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http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5935/did-removing-one-olive-lead-to-an-airline-saving-thousands-of-dollars http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questio

by kayfox 12y ago

http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5935/did-removing-one-olive-lead-to-an-airline-saving-thousands-of-dollars http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5935/did-removin... None of the discussions I found online tried to calculate fuel costs, which is also a major factor in how much that one olive costs.

mikeash 12y ago
This article claims that it takes one extra gallon of fuel for 100 pounds of weight on a domestic airline flight: http://www.budgettravel.com/blog/overweight-passengers-cost-the-airlines-fuel,10007/ http://www.budgettravel.com/blog/overweight-passengers-cost-... I don't know how accurate that is, but it passes a basic smell test for me. An olive is about 6 grams, so the per-olive fuel consumption is about 0.0001 gallons. Jet fuel currently costs about $1.70/gallon, so that's about 0.017 cents per olive in fuel. To save $40,000 in fuel per year by reducing olives, you'd be flying about 200 million fewer olives. American flies about 500 million passengers per year, so $40,000 in fuel savings could be achieved with about 0.4 olives saved per passenger. I have no idea if this actually happened, but the numbers look about right!
- coldtea 12y ago
  I'll use yours: 1 gallon for 100 pounds of weight. If an olive is 6 grams (0.013 pounds), then 100 pounds need: 7,692 olives. For $1.7/gallon, this gives: .00022 dollars fuel cost per olive (or 77 times less than your estimation). For 500 million passengers with one olive less, we got: 500 million less olives x 0.00022 = $110,000 in savings. Taken from another angle, 300 passengers * 0.00022 savings per olive/passenger is: 0.066 savings per flight. From the 6000 flights/day they have on their site, this gives: 6000 * 365 * 0.066, or a saving of $144,540, so same ballpark. They seem to save at least $80-$100,000 per year in both fuel and olive costs by removing just one olive. Of course while it sounds amazing to us, it involves 6000*365 flights / 500 million passengers a year. Which means that this seemingly "large" number (when compared to say, our salary) is actually peanuts compared to their operating costs. Like, by removing one olive per passenger, they reduce their operating costs per flight by less than .000025%.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    "or 77 times less than your estimation" Your estimate and mine are almost the same. 0.017 cents is $0.00017 is close to $0.00022. The difference is because I did some heavy intermediate rounding, what with olive weight being highly approximate to begin with. You're right that in relative terms, the savings is tiny. But absolute numbers count as well. If it saves $40,000/year then that means one full-time employee can spend something like 25-50% of his time working on this problem and they still come out ahead.
    - coldtea 12y ago
      >Your estimate and mine are almost the same. 0.017 cents is close to $0.00022 Ugh, yeah. 0.00017 and 0.00022 are indeed the same (for our level of accuracy), I just had not seen the "cents" and thought your 0.017 value was in $.
      - mikeash 12y ago
        That's probably a good lesson in why one (i.e. me) shouldn't switch units in the middle of something.

by kayfox 12y ago

mikeash 12y ago

This article claims that it takes one extra gallon of fuel for 100 pounds of weight on a domestic airline flight: http://www.budgettravel.com/blog/overweight-passengers-cost-the-airlines-fuel,10007/ http://www.budgettravel.com/blog/overweight-passengers-cost-... I don't know how accurate that is, but it passes a basic smell test for me. An olive is about 6 grams, so the per-olive fuel consumption is about 0.0001 gallons. Jet fuel currently costs about $1.70/gallon, so that's about 0.017 cents per olive in fuel. To save $40,000 in fuel per year by reducing olives, you'd be flying about 200 million fewer olives. American flies about 500 million passengers per year, so $40,000 in fuel savings could be achieved with about 0.4 olives saved per passenger. I have no idea if this actually happened, but the numbers look about right!

coldtea 12y ago
I'll use yours: 1 gallon for 100 pounds of weight. If an olive is 6 grams (0.013 pounds), then 100 pounds need: 7,692 olives. For $1.7/gallon, this gives: .00022 dollars fuel cost per olive (or 77 times less than your estimation). For 500 million passengers with one olive less, we got: 500 million less olives x 0.00022 = $110,000 in savings. Taken from another angle, 300 passengers * 0.00022 savings per olive/passenger is: 0.066 savings per flight. From the 6000 flights/day they have on their site, this gives: 6000 * 365 * 0.066, or a saving of $144,540, so same ballpark. They seem to save at least $80-$100,000 per year in both fuel and olive costs by removing just one olive. Of course while it sounds amazing to us, it involves 6000*365 flights / 500 million passengers a year. Which means that this seemingly "large" number (when compared to say, our salary) is actually peanuts compared to their operating costs. Like, by removing one olive per passenger, they reduce their operating costs per flight by less than .000025%.
- mikeash 12y ago
  "or 77 times less than your estimation" Your estimate and mine are almost the same. 0.017 cents is $0.00017 is close to $0.00022. The difference is because I did some heavy intermediate rounding, what with olive weight being highly approximate to begin with. You're right that in relative terms, the savings is tiny. But absolute numbers count as well. If it saves $40,000/year then that means one full-time employee can spend something like 25-50% of his time working on this problem and they still come out ahead.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    >Your estimate and mine are almost the same. 0.017 cents is close to $0.00022 Ugh, yeah. 0.00017 and 0.00022 are indeed the same (for our level of accuracy), I just had not seen the "cents" and thought your 0.017 value was in $.
    - mikeash 12y ago
      That's probably a good lesson in why one (i.e. me) shouldn't switch units in the middle of something.