Martinair Saves Fuel with Honeywell Forge Flight Efficiency

Moving a million tons of cargo is a big job that requires big airplanes. That’s why Martinair Cargo, one of the world’s premier cargo airlines, flies a fleet that includes four Boeing 747-400 Freighters, specially equipped to carry the big loads.

Plus-sized aircraft like the 747 burn lots of fuel, too, but Martinair gives flight crews key analytical tools to allow them to create advanced calculations to help reduce fuel consumption, improve operational efficiency and shrink the cargo carrier’s impact on the environment. Meet Honeywell Forge Flight Efficiency.

Honeywell Forge Flight Efficiency is a powerful fuel-efficiency tool and much more. It’s a versatile software platform providing a single true source of real-time and historical data so pilots and others can make fact-based decisions impacting fuel use, flight efficiency, flight planning and other operational processes.

“Martinair needed a tool that could give us essential information on fuel efficiency without a lot of time consuming manual efforts,” said André de Chauvigny de Blot, Manager of Flight Technical Support for Martinair. “We’re using Honeywell Forge Flight Efficiency to track all our fuel-savings initiatives. It’s a powerful tool that every airline should have.”

Honeywell Forge Flight Efficiency has definitely helped the airline improve overall fuel efficiency, he added. “It enables us to monitor and manage our key performance indicators like discretionary fuel and cost-index adherence. Our 2021 savings were well above our target, amounting to 245,000 kg of fuel for our 747 fleet of four aircraft.”

Flight crews play a critical role in Martinair’s fuel-efficiency initiatives; so last August, the airline worked with Honeywell to introduce a pilot engagement program to provide easier access to flight efficiency information before and during a flight. This gives flight crews the ability to balance fuel savings with on- time performance and keeps them apprised of the effects that choices, like increasing airspeed, have on fuel efficiency.

“We constantly inform our pilots about fuel savings initiatives, so they have the information they need to make the best possible decisions on things like the need to take on additional fuel,” de Chauvigny de Blot said. “The pilot engagement program gives them direct access to real-time information about specific city pairs, statistical contingency fuel, delays, holdings, go-around and other things that may affect fuel burn.”

Fuel savings is a critical goal unto itself, but reducing fuel burn also helps the airline, which is part of Air France-KLM’s strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. “Our Fuel Management Board constantly reviews our sustainability performance,” de Chauvigny de Blot said. “We are committed to achieving the sustainability goals set out by AFKLM. In addition to improving fuel efficiency, we’ve started to add sustainable aviation fuel for all our flights.”