I saw a video from FR24 when they jumpseated with a Etihad 78 Crew and they showcased a tool where It calculates the recommended CI based on GW, FL and SAT. Would be a great Idea to be implemented into simbrief as another tab for enroute CI. For fuel prices, maybe can use in partnership with GSX or real life sources to build the cost index value
True optimum CI is not just based on fuel prices - its also based on all of the time-related operating costs, like the crew. While yes, as fuel price goes up, the optimum CI drops, and when fuel prices go down (not likely recently but it happens), optimum CI increases, but fuel price alone is just a component of the total time dependent operating costs used to calculate true optimum CI. If as crew contracts come into play, the planning CI doesnt change as crews become more expensive, you’re not flying true Optimum CI, but are flying LRC in terms of CI to take some advantage of the planning capabilties in the FMS.
There may also a band of acceptable CIs, where as an operator you may not want to plan at CI-0 as the aircraft could become speed unstable; or above a certain CI speed where the gain in reduced flight time is not worth the dramatic increase in fuel burnoff - for example is the savings of 5 minute’s of flight time at what I call CI-barber pole worth the 15000 lbs of additional fuel burn?
I can guarantee whatever tool the UAE crew uses also has crew costs baked into it.