Fuel Savings Driven by Flight Operations Insights

A Flight Operations client sought to create a data-driven fuel savings program that would maximize the outcomes from various fuel efficiency initiatives, but didn’t have the resources to organize and manage the complex parameters and calculations of flight fuel consumption. The analytics team spent 90% of their time chasing and cleaning data from disconnected systems and only 10% of their time doing the advanced analytics necessary to unlock new fuel strategies. Furthermore, the most in-depth analysis of fuel usage data often required weeks to perform and assemble. Such analysis periods generated numerous optimization ideas, but to put them in practice, the team needed the ability to reproduce data transformations and applied analytics in an automated fashion. Their goal was to reduce the time they spent configuring data and increase the time they spent generating and disseminating insights to support daily decisions that would lead to real-world impact.

The client partnered with BKS Consulting to simplify and consolidate real-time data feeds from major operational data sources, including weight and balance systems, flight planning systems, operational control systems, and ACARS messages. A departmental analytical sandbox was deployed inside the client’s data warehouse alongside the data layer so that the analytics team could prototype and test business rules, parameters, and calculations that could later be easily promoted into the department’s continuous fuel savings program.

Moving from a Fuel-Analysis Project to a Sustainable Fuel-Savings Program

The resulting Operations Data Layer created a single, standardized data source for high-value information such as fuel consumption, APU usage, and taxi behavior that enabled rapid analysis across tens of thousands of historical flights to identify efficiency opportunities. Simultaneously, the data layer provided monitoring of the same information and derived metrics across the airline’s current daily operations, which allowed the team to monitor whether fuel strategies were accomplishing their goals.

Within two months of deployment, BKS Consulting’s client used its new Operations Data Layer to develop a fuel redispatch program that yielded unprecedented savings—savings that paid back one month of the client’s BKS consulting expense in a single day of operations. 

BKS and the client created an environment that freed up the team to begin acting on years worth of efficiency ideas queued up, waiting on data. In addition to measurable fuel savings, BKS ultimately delivered a new approach to BI development and delivery that gave the client the confidence to become a more data-driven operation. Today, the Operations Data Layer continues to empower the client to leverage big data for big savings.