How aviation companies can use strategic weather planning to optimize operations

While weather might be fleeting, it can cause massive disruption – particularly when you’re in the aviation business. Not only can it result in delays, but it can also lead to enormous financial losses.

According to Eurocontrol’s 2024 Air Traffic Management report, weather was the main driver of airport delays in, with 36.2% of en-route Air Traffic Flow Management delays being attributed to adverse weather.In addition, flight delays can also wreak financial havoc. According to a May 2023 study conducted by California State University, flight delays cost the US economy around $32.9 billion annually. The study also found that airlines and passengers incur direct costs, such as lost productivity and increased fuel consumption.

How can companies use weather to optimize aviation operations?

Weather greatly affects how aviation businesses are run, so it pays to have the knowledge and foresight to use it to your advantage.

The Weather Company (formerly WSI), based in Georgia, US, provides products and services that help airlines and aviation companies use weather to give them a strategic advantage in their operations.

Established in 1980, The Weather Company combines technology with human and meteorological expertise to turn weather intelligence into operational advantages, which allows aviation companies to make confident decisions. 

Leading the company’s enterprise division, including its team of FAA-compliant Enhanced Weather Information Systems (EWINS) meteorologists is the company’s President, Sheri Bachstein.

Sheri Bachstein, President of The Weather CompanySpeaking to AeroTime, Bachstein shared how she began her career working as a field producer with CBS News in Atlanta, in the United States, and The Weather Channel television network, chasing storms and covering tornadoes. It was here that Bachstein witnessed firsthand the impact that Mother Nature can have on people’s lives.

This further developed her passion and commitment to helping people and businesses make more informed decisions in the face of increasingly volatile weather.For 20 years Bachstein has held various leadership roles at the company, including the global head of the consumer business, which included all aspects of The Weather Channel, Weather Underground and Storm digital properties, as well as CEO, where she successfully re-established The Weather Company as a stand-alone business with its divestiture from IBM to Francisco Partners. In November 2024, Sheri assumed the role of president where she is now focused on growing its enterprise business. 

“Can anybody mention an industry that is not impacted by weather?” she asked, before going on to explain how almost every business operation in any industry is affected by weather.

All industries, from fashion to pharmaceuticals, be it in production, marketing, logistics or transportation can be affected by weather. While weather affects all industries to varying degrees, aviation is one of the few sectors that is almost bound by weather in its movements.

“If you understand weather patterns, you know you can pick better routes, routes that will make your customers more comfortable, which is definitely the top priority, but can also actually save you fuel and time, and we all know that fuel and time are what cost an airline the most.”

Using weather intelligence for smoother flight operations

With its suite of products, The Weather Company has been providing aviation weather forecasting and real-time aviation weather analysis for more than 30 years. 

A few of The Weather Company’s products include:

Pilotbrief – developed in 1980, this was the first program in the industry to provide aviation weather briefings via dial-up. Decades later, it has now been developed with the latest innovation and technology to meet current operational flight needs. With a connected cockpit and an iPad, pilots can use Pilotbrief to overlay flight routes, access detailed maps and charts including vertical profiles, and generate weather briefings right from their seats. This on-hand access to weather impacts, paired with alerts for EDR, PIREPs, FPGs, SIGMETs, and TAPS, allows for quick in-flight adjustments for safer and more efficient routes.  

Pilotbrief. Image: The Weather Company

Total Turbulence Alerting – this program uses patented real-time turbulence detection, high-resolution, numerical weather modeling and support from highly experienced aviation meteorologists to deliver timely and actionable turbulence alerts and guidance directly to the cockpit through ACARS. Total Turbulence is tailored for transport class aircraft to optimize altitude and route planes and is continuously monitored 24/7 by aviation meteorologists.

Fusion – this is The Weather Company’s flight-following solution that provides real-time global flight tracking for early insight into changing flight, airport, and airspace conditions. Fusion allows airline dispatchers, managers and operations personnel to improve operational efficiency with traffic flow management tools. 

The solution assists passenger and cargo airlines in reducing cost by:

Optimizing flight plans and lower fuel costs without compromising safety

Reduce the cost of cancellations, delays and diversions due to weather

Provide awareness of airport and runway congestion to avoid potential fines
Leveraging the deep operational experience gained from its work with Fusion, The Weather Company has developed its next generation flight following solution, Maverick Dispatch. 

Fusion. Image: The Weather Company

Maverick Dispatch: solving the dispatcher’s paradox

In early April of this year, The Weather Company launched Maverick Dispatch, a global weather and flight tracking solution that transforms how aviation dispatchers handle mission-critical weather and operational data.

Describing it as the “answer to the dispatcher’s paradox,” Bachstein said that Maverick Dispatch turns information overload into operational advantages for dispatchers by delivering the right amount of information needed instead of overwhelming them with data. 

“In today’s complex aviation environment, dispatchers are overwhelmed with data but starved for actionable intelligence,” Bachstein said. “While others are reducing their spend in aviation technology, we’re accelerating efforts. Maverick Dispatch transforms fragmented data streams into clear, contextual insights that enable faster, more informed decision-making.”

Bachstein added that Maverick is easier to use because it’s a browser-based product which improves the user experience. 

“In addition to that, instead of just presenting data, Maverick Dispatch also creates insights with AI that will help a dispatcher make decisions, so it really helps to alleviate that cognitive load,” Bachstein said. “We’ve developed Smart NOTAMs, which transform a traditionally time-consuming process into something fast and clear so pilots and dispatchers can focus on safe flying. Previously, they had to comb through pages of NOTAMs, many of which aren’t even relevant to their flight. Smart NOTAMs use AI to highlight what matters most.”

Bachstein also mentioned the inclusion of terminal airspace convention risk (TrACR) in Maverick Dispatch, a tool that helps airports and airlines anticipate when there is going to be a convective hazard or storm around the terminal areas.“So they will know which gate of the airport to best fly into. It can help reduce the chance of holding patterns on the ground because of the storms,” Bachstein added.

Breeze Airways and Korean Air are among the first carriers to use Maverick Dispatch’s advanced SaaS Platform.

“The reduced alert fatigue and contextual highlighting of critical information means our team spends less time hunting for data and more time making smart decisions that benefit our Guests,” said Garrett Urry, Manager of Flight Dispatch at Breeze Airways.

“We anticipate Maverick Dispatch’s intuitive and streamlined user environment will significantly enhance our dispatchers’ ability to focus. By providing a clear, unified view of critical information, the system is expected to minimize alert fatigue and allow our team to concentrate on what matters most.” said Dongjun Kang, Dispatcher at Korean Air.

Government and defense weather modeling

The Weather Company’s intelligent weather forecasting goes beyond commercial aviation. 

Believing that climate readiness is mission readiness, The Weather Company has also launched Weatherverse, a platform that helps government and defense organizations with advanced training and simulations for any weather conditions.

Using The Weather Company’s proprietary high-resolution atmospheric forecasting model and superior weather intelligence, Weatherverse was designed to increase mission success, reduce sustainment costs by providing accessible, accurate and actionable weather insights. This will help military personnel make better decisions by assessing the weather’s impact on operations.

“Most military establishments use synthetic weather, but we’ve actually created a plug-in that can go right into simulators that bring real world weather into these environments,” Bachstein said. “Weatherverse Sim really helps to train on real weather so that the team can go back and see how things could have been handled differently, so it can bring in that historic, real weather, especially like a hurricane or a severe storm event.”

Weatherverse also includes Weatherverse Planner, which helps military personnel make better decisions by assessing weather’s impact on operations.

“[Weatherverse Planner] allows a military to select whatever their vehicle is. So let’s say they select a Black Hawk Helicopter,” Bachstein explained. “The planner can pinpoint the weather for that mission. It can help them make decisions like, is the timing of that mission the most ideal? Or if they waited 30 minutes, will the weather improve along that mission’s route? If the mission has to happen at a specific time, then what’s the best way to handle that? What level of the atmosphere would be the best area to fly in? The planner allows them to have better situational awareness for the mission.”

Making weather work for almost 50 years

The Weather Company has been helping companies make weather work for them for 45 years. So, what makes the company thrive in the face of a changing climate? 

Seniority and expertise in the field has placed them ahead of the game. Bachstein said that a lot of other flight-following solutions in the marketplace have to license weather data from places like The Weather Company. 

“We have a proprietary weather model that we created. It’s a physics-based model that is part of our overall forecasting but that helps to really identify these storm scale weather events,” Bachstein said. 

She also said that The Weather Company is not dependent on one source for data, something which Bachstein believes gives the company an edge when it comes to the accuracy of its forecast and how it is made. 

“We use a combination of human expertise and machine learning, or AI–before it was coined AI. We’ve been using machine learning to look at all of those models, all of that weather data, and to distill it down into what is the best deterministic forecast to provide to our customers,” she explained.

According to ForecastWatch, the organization for evaluating the accuracy of global weather forecasts, The Weather Company is nearly 4x more likely to be the most accurate weather forecaster across all geographic regions studied. 

With over 185 patents related to weather forecasting and technology, The Weather Company’s website states that 25,000 flights per day rely on the company for safe passage and operations.

In recent years, Bachstein observed that various companies, not just in aviation, have had a shift in mindset about weather as seasons and climates become more volatile. 

“Weather patterns are getting more and more erratic. Whereas in the past, companies could anticipate movement depending on the season, like knowing what happens in summer. But now, things are happening at really weird times,” she said. “We’re more likely to see abnormal weather conditions and more intense severe weather events, so it’s getting harder for companies to preemptively plan  with a high degree of confidence. By partnering with The Weather Company, businesses can reclaim that confidence and make informed decisions despite the increasingly volatile climate.”The post How aviation companies can use strategic weather planning to optimize operations appeared first on AeroTime.

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