Course correction: flight management systems

Aviation 2030 series

13 August 2024

8 min read

Innovation in flight navigation can deliver much-needed changes in efficiency and environmental impact. Chris Brown and our Strategy team explain how below.

Aviation: your software needs an update

At a time when most sectors of the economy are being redefined by innovation, many passengers would probably be surprised to learn how little Flight Management Systems (FMS) have changed since their introduction in the 80s. In 1982, when the Boeing 767 became the first commercial aircraft to go into service equipped with a FMS, the most advanced supercomputers in the world would have underperformed the average smartphone of today.

Yet many flight systems in use in 2024 are based on similar fundamental technology and architecture to those early deployments, despite the enormous advances that have occurred in the intervening years.

Modern computing and connectivity solutions allow for huge enhancements to flight management capabilities, in the form of more accurate and dynamic flight path adjustments, real-time weather analyses, and predictive maintenance.

Touchscreen and voice recognition technologies permit more intuitive and streamlined user interfaces for pilots. Such upgrades have the potential not only to bolster efficiency through reduced flight times and fuel burn, but to raise a pilot’s situational awareness and reinforce passenger safety.

However, dense regulation, cost and operational implications, long aircraft lifespans and other factors have seen aviation lag other sectors on technology adoption in this critical area.

As specialists in the commercial models behind air traffic and aviation technology, KPMG sees opportunity here for innovators. Unsurprisingly, the startup scene is stepping in, with offerings from outfits such as Austria’s Flightkeys and the US’s SmartSky Networks, and notable innovations in the pipeline from established OEMs such as Thales’s next-gen FMS, PureFlyt, expected to be implemented in Airbus A320, A330, and A350 aircraft by 2026.

KPMG case study: Flightkeys

Austrian-based startup Flightkeys aims to ‘re-write the science of flight management for the 21st century’ with two next-generation flight planning solutions:

Loretta: advanced flightdeck assistant application designed to enhance pilot capabilities through real-time decision support. Leverages modern computing and the widespread availability of Electronic Flight Bags (EFBs) to provide route visualisations and on-device trajectory optimisation, aiming to improve situational awareness and cost efficiency during all phases of flight, reducing fuel burn and contrail formation.
FLIGHTKEYS 5D: advanced flight dispatching tool, leveraging cloud computing and real-time data integration to optimise flight trajectories in five dimensions: latitude, longitude, altitude, time, and cost. FLIGHTKEYS 5D uses Aeronautical Information Publication (AIP) data to enhance the accuracy and timeliness of flight planning, allowing for more precise and dynamic in-flight re-optimisation based on real-time information, helping to resolve potential conflicts as they unfold, improve overall airspace utilisation and reduce environmental impact.

Contrail management: an ESG lifeline

Flight optimisation takes on special relevance in the context of the sector’s ESG ambitions. Aviation is committed to decarbonise by 2050 and is desperately in need of solutions to demonstrate positive environmental intent.

The current discourse mostly focuses on reducing in-flight CO2 emissions through Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF), alongside emerging electric and hydrogen technologies, but these solutions remain niche and may take decades to scale effectively.

Reducing condensation trails, also known as contrails, which account for a large slice of the sector’s total inflight ‘effective radiative forcing’ impact (ERF), offers a far more immediate upside opportunity.

Whilst the exact scale of the effect contrails have on RFI is a matter of ongoing research and debate, few now doubt that it is significant: a range of studies, including by KPMG and Flightkeys, have estimated it to be well over half of aviation’s inflight radiative forcing.¹

Kpmg estimated co2e breakdown from across aviation today

A simple fix: advanced flight planning systems

The good news for the industry is that much of aviation’s contrail impact is addressable with relative ease, compared to other tailpipe emissions. Since contrails are far more likely to form under particular atmospheric conditions (namely higher levels of moisture), all flights have to do is adjust their paths to avoid such conditions.

Upgraded FMS therefore offer the sector a golden opportunity for genuine green proactivity that goes far beyond the tokenism the industry is often accused of. And with the EU requiring non-CO2 impact reporting from 2025, airlines have every reason to grasp the nettle.

New data have helped clarify the extent to which such methods can mitigate contrail formation – and at what cost. The flight changes themselves need not be a huge operational challenge; previous research has suggested that the large majority of contrail warming is caused by only a small fraction of flights: as low as 2%.²

Thus, though targeted flights may face a fuel burn penalty for rerouting, it is likely to be trivial – Ian Poll, past President of the Royal Aeronautical Society and Emeritus Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Cranfield University, has suggested a figure not more than +0.5%.

More recently, Flightkeys has sought to flesh out such estimates with a study into the feasibility and cost of contrail avoidance within a commercial flight planning system. The study, published in March 2024, simulated contrail avoidance on almost 85,000 flights during the first two weeks of June 2023 and the first two weeks of January 2024, enabling high-accuracy estimates of additional cost and fuel investments required by operators to mitigate contrail-energy forcing.

The results implied that navigational contrail avoidance to achieve a climate forcing reduction of 73% would require negligible additional costs (+0.08%) and fuel burn (0.11%). Significantly, only around 14% (11,620) of flights were identified as likely to generate net warming contrails, of which 10,911 were rerouted successfully. For these, the flight time actually decreased on average due to a tendency to adjust flight trajectories to lower altitudes.

This study further consolidates the growing evidence base around the feasibility of building contrail avoidance models into commercial flight planning systems, and demonstrates that such models can be used for meaningful contrail optimisation with only minimal fuel consumption and cost increase.

No time like the present

As the pace of technological change increases, innovation in flight navigation systems offers a timely opportunity for airlines to engineer a step change in operational efficiency and environmental sustainability. In a sector struggling for profitability and environmental wins, developing and adopting such solutions looks more and more like a necessity rather than a luxury.

To conclude, we highlight some key takeaways by player type.

Contrail mitigation technologies are an opportunity for airlines to reduce their environmental impact quickly, and are both operationally feasible and cheap.
The evidence base around contrail impact and mitigation is growing, implying that the vast majority of contrail impact can be mitigated through rerouting only a small percentage of flights.
Effective contrail mitigation requires next-gen flight management systems, such as that offered by Flightkeys, that allow for real-time conditions analysis and rerouting. Such systems offer other benefits such as enhanced operational efficiency and safety.
Engaging with policymakers now will allow airlines to shape the regulatory approach to contrail reduction and its treatment as part of industry emissions-reduction strategy (e.g. the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme).
Airlines can work with research partners to understand their specific contrail-related warming impact and its place in overall operational impact.

Innovations like the Flightkeys 5D system may help ANSPs manage higher traffic volumes with the same or even improved levels of safety and efficiency, since they allow for real-time optimisation of flight trajectories and more flexible and responsive air traffic management.
Advanced flight planning systems have the potential to improve coordination between pilots and ATC, leading to precision, efficiency, and safety gains.
Optimised flight paths can reduce fuel costs, emissions and contrail warming, helping ANSPs to contribute to more sustainable aviation practices.
Advanced flight planning systems provide real-time decision support tools that enhance situational awareness for both pilots and air traffic controllers, which should allow for more informed and timely decision-making.
Innovations in flight planning systems align with broader initiatives like NextGen in the United States and SESAR in Europe, which aim to modernise air traffic management and enhance efficiency and safety in air travel.
Advanced flight planning technologies offer ANSPs an opportunity to future-proof their operations against increasing air traffic demands and evolving regulatory requirements.

Have a key role to play in updating regulatory standards to accommodate the new capabilities of advanced flight planning systems, including establishing guidelines for the certification and integration of these systems into existing aviation frameworks, and harmonising these regulations internationally to ensure consistent standards and interoperability of FMS technologies globally.
Policymakers may consider incentivising adoption of advanced flight planning systems in the context of broader environmental policies and goals.
Integrating advanced flight planning systems into national and international sustainable aviation policies can help achieve targets for reducing the aviation industry’s carbon footprint, especially when contrail impact is included in industry impact estimates.
Governments can support relevant R&D in this opportunity-rich area through grants, subsidies, and public-private partnerships.
Governments can promote collaboration between relevant stakeholders, including airlines, ANSPs, and technology providers, to foster innovation and implementation of advanced flight planning technologies.