Lufthansa Systems today announced that easyJet, Europe’s fourth largest airline, will begin using Lido Operations Center (Lido OC), to plan all of its flight routings from October 2008.

The Lido OC flight planning solution will enable the airline to optimise its flight routings, reduce fuel consumption and deliver significant cost-savings by:

• Taking in to account TFR (Traffic Flow Restrictions) - highly complex regulations which ensure that air traffic flows smoothly
• Saving dispatchers time and effort by automatically checking the regulations for each route
• Taking in to account current weather conditions, flight time, fuel efficiency, and costs in order to plan the best route

Cor Vrieswijk, easyJet’s Operations Director, commented:

“The recent surges in oil prices are having a dramatic effect on European aviation and as a result easyJet are taking a range of measures to reduce our costs and improve fuel efficiency. We chose Lido OC and the TFR module because it will help us optimise the routes operated by our modern, economical fleet and create an efficient, dynamic flight planning processes, which will reduce costs.

Moreover, the system is highly automated, which helps our dispatchers work more efficiently and frees up resources for continued growth. Efficient processes and the optimal use of resources are the core of our successful business model.”

Matthias van Leeuwen, Senior Vice President Sales EMEA/South at Lufthansa Systems, welcomed the latest member to the growing Lido OC user community:

“easyJet is a success story just as much as our flight planning solution which has been an internationally leading application in its field for a long time. We are pleased that this dynamic airline adds to the list of major carriers from our UK growth market that benefit from the optimization potential of Lido OC,”

The introduction of this new flight planning system is part of easyJet’s efficiency program which also includes accelerated fleet rationalization, improvements to crewing efficiencies, a focus on reducing overheads and follows the airline’s recent unveiling of its new CFM engines which will reduce NOx and CO2 emissions as well as fuel consumption.