3 ms·
Landing slots aren’t a constraint, so maybe it’s good enough to fill the hold and take advantage of the fuel economy of a lightly loaded plane.
by coredog64 7y ago
Landing slots aren’t a constraint, so maybe it’s good enough to fill the hold and take advantage of the fuel economy of a lightly loaded plane.
- rtkwe 7y agoMaybe? Planes only have about a quarter of their max weight available for passengers the rest is the plane itself and the fuel so I'm not sure how much you'd save by running light. Maybe flying slower would be a way to make cargo flights more efficient but planes are pretty tuned to their cruising speed so maybe even that wouldn't have a big effect.
- mlyle 7y agoTypical cruise in airliners is about 10% faster than their most efficient speed, which translates to a 15% or so higher fuel burn per distance. You also do not need to take off with max fuel weight-- and airliners these days rarely do, so that leaves more mass budget for cargo. For the past couple decades, airlines have been really focused on eliminating weight and using the efficiency increases this brings to reduce fuel weight, further increasing efficiency. Across huge scales, this can have surprising effects. United figured they saved $300k/year of fuel by printing their in flight magazine on lighter paper.
- rtkwe 7y agoAccording to their site they ran ~1.6 million flights in 2019 so they saved $0.18/flight which across their operating revenue of $43.259 billion is a rounding error even when it adds up to 300k.
- mlyle 7y agoA rounding error, but still worthwhile. $300k here, $300k there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money ;). Anyways, the main point: passengers and their luggage on a 737-sized craft might weigh 15,000 kilos. You might save 340 kilograms/hour by flying slower, too, so a 6 hour flight without passengers could move 17 tonnes more than it did with pax onboard, so long as you have space for what you're shipping.