Command-Line Interface

Installing acropole installs the acropole command (entry point acropole.cli:main). It is a thin wrapper over FuelEstimator: read a flight from disk, estimate fuel flow, and write the enriched table back out. The estimation logic lives entirely in the library — the CLI only handles file I/O and argument parsing.

`acropole estimate`

acropole estimate <flight> [OPTIONS]

Read <flight> (.csv or .parquet), estimate fuel flow, and write the result. The output frame is the input frame plus:

Column	Unit	When
`fuel_flow`	kg/s	always
`fuel_flow_kgh`	kg/h	always
`fuel_cumsum`	kg	only when `--second` is given

Argument

Argument	Description
`flight`	Path to the input flight, `.csv` or `.parquet`.

Options

Option	Default	Description
`--out`	`<flight>_fuel.<ext>`	Output path (`.csv` or `.parquet`). When omitted, the result is written next to the input with a `_fuel` suffix, keeping the input's extension.
`--typecode`	`typecode`	Aircraft type column.
`--groundspeed`	`groundspeed`	Groundspeed column (kt).
`--altitude`	`altitude`	Altitude column (ft).
`--vertical-rate`	`vertical_rate`	Vertical rate column (ft/min).
`--airspeed`	`airspeed`	Airspeed column (kt).
`--mass`	`mass`	Mass column (kg).
`--second`	(none)	Timestamp column (s). Enables temporal derivatives and the `fuel_cumsum` column.

Each mapping option points a logical feature at the matching column name in your file. If your file already uses the standard names, you can omit them all.

Examples

Standard column names — the output defaults to flight_fuel.csv:

acropole estimate flight.csv

Choose an explicit output path:

acropole estimate flight.csv --out enriched.parquet

Real QAR flight with mapped columns (the bundled examples/example_flight.csv):

acropole estimate examples/example_flight.csv \
  --typecode FLPL_AIRC_TYPE --groundspeed GRND_SPD_KT --altitude ALTI_STD_FT \
  --vertical-rate VERT_SPD_FTMN --airspeed TRUE_AIR_SPD_KT --mass MASS_KG \
  --second FLIGHT_TIME --out result.csv
# wrote 7796 rows with fuel columns to result.csv

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
`0`	Success — the enriched table was written; the command prints `wrote <n> rows with fuel columns to <out>`.
`1`	Error — printed on `stderr`. Raised when the input file does not exist, the format is unsupported (not `.csv`/`.parquet`), or a mapped column is missing.

For a task-oriented walkthrough, see the how-to guide Estimate fuel from the command line.