Cessna Aircraft Company has announced the first-time availability of its GreenTrak flight planning software on a number of Citation models.
Making the announcement at the 63rd NBAA Annual Meeting and Convention in Atlanta, Cessna said that the software package that was originally only available on its Citation CJ4 business jet is now also available on the Citation Sovereign, Excel, XLS and XLS+ models.
GreenTrak is a proprietary software system – the first offered by a General Aviation manufacturer – that uses a cost indexing process to minimise total trip cost by balancing the costs of direct operation, fuel burn and carbon emissions. The GreenTrak software package is available through a subscription to Cessna’s CESNAV general flight planning program and can be run from a PC or EFB.
In technical terms, GreenTrak is a method of determining the optimum climb, cruise and descent speed schedules for a given ratio of cost of time (linked to direct operating costs) and to the cost of fuel using the aircraft’s gross weight, altitude, wind speed, direction and temperature – and even a company’s cost structure.
The resulting flight plan will result in the lowest total trip cost in terms of fuel consumed and carbon emitted. The program can be run on the flight crew’s electronic flight bag for in-flight adjustments as circumstances demand.
GreenTrak can help users optimise their business jet operations for proposed regulatory programs such Europe’s planned Emissions Trading Scheme. Cessna already provides Citation operators annual emissions estimates and application support for ETS.
Cessna says it is working to also make GreenTrak available for the Citation Mustang, Citation Encore/Encore+, Citation CJ2 and the Citation X.
The Cessna Citation Sovereign. (Cessna)
