PANASONIC AVIONICS ANNOUNCES CONNECTED FUEL SAVING SOLUTIONS WITH SAFETY LINE AND AIR AUSTRAL

Hamburg, Germany – 11 April, 2018 – Panasonic Avionics Corporation (Panasonic); Safety Line; and Air Austral, one of the main airlines serving the Indian Ocean, today announced an agreement to provide fuel saving solutions for the carrier’s narrowbody and widebody aircraft.

As a first step, Air Austral will implement Safety Line’s OptiClimb solution on all aircraft in its fleet, which will allow the carrier to save up to six percent of fuel during ascent by delivering optimized climb profiles to pilots ahead of each flight.

The optimization process leverages historical flight data and combines machine learning performance models for each aircraft together with accurate 4D weather gradients throughout the climb.

In parallel to implementing OptiClimb, Air Austral has also agreed to test Safety Line’s OptiCruise and OptiDescent solutions. These utilise Safety Line’s on-board OptiFlight App together with Panasonic’s connectivity to provide real-time flight recommendations taking into account the latest weather forecasts.

This test campaign is a major step forward in the strategic partnership between Panasonic and Safety Line which was first announced in November 2016 and is geared towards delivering connected fuel saving solutions to airline customers.

“Air Austral looks forward to saving fuel and reducing the carbon footprint of both our narrowbody and widebody operations. We are also very excited in partnering with Panasonic Avionics and Safety Line to test and validate innovative fuel saving solutions that will benefit the industry as a whole,” said Olivier Jay, Head of Flight Operations at Air Austral.

“Combining our strategic partnership with Panasonic Avionics, one of the major players in aviation, and the agility of Air Austral, who operate a modern and well-equipped fleet allows us to accelerate our innovation process in ways we could only dream of,” said Pierre Jouniaux, CEO of Safety Line.

“Our partnership with Safety Line allows us to leverage our connectivity solutions towards unique fuel saving solutions much appreciated by our airline customers,” said Jeff Sare, Vice President of Corporate Planning and Business Development for Panasonic Avionics. “We knew we had a perfect fit when we decided to introduce Air Austral to Safety Line for testing our joint solutions.”