by Elsie Clark | Sep 17, 2025 | Flight Ops IT, Innovation
Air India has adopted SITA OptiFlight’s advanced climb optimisation solution, OptiClimb, and SITA eWAS for improved operational sustainability. The data-driven insights provided will reduce the airline’s carbon emissions by 35,000 tons each year.
The Indian national carrier has adopted the software as part of is intensive modernisation strategy, which includes retrofitting its current planes and purchasing more aircraft. The SITA technology has now rolled out across its fleet of Airbus A320s and Boeing 737s, with the widebody fleet to be added soon.
The SITA OptiFlight suite helps airlines optimise key phases of flights, especially energy-intense phases. Without compromising safety or performance, the intelligence tools provide custom climb-out schedules for each aircraft, reducing fuel burn.
SITA eWAS, on the other hand, is a complementary programme that provides pilots with weather updates and predictive forecasting. The availability of this real-time data helps the crew avoid turbulence and re-route efficiently.
Sumesh Patel, President, Asia Pacific at SITA, said:
Air India’s deployment of SITA OptiFlight and eWAS is a strong example of how smart digital technologies can cut emissions, save fuel, and unlock real operational value across every flight.
Basil Kwauk, Chief Operations Officer, Air India, added:
Sustainability and efficiency are core to our transformation into a world-class airline. With SITA OptiFlight and SITA eWAS, we’re taking meaningful steps to modernize our operations, reduce our carbon footprint.
Fuel savings across the fleet as a result of SITA’s optimisations are expected to be in the region 11,000 tons. The announcement comes after Air India signed a memorandum of understanding with IndianOil for the supply of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in August 2025 – a further component of its net-zero emissions strategy.
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by Elsie Clark | Sep 17, 2025 | Innovation, Sustainability
According to the IEA, aviation is responsible for around 2.5% of the world’s carbon emissions. To make the industry more sustainable and accelerate a net-zero future, airlines need to plot a realistic roadmap for emissions reduction.
In this exclusive interview, Aerospace Tech Review talks to Jolanda Stevens, Program Manager, Zero Emission Aviation, from KLM. The Dutch national carrier published its first Climate Action Plan in 2022, and has now developed a range of short- and long-term strategies to mitigate emissions.
In the long term, of course we have new technologies like hydrogen, batteries, electric, and underlying all of these is alternative aviation fuel.
To take immediate action on waste reduction, KLM uses an artificial intelligence (AI) system to determine which foods should be packed onboard. This has reduced the airline’s food waste by 63%.
Looking at the bigger picture, the airline has a robust fleet renewal plan and aims for 80% of its aircraft to be energy-efficient models by 2030. As the momentum behind sustainable fuel ramps up, Stevens discusses KLM’s ongoing plans to fly their first zero-carbon emissions flight before the end of the decade. In partnership with ZeroAvia, a flight demonstration with a hydrogen-powered engine is also expected for 2026.
If you’re looking at new technologies then the infrastructure has to be there, and for hydrogen that is totally different to what we have today. On the other hand, once the infrastructure is there, you can scale that up in different steps.
Driving sustainability across organisations with as many moving parts as airlines is a technologically complex and lengthy process. As Stevens highlights, if easy wins were possible, they would have been achieved already. Nevertheless, her outlook for the future remains positive.
Investing in new technologies and helping new startups, new parties in the field who have disruptive ideas, is very necessary for the future. I think we should all step in and help them.
🎥 Watch the full interview below to hear more from Jolanda on KLM’s sustainable operations journey.
Questions asked include:
- Could you give us an overview of the zero-emission programme at KLM?
- Can you talk us through some of the sustainable technologies and innovations you’ve adopted over the years?
- How confident are you that infrastructural challenges can be overcome?
- Are there any ‘quick wins’ for sustainability in aviation?
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by Elsie Clark | Sep 16, 2025 | Avionics, Innovation
Honeywell has confirmed that their new Surface Alerts (SURF-A) cockpit technology was trialled in Kansas City, US, in late August,
SURF-A was showcased alongside Honeywell’s already-certified SmartRunway/SmartLanding (SmartX) product, in two demonstrations that recreated real-life near-collisions.
SmartX provides audio and visual clues to pilots during high-stress phases of flights, alerting them to configuration errors and wrong-surface alignments in real-time. SURF-A, meanwhile, has been specifically designed to alert pilots when traffic is on the runway. Callouts are given, and text appears on the display screen if another aircraft in the runway engagement zone presents a collision risk.
As global air traffic increases, cockpit alerts are needed to prevent accidents and close margins of error. Honeywell’s tests of SURF-A at Kansas City recreated two notable incidents from recent years: a February 2023 near-collision at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport during fog, and a January 2023 event at New York JFK where an aircraft taxied onto an active runway.
In the recreations of both scenarios, cockpit alerts warned of the traffic ahead, giving the pilots ample time to react and divert the aircraft’s movements.
Honeywell expects SURF-A certification for commercial aircraft in 2026. Southwest Airlines is currently deploying SmartX across its fleet of Boeing 737s, with more than 700 aircraft activated to date.
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by Elsie Clark | Sep 11, 2025 | Innovation
A new global survey of executives has highlighted key findings as the aerospace industry prepares for Industry 5.0
The Future Ready Skies Study 2025 from Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) surveyed over 300 European and North American executives across the aerospace value chain. The results revealed how the industry is planning for the next decade as key trends, including artificial intelligence (AI), digital twins, and advanced air mobility (AAM), dramatically reshape the supply chain.
Mixed progress on aerospace automation
While automation remains a priority, executive predict that 60% of their operations will still require human involvement in the next five to seven years. From a maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) perspective, only 2% of providers believed their service would be autonomous by 2030, while more than half expected to be using predictive analytics and digitally assisted diagnostics. Around a third of MRO experts predict that they will see a return on investment (ROI) in tech within the next three years.
Trust in delegating supply decisions agentic AI remains mixed. While 6% of respondents said they were already deploying agentic AI in this area, 37% said regulatory, compliance, or trust issues prevented them from doing so, and a further 45% said they needed more transparency and control before implementing such a solution.
AI was nevertheless rated as the technology with the greatest potential to reshape aerospace factories by 2035, followed by digital twins, robotics and cobotics, quantum computing, and edge computing.
Commercial AAM set for takeoff
As more AAM projects reach the commercialisation phase, the TCS study illustrated that aerospace executives are committed to developing the sector. 88% of respondents said they had implemented a strategy for engaging the AAM market, with 16% of those executives already engaged in developing projects, and 54% actively building a product or platform for AAM.
The results of the survey emphasised several priorities for the aerospace industry moving forward: achieving a digital transformation, creating the infrastructure for AAM, and building resilient supply chains.
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by Elsie Clark | Sep 10, 2025 | AI & ML, Innovation
A new strategic partnership between Adacel Technologies and Smart Eye will enhance the MaxSim air traffic control (ATC) simulation platform. MaxSim currently provides the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA), Air Force, and U.S. Army with controller training across a variety of scenarios.
Through integration with Smart Eye’s artificial intelligence (AI) programme, MaxSim will monitor trainee controllers’ eye movements and attention patterns during simulation exercises. This will allow instructors to analyse objective, quantifiable data on the trainees’ development, ultimately improving learning and preparedness.
Adacel vice president Michael Saunders commented:
Partnering with Smart Eye now brings advanced eye-tracking analytics into MaxSim, giving instructors unprecedented insight into attention, decision-making, and situational awareness—further enhancing safety and training effectiveness.
As well as ATC training, the sophisticated human performance analytics system has the potential to roll out across other aviation training in due course.
Improved training critical to planned ATC upgrades
The Adacel/Smart Eye partnership comes as the US begins a major overhaul of its ATC system. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the plans in May 2025, and recently stated that the upgrade could cost US$31.5 billion.
Training new air traffic controllers is essential to these development plans. The FAA ended 2024 with around 3,900 controllers short of targets, but the ensuing recruitment drive has left instructors overworked. Adacel and Smart Eye’s new partnership will provide data that not only enhances ATC training programmes, but reduces the burden on instructors to evaluate performance.
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