Narrative:

Aircraft was dispatched on an inland route with a distance of 1923nm. Glancing at the winds and weather charts it was obvious that a deep water route was more efficient and so we elected to fly airway X with a total distance of 1754; a difference of 169 miles; or 27 minutes or 3117lbs of fuel.prior to making this change the dispatcher told me she ran both of these flight plans and the inland route as per saber was 6 mins shorter.common sense told me it was not. At a time when we are relying on automation almost exclusively to make our decisions we better be cautious that the automation is providing the correct solution. Please look at release one and release 3 to verify this information. This is a big mistake and someone should get to the bottom of this so it does not happen again.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: B737 Captain reported the company flight planning service incorrectly projected a shorter time for a longer route.

Narrative: Aircraft was dispatched on an inland route with a distance of 1923nm. Glancing at the winds and weather charts it was obvious that a deep water route was more efficient and so we elected to fly Airway X with a total distance of 1754; a difference of 169 miles; or 27 minutes or 3117lbs of fuel.Prior to making this change the dispatcher told me she ran both of these flight plans and the inland route as per Saber was 6 mins shorter.Common sense told me it was not. At a time when we are relying on automation almost exclusively to make our decisions we better be cautious that the automation is providing the correct solution. Please look at release one and release 3 to verify this information. This is a big mistake and someone should get to the bottom of this so it does not happen again.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.