Long-time users of the Air Support Preflight Planning System (PPS) route planning software on PCs may not be surprised to learn that the company plans to unveil a faster flight plan Optimizer. What may surprise current customers, however, is that they will need do little more than turn on their computers to obtain this major upgrade, because it will happen, for the most part, behind the scenes. Air Support (Stand C512) is based at Billund Airport in Denmark.

From the demonstration this AIN editor saw here at MEBA, the product provides a lighting-speed reply to route queries. It took less than two seconds to consider the potential route, analyze all weather, wind and temperature and Notam data and return a route with fuel-burn estimates in a PDF format capable of being read on a smartphone.

Jens Pisarski, Air Support's director of sales and marketing, explained, "The Optimizer delivers the right answers much more accurately than ever before. The system will, of course, optimize for minimum cost, distance, time or even minimum turbulence penetration on any given trip."