Why Your Airline Needs Digital Fuel Management — 4 Success Stories!

This article probably illustrates the most important purposes of introducing digital fuel management at airlines: Powerful, real-life examples that have been achieved by airlines worldwide. And hopefully, a small glimmer of hope on how airlines can progress during these testing times.

When we started to develop our digital fuel management solution, we had a clear vision. First, we wanted to establish a truly digital fueling process characterized by efficiency and speed. Second, we wanted to create the biggest fuel network on earth — connecting airlines and fuel providers on every airport worldwide.

During the last five years, we made incredible progress in terms of realizing this vision. Many renowned airlines already use our digital fuel management software, and we’ve been able to connect 45 airports to our network.

Digital Fuel Management — Here’s What Our Airline Clients Told Us

That’s why we thought it’s the perfect time to ask our clients for some feedback. What are the success stories they’ve written with our solution? How did they improve? How much did they save?

For this article, we put together four of the most remarkable and inspiring success stories. Unfortunately, we can’t provide you with the airline name for all of the stories due to privacy policy. However, if you want to know more about specific success, stories just get in touch with us. We can also forward your inquiry to the respective airline.

Reducing Fuel-Delays Down To Zero!

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Airline Type: Network Carrier
Location: Europe
Achieved Year: 2015 — ongoing

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Let’s start with one of my favorite and most impressive success stories at the same time. Delay costs represent one of the most significant cost factors for airlines. In 2018 FAA estimated the annual costs of delays (the direct cost to airlines and passengers, lost demand, and indirect costs) to be $28 billion. You could buy ~150 brand-new A350 aircraft or fund NASA’s next moon mission.

Of course, with digital fuel management, airlines can’t get rid of delays entirely. However, fuel-related delays seem to be a thing of the past. That’s why we are fascinated that one of our clients came up with data about reducing fuel-related delays after introducing digital fuel management.

In general, the airline has been able to reduce fuel-related delays — especially at outstations significantly. The most impressive result has been achieved at their outstation in Amsterdam (AMS). Before operating the digital fuel process, fuel-related delays accounted for 2% of all AMS airport delays.

Right from the beginning, the airline was able to observe a constant reduction of these delays. After operating the platform for one week, the number of fuel-related delays dropped to 0%. And even more critical, the airline was able to maintain this level constantly.

Speeding Up The Process: 25% Time Savings!

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Airline Type: Network Carrier
Location: Europe
Achieved Year: 2016 — ongoing

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When I started my aviation career (back in 2003 at Frankfurt Airport) it was the first thing I learned: Planes only earn money when flying! Therefore, turnaround processes must be as efficient as possible. And of course, that’s why every airline is trying to reduce the turnaround time to an utmost minimum.

With digital fuel management, one of our clients reduced the required time for fueling massively. After introducing the digital fuel management solution, the airline started to analyze turnaround data. As a result, the airline was able to observe a reduction in fueling-process time of 25%.
The illustration below provides the details.

	Traditional Process	Digital Fuel Process
8:27	Aircraft arrives on block	Aircraft arrives on block
8:30		Min. Block Fuel received
8:32	Truck arrives at aircraft	Truck arrives at aircraft
8:40		Final Block Fuel Received
8:48	Fuel verbally ordered / fuel flow starts
8:52		Fueling completed and eTicket generated
8:53		Acknoewledgement
9:00		Truck leaves aircraft
9:01	Fueling finished and delivery slip generated
9:03	Signature received
9:11	Truck leaves aircraft
	44 Minutes	33 Minutes

Double-Digit Saving Through Improved Data Quality

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Airline Type: Regional Carrier
Location: Europe
Achieved Year: 2017 — ongoing

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First off, I have to admit we never had that success story in mind when we started with our digital fuel management solution. However, obviously and quite logically, digitizing an airline’s fuel process has an immense (positive) impact on downstream processes.

Here’s the problem we solved: When operating a traditional fueling process, the manual work reflected a massive source for mistakes and errors. This, especially, account for invoices and receipts. Regularly these documents reflected wrong uplift figures, wrong flight numbers, etc.
As a result, intensive quality checks were necessary to identify and correct these mistakes.

Digital Fuel Management eliminates manual process and the risk of wrong invoices

With digital fuel management, an airline achieves two major benefits in that context. First, due to an immense rise in data quality, there’s no longer a need for additional (extensive) quality checks. Second, the airline eliminates the risk of wrong invoices and ultimately false (too high) payments.

Our client, a European regional carrier, did the math after one year and calculated savings. The result was impressive. They were able to save a high double-digit amount.

A No-Brainer That Saves Up To $1 Million — Annually!

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Airline Type: Network Carrier
Location: Europe
Achieved Year: 2017 — ongoing

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“Why doesn’t every airline use that?” One of the questions I’m asked most when talking about this success story. An excellent question because this saving measure is a no-brainer par excellence. Although I have to admit it doesn’t work for every airline.

Here’s how it work. The entire cost savings are based on a fuel management functionality we like to call the “NFX Indicator.” This powerful functionality continuously calculates whether refueling is required at the destination airport or not. The calculation starts before take-off and continues during the entire flight. In case refueling is not required (tankering flight) it allows sending a message out of the cockpit directly to the fuel provider. That’s it. The story ends here.

You may ask, “how does this help to achieve savings?”
Well, as the heading says, it’s a no-brainer. Usually, fuel providers send a fuel truck to every aircraft simply because they don’t know whether refueling is required or not. The problem is: Even if you’re on a tankering flight, the availability of the fuel truck costs money.

Accordingly, by sending out the no fuel message to the fuel provider, you avoid provisioning costs. Simple as that. Now, the savings potential, of course, relates to the amount of tankering flights you operate.

For our client, it was probably one of the fastest ROIs ever achieved. They operate quite a considerable amount of daily tankering flights. Therefore, the annual savings reached almost $1 Million.

Your Opinion About Airline Fuel Management!

Always happy to discuss this further. Just hit me up on Twitter or get in touch with me on LinkedIn.

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