Originally Posted by
LarryJ
Not even close.
$42/passenger in a 137 seat SWA 737, for example, would be $5754 in jet fuel. At your $2.10/gal figure that's 2740 gallons or 18,358 pounds. That's enough fuel to fly a 737 for over 3½ hours including flying the weight of the airplane, bags, cargo, etc.
So a 3.5 hour flight is what, about 1700 miles? Vs. the 1000 I estimated? That's actually kind of close. Biggest source of the discrepency is likely that the numbers I used were per revenue-pax-mile. Not sure what the average number of revenue-pax are per flight, but accounting for empty seats, award tix, deadheaders, and employees, I'll bet that explains most of the gap.
But good to see some better numbers posted.