From the CEO

Look out your window. To you and me, it probably appears as it always does at 35,000 feet. But what we don’t see are the wind currents that can make a big difference to when you arrive. A powerful tailwind could get you to New York an hour early or a strong headwind might mean that you’re late.

The more information we have about these currents and other data, the more we can use it to our advantage to save time and fuel. Like most airlines, Qantas used a computer program to help us predict the weather and navigate through the skies but it was based on older technology. That’s why we built a new one.

We call it Constellation. We developed it with the Australian Centre for Field Robotics at The University of Sydney and we’ve recently rolled it out on our largest aircraft. It calculates thousands of possible routes in an instant, crunching huge amounts of data on wind patterns, altitudes, speeds and everything else you can imagine. When the calculations are complete, it tells pilots the most efficient flight path to take.

Some of Constellation’s results are surprising. It may send an aircraft a few hundred kilometres away from a conventional course but the plane will arrive earlier and burn less fuel thanks to the weather. For a flight from Sydney to Santiago, for instance, Constellation can vary the path slightly due to favourable headwinds and save 1000 kilograms of fuel. It’s an incredible breakthrough.

This sort of innovation is what Qantas is all about. So many of aviation’s greatest advances have emerged from this country because the tyranny of distance means we’ve had to work so much harder to stay connected to the world. For this reason, we do long-haul travel better than anyone else. And projects like Constellation are making those journeys faster for you, increasingly efficient for us and sustainable for the planet.

Whether your journey with us today is long or short, thanks for choosing Qantas.