Thanks all.
Here's the future as I see it:
The daily flightplan load is auto-generated, fed by the flight schedule; the FPS auto-reads WX, NOTAMS, RAD, etc. and produces FPLs based on found limitations and the usual company criteria (fuel policy, CI, alternate selection policy, MEL, statistical additional fuel, statistical taxi fuels, etc.).
Auto-check with CFMUs for instance (just to be sure), calculations NOT based on tables, laterally and vertically optimised for winds, temps and enroute charges, random routing of course (manual route building disappeard by the end of the last century, didn't it?).
Where defined parameters are exceeded, Flight Dispatch is notified and is then required to take action, otherwise no input is required.
Fuel prices are updated constantly, as are the sector-specific costs-of-time, resulting in optimised route-specific CIs.
The process is first done 24 hours prior to the actual flights and relevant information is auto-distributed to key stakeholders in the OCC such as Flight Dispatch, Load Control, Commercial, Crew Control, Movement Control, etc. in order to tweak where required and enter an operational day being aware of possible weak points in the daily flight program.
The same process is repeated on the actual day of operation, and this time Flight Dispatch releases, resulting in auto-send to remote briefing (email, print, hotel, airport, agent or ACARS). Not many flight dispatchers on shift either.
Where blocktimes deviate from schedule (expected departure delay, required ETA, etc.) schedule updates auto-generate new FPLs with newly optimised CIs resulting in newly required flight times.
New CI calculations may change cruise levels, chosen routing, etc, as impact of winds, temps, enroute charges versus the cost of time/cost of fuel equation have a different impact.
As the FPS philosophy is about presenting information rather than being an input-output tool, it is simplicity itself- an uncluttered dashboard providing intuitive graphical feedback on a flight, a fleet, a sector, etc. with intuitive interactive input tools to manipulate output (e.g. sliders).
Several layers provide the usual weather, geographical and other information of course.
One can go further and integrate FPS, DCS and other more-or-less stand-alone systems (fuel MI, performance, NAV, comms) as modules into an integrated environment, providing easy access to information by users across the flight support/execution spectrum.
Dynamic (4D) CI calculations; only f:wz comes close I think.
A very large US airline selected this system after a 2-year market evaluation.
V&L optimised versus non-optimised flightplans (RPLs being the worst example) will save an airline millions in fuel; optimised fuel load, on-time arrivals, optimised delay-cost management, the list goes on.
Graflite, Lido, Skytrack, JetPlan, etc., even after manually entering a new ballpark CI value (guessing its effect on flighttime), only the cruise speed changes, routes are not newly vertically & lateraly optimised. I could be wrong there- feedback please.
Coffee, anyone?
Cheers- Max
