One month after unveiling a new program that promises to take a large bite out of massive airline fuel bills, AeroMechanical announced a major customer will be taking part in the first step of a two-step process.

For competetive reasons the name of this major customer, which is described as a significant, European-based leisure carrier, wasn't revealed.

Nevertheless, investors probably noted from the strong adjectives that the carrier is not in the minor leagues.

What the major customer has done is agree to pay AeroMechanical to have AMA experts pore over the customer's operations and fuel bills in order to determine just how much AMA's technology could save the carrier.

When the fuel-management program was announced last month, AMA reported that two of its existing customers believed they could rack up savings of between $100 thousand to $250 thousand per airplane, or up to five per cent of their annual fuel bill.

If an airline had a fleet of 20 planes, that could result in savings of between $2 million to $5 million.

No small chump change.

After identifying potential savings through this first-step consultation process, this new major customer will then be left to decide whether it wishes to take the second step and install AMA's bluebox technology.

The bluebox - its formal name being the afirs(TM) UpTime(TM) - is the critical piece in the fuel-saving exercise.

The bluebox montiors key aircraft functions that allows an airline to determine if fuel-saving practices are being maximized on a second-by-second basis - no matter where in the world the aircraft is either flying, landing, taxiing down a runway or taking off.

The bluebox also montiors thousands of other aircraft functions that help airlines better manage and maintain their fleets in real time.

To read the full press release, please click here.