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by travisjungroth 2298 days ago
Not obviously, but it could be. Reducing idling time and improving routes both increase fuel efficiency without changing the airplane. Maybe software could help with those.

Edit: my reply was to the original comment which was something like "how is this a software problem?"
1 comments
spaceandshit 2298 days ago
> Reducing idling time and improving routes both increase fuel efficiency without changing the airplane

Do you think idling time is a software problem? Aircraft idle for various time based on other requirements and needs, for example, spooling up the engines or inerting the fuel tanks.

Routes are already optimized by air traffic for the fastest, and cheapest route. They have no incentive to increase flight times as there would be fewer aircraft flying then.

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travisjungroth 2298 days ago
Software can't fix aircraft idling, but maybe it can help. And ATC has the final say on routes for IFR aircraft (except emergencies), but there are a thousand VFR airplanes in the air right now. I think it's possible we can do better than GPS direct.

I don't have a solution for either of these things, just enough intuition as a pilot and software engineer to say "maybe there's something there".

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