Qantas, GE crunch big data to cut costs and emissions

Australia's national airline Qantas and industrial services firm GE will crunch as many as ten billion data points from the wider aviation sector in a bid to reduce the carrier's fuel costs and carbon emissions.

Qantas is the launch partner for GE's fourth digital collaboration centre in Austin, Texas, the first of its kind in the United States. The GE facility will employ 100 data scientists, engineers, and software designers.

The pair expect to end up with more efficient take-offs and landings, as well as better predictions about how weather events will affect routes, as a result of work performed in the new centre.

They also hope to reduce Qantas' fuel bill - which came in at $3.2 billion in its most recent full financial year - along with carbon emissions.

Over 95 percent of Qantas' total emissions come from its use of jet fuel, and the carrier has committed to meet a target of 1.5 percent annual fuel reduction by 2020.

The companies have already started work building a mobile application that will give pilots access to fuel analytics data for more efficient flying.

Data collected from Qantas airplane engines, supplied by GE, will be collected and fed through GE's Predix industrial platform-as-a-service technology.

Practical use of the data in GE's other global other centres has included analysis of flight paths, replacement cycles, and engine optimisation, GE said in a statement today.

The partnership extends a deal signed last September between the pair for engine data analytics.

“We’ve seen that even small gains in fuel efficiency add up to big benefits and lower emissions when you multiply them across the hundreds of aircraft in the Qantas fleet," Qantas head of fuel and environment Alan Milne said in a statement.