I have always felt a special sense of reward when flying alongside prospective customers and sharing the remarkable performance of our Tamarack® Active Winglet System - if only I had a chance to fly with every operator out there, we could learn so much together! However, the current reality is that curious operators need not look further than their own computer or smart phone for flight planning needs. At Tamarack, our team is positioning to coordinate efforts with CJ Partners and software companies to improve the planning experience for operators. After carefully monitoring thousands of flight hours within hundreds of flights, we have discovered an area in need of improvement: planning at the flight levels that we actually fly. Once an operator feels comfortable at FL410 or FL450, it makes much more sense for them to execute this altitude as soon and often as possible.
Several concerned operators have notified our team of major discrepancies between their expectations and projected planning results on at least four separate flight-planning sites. At Tamarack, where we want the best for our family, we looked at it much closer. We have had potential clients show us profiles with no substantial benefit to flying with Active Winglets – which is not the case, as our current customers share a wealth of flight information with us. The confusion is valid and mirrors my own – how can such widely-used platforms have difficulty producing flight planning profiles our prospective customers need?
Upon investigation, we have found two underlying issues that are the culprit: The first issue is embedded in the granularity of the data, which can be remedied by updating our own data sets to reflect more useful and poignant results. But the latter, more pressing issue is the way in which operators plan for flights when considering the winglet modified aircraft. We found that a surprising number of operators are choosing improper flight levels that are much lower than the altitude at which modified aircraft can be flown. When running an optimal flight plan for modified aircraft, altitude must first be adjusted to reflect how the aircraft would be flown with installed winglets.
After discussing with fellow pilots, this complication seems to be a habit-breaking issue rather than a re-training one; business jet operators generally have extensive flight planning experience, and we know our individual aircraft extremely well. In addition, we run a multitude of flight plans during our careers, and commonly plan at an average altitude pertaining to our aircraft’s normal abilities. But operators interested in winglet technology must remember to consider how they would take advantage of Tamarack modifications and adjust the flight-planning process. For instance, a Tamarack-modified CJ2 aircraft will easily climb to FL450 in under 30 minutes, unlike a flatwing CJ2. So, a curious operator must plan for that flight level in order to run an accurately projected flight - but unfortunately, many folks tend to automatically choose lower flight levels as if planning for a normal flat-wing flight.
This trend is alarming because it juxtaposes the function of flight level increase that Tamarack winglets provide. If several confused prospects have already reached out to us for assistance, then how many are making this mistake on a daily basis that we do not know about? This means thousands of pounds of fuel savings for operators lost by a simple snafu. We are dedicated to helping operators learn about our technology, and encourage all jet operators to call Tamarack directly for questions about aircraft performance and flight planning sites. We remain committed to providing an easy way to plan for our potential customers, and urge flight-planning services to consider how they can better direct users to plan with our innovative technology.
