Big Data Helps GE Drive Airline Efficiency
GE Aviation is helping airlines to analyze vast amounts of data to better understand how to cut fuel costs and other inefficiencies.

GE Aviation’s Flight Efficiency Services division is using big data techniques to help airlines to improve their profit margins with a particular focus on reducing fuel burn. “Fuel accounts for 40 percent of airline costs with around $215 billion spent on this each year,” said general manager Giovanni Spitale. “GE thinks that if machines can talk to each other using the industrial internet [a term coined by GE] we can make better sense of that [fuel consumption].”

Essentially, GE’s view is that while operators know perfectly well what they need to be doing to save fuel, but they sometimes struggle to do these things systematically. By combining its knowledge of Sixth Sigma best practice management with data science, the company is demonstrating to operators exactly how the most worthwhile savings can be achieved.