in the route optimization, the user can also select which weather layers to visually display
Advanced aircraft performance modeling
Unique aircraft performance models that address shortcomings with legacy tools and account for post-production changes in aircraft performance
Intuitive, easy-to-use User Interface (UI)
Operates on portable EFBs, iOS and Windows-based mobile devices and incorporates modern tablet functionality including smart keyboard, pinch-zoom and gesturing
Optimization options
Pilot selectable, based upon airline cost index, fuel or time savings
Reporting dashboard
View realized quantitative savings (time and fuel), percent usage, percent acceptance and other key performance indicators on a regular basis
Offline mode
Provides “offline mode” of operation when air-to-ground links are unavailable
Future Proof
Planned integrations include Eurocontrol NM and turbulence. APiJET’s Software as a Service model (SaaS) allows continuous expansion of regions, polygon inputs and weather sources without bulky system upgrades
Solution Benefits
Go Green – unlock emission reduction opportunities exceeding a half-ton or more per flight
Route Savings – Generates counterintuitive route savings opportunities for pilots and dispatchers
Reduced fuel costs – 1.75% average fuel savings demonstrated over multiple airlines
Improved safety and comfort – Avoid turbulence and weather events
Instant ATC feedback – Immediate assessment of ATC re-routes
Best option routing – Intelligent ‘best option’ rerouting around unplanned weather obstacles
Architecture
Real-time data into AI algorithms
Digital Winglets Architecture
APiJET Smart Aircraft System + Aircraft Data = Smarter Operations
Digital Winglets is powered by APiJET’s industry-leading Smart Aircraft System. APiJET’s Smart Aircraft System integrates existing aircraft operational data, IP communication links, and airline ground systems into a single, connected service that gets the right information, to the right place, at the right time. Our Digital Winglets solution leverages proprietary APiJET Actor™ technology to ingest aircraft and ground-based information, generate airline-configured polygons, perform real-time analytics, and provide optimized reroute options utilizing TASAR technology.
Digital Winglets (TASAR)
Uncover hidden fuel and flight time efficiencies with our Digital Winglets application which accounts for aircraft performance, flight constraints, and traffic considerations.
Turnaround Management
Combine predictive analytics with real-time aircraft data while integrating with your back-office systems to develop an enhanced situational awareness of the airline’s operations.
Aircraft Health Monitoring
Our AHM solution forwards time-critical data to ground systems for off-board triage, trend analysis, and predictive analytics.
Flight
Tracker
We integrate real-time aircraft position and telemetry with ground-based data feeds to create a comprehensive picture of the operating environment.
Smart
Aircraft
Leverage existing airline avionics, IP communication links, and ground systems to provide actionable insights and intelligence to the right stakeholders at the right time.