Virgin America maintains a strong commitment to operating as greenly as possible and continually works to reduce its carbon footprint. Its efforts to minimize carbon dioxide emissions start long before any flight leaves the ground, as dispatchers use a range of cutting-edge tools to plan the most efficient routes possible.

1. Greener Flights through Optimized
Flight Planning at Virgin
David Pflieger

2. Introduction
• Virgin America maintains a strong commitment to
operating as greenly as possible and continually
works to reduce its carbon footprint. Its efforts to
minimize carbon dioxide emissions start long before
any flight leaves the ground, as dispatchers use a
range of cutting-edge tools to plan the most efficient
routes possible.
In 2012, the company introduced a new flight-
planning system that makes use of the National
Spatial Reference System created by the U.S.
Federal Aviation Administration, as well as more
traditional ground-based tools.

3. Virgin America
• The flight-planning system takes into account
tailwinds and headwinds to find the shortest path
between destinations.
In addition, Virgin flights use a variable speed based
on a dynamic cost index rather than a set cruising
speed. The optimal speed is calculated considering
fuel costs and operating costs based on time in the
air. Thus, the speed changes based on conditions
like wind and altitude. Altogether, these initiatives
save an average of about 400 pounds of fuel per
flight, which reduces carbon dioxide emissions by
about 37,000 metric tons each year.