LONDON – GE and Qantas have collaborated on many domains. With gas prices rising, Qantas approached GE an expert in pioneering green technology, on data-driven collaboration with air traffic stakeholders to aid airlines to burn less fuel and spew out fewer emissions.

GE also offers solutions to the Australian national carrier, including flight path designs with Airspace insight which accelerates fuel savings initiative. 

What is Airspace Insight?

Airspace Insight, developed by GE is designed to aid and identify airspace gridlocks which reduce inefficiencies and will reduce overall total flight time.

This will have a positive impact on external societal domains, such as reducing carbon emissions, whereby a typical flight emits 900 to 1,000 kg worth of excess carbon dioxide per flight, due to highly inefficient airspace and air traffic compositions.

Airspace Insight thus is one of the pioneering tools to allow all stakeholders to collaborate among others. Stakeholders include Air Traffic Control (ATC), airlines, airports, airspace designers, and communities).

These parties will work together in harmony to identify anomalies and inefficiencies in day-to-day operations in the airspace.

Importantly, they will also need to point out inefficiencies in airspace, and at the same time, advise aircraft upon environmentally sensitive areas, to tackle air and noise pollution respectively. 

How this will benefit Qantas? 

The insight program will allow Qantas to better understand its situational awareness in its operating airspace.

This is advantageous, as Qantas will be able to point out the discrepancies in their flight plan, and will use this to adjust their flight plan accordingly to enhance safety, efficiency, and competitiveness.

Qantas will have access to information and will further better improve Qantas’s already world’s leading safety program with data to coordinate with air traffic management services accordingly.

This could be used worldwide. Significantly, these data will aid Qantas to shave off carbon dioxide and other harmful pollutants to the atmosphere, such as other Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, while at the same time maintaining optimal operations efficiency and reducing noise footprint respectively. GE’s data will be most helpful in crucial phases of flight, such as climbing and descending profiles in and out of airfields. 

Moreover, GE and Qantas will not act alone, its Airspace Insight module will also be integrating with local Navigation Services to pave way for the airline to fly misally in congested airspace, from off-block time to engine shut down time.

The airline expects to receive tremendous in the fields of eliminating circling, side-step, and non-precision procedures; providing lateral and vertical guidance to every runway end; promoting wind-aligned operations; accounting for non-normal and rare-normal conditions, reducing pilot and controller workload; providing guidance through complex terrain scenarios, and increasing track predictability.

Apart from the advantages working towards the airline’s favour, passengers will also benefit from the decreased flight times. 

Andrew Coleman, General Manager of GE Digital’s Aviation Software business stated:  “The only way to get the kind of acceleration we need to hit our sustainability and efficiency goals is to put data to work.”

“That data is already available in flight operations and in the flight itself. Innovators like Qantas are constantly looking to improve their flight experience for passengers and identify opportunities to drive change in their business and in the industry.”

“We are honored to work with them toward those goals.”