IATA's flight-ops chief says the next fuel savings will come from data, not new aircraft

IATA director of flight and operations Stuart Fox has made the case that airlines have largely exhausted the traditional levers for cutting fuel use — replacing older aircraft, adjusting networks — and that further savings now depend on mining operational data for smaller, harder-to-spot inefficiencies. He frames the stakes in financial terms: fuel already accounts for close to a third of airline operating costs, with the industry projected to spend around $350 billion on it in 2026, even as profit margins are expected to compress from 4.2% in 2025 to roughly 2.0% this year. Fox cites IATA survey data showing 90% of airlines rank fuel efficiency as a priority, rising to 96% among financial and procurement teams specifically. To support that shift, he points to two IATA tools: FEGA, an advisory service that identifies savings opportunities by fleet type, route and flight phase, and FuelIS, an analytics platform IATA says draws on real-time data from more than 240 airlines to let carriers benchmark their own performance against peers. As an example of the kind of gap this can surface, Fox points to airlines carrying excessive fuel reserves on arrival — a pattern only visible once flight-by-flight data is compared systematically rather than reviewed in aggregate. His closing framing was blunt: "the cheapest gallon of jet fuel is the one an airline never burns."