Systems, apparatus and methods for aircraft flight planning and efficient communications with aircraft

A processor-based system, comprising:

• at least one processor;
• and
• at least one nontransitory processor-readable media communicatively coupled to the at least one processor and which stores processor-executable instructions which, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the at least processor to:
• access a flight plan for a particular aircraft by the processor-based system;
• access one or more sets of location and altitude information for the particular aircraft by the processor-based system, the one or more sets of location and altitude information each specifying a location and an altitude for the particular aircraft at a respective time;
• access winds aloft data by the processor-based system;
• and
• determine an at least approximate airspeed and a heading for the particular aircraft by the processor-based system based at least in part on the one or more sets of location and altitude information for the particular aircraft and based at least in part on the winds aloft data,
• wherein to access one or more sets of location and altitude information for the particular aircraft the processor-based system retrieves from a tracking ground-based processor-based system, one or more sets of transponder telemetry for the particular aircraft stored by the tracking ground-based processor-based system, the one or more sets of transponder telemetry including, for each respective one of a plurality of instances of time, a respective time-stamped set of global positioning coordinates, a respective pressure altitude value, and a unique aircraft identifier supplied by a transponder on the particular aircraft.