and this would work in real life too, if only we could all climb and descend entirely at pilot's discretion, direct enter enter and never have to worry about all of the other planes doing the exact same thing.

A plot of a larger sample of post-hoc known wind and other constraints over a regular service would help enormously to sell the idea.

One point at 45min faster and 25% less fuel is of course huge, but how does it map out over a year of routing?

This is pretty cool! https://github.com/airbus/scikit-decide

It's nice to see the scikit brand live on.

I am not sure how this approach would integrate with the common use of navigating between known/mapped IFR navigation waypoints:

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=IFR+navig...

https://skybrary.aero/articles/waypoint

https://www.flyingmag.com/how-ifr-fixes-get-their-names/