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

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.

This is actually the 6th patent obtained by Safety Line, including a related patent in 2015 for OptiClimb, a solution that optimises the climb phase thanks to machine learning performance models for each tail, an innovative technology exclusive to Safety Line.

According to Pierre Jouniaux, Safety Line’s Founder & CEO, “Certain pilots would comment that they had access to user-friendly applications on their smartphones to identify shortcuts when driving their cars, but no equivalent in the cockpit. This has now been corrected thanks to OptiDirect”.

“Transavia is proud to be an innovation partner to Safety Line, and as such, to have been the launch customer for both OptiClimb and OptiDirect. We are very pleased with this new patent, which comes as a fruit of our cooperation” says Emmanuel Cachia, VP Flight Operations at Transavia France.

Jean Fernandez, VP Flight Operations at Air France adds: “I would like to congratulate Safety Line for this new patent. OptiDirect, which our pilots have been using since January 2020, aligns perfectly with our continued efforts towards implementing more eco-flying solutions and contributes to our sustainability commitments”.