Fuel Use Per Passenger Stats in AJC Article RE: Fewer RJs

This morning's AJC has an article about airlines using fewer RJs. Here's the link: http://www.ajc.com/business/airlines...s-1240775.html

Interesting info:
While I knew larger jets are more efficient in this regard, the actual numbers are interesting to know. Thought others might find it interesting, too.

It'll be interesting to see whether it'll be easy to do segment runs in the future.

Bob H

I wonder if this is accurate if both trips are 500 miles long. Takeoffs obviously take more fuel. My guess is that takeoffs of larger jets take exponentially more fuel. The "per 500 miles" number is misleading if that's taking a 500 mile flight in an RJ vs. one third of a 1500 mile flight in an MD-90.

The WSJ had an article on fuel burn:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...677748380.html

Some stats were: Boeing says the champ in its current line-up is the 737-900 with 180 passengers flying 1,000 miles. It gets nearly 99 mpg. Boeing says its 777-200ER wide-body jet gets nearly 82 miles to the gallon with 301 seats, all full, on a 3,000-mile trip. But increase the flight to 6,000 miles, and the same plane only gets 76 mpg per seat. The Airbus A380 super-jumbo, the largest passenger airplane in the world with more than 500 seats, averages about 65 miles per gallon per seat, The A320, a single-aisle plane with about 150 seats, averages roughly 77 seat miles to the gallon, according to the manufacturer

Good, always prefer a real jet.

definitely. After reading this, I wanted to find a big table listing fuel consumption by type. I'd be interested in knowing how the bigger rjs do, for example.

That's still a lot of fuel. I don't know why Delta doesn't fly the Schweizer SGS 2-32, they're a lot more fuel efficient.

Because the 2-32 isn't near as efficient as the G-103.

As opposed to fake jets that don't have turbines or burn jet fuel?

Remember than part of the reason some of these aircraft seem to consume so much fuel is the fuel used to carry fuel for long trips. The weight of fuel loaded for ultralonghaul flights is substantial.

Most markets that see CRJ service could never fill a 160 seat MD90 making it impossible to see the numbers that are listed. If a CRJ is doing 19 gallons per passenger for a 500 mile route (19 x 50 = 950 gallons) and an MD90 is doing 7.5 gallons per passenger for a 500 mile route (7.5 x 160 = 1200 gallons) the CRJ still burns close to 300 less gallons of fuel for the trip. If DL flew half full (or less) MD90s on these routes the gallons per passenger increases dramatically. Unless DL can fill the larger planes, they probably wouldn't make the most sense on many routes. They require extra FAs, higher paid pilots, more fuel (even though mpg may be better), staffing at outstations to likely be DL employees and not Regional Elite, etc.....I think DL will stick with connection carriers and save quite a bit of money.

Passengers tend also to prefer more frequent flights, so that they have more schedule choices.

When fuel was cheap, small RJs made more sense despite their high fuel burn per available seat mile. In 1998-99, jet fuel averaged about $0.55/gal. So far in 2011, jet fuel has averaged over $3/gal, its highest annual average price in history (in nominal terms, not necessarily in real terms).

So fuel guzzling small RJs were acceptable 10-15 years ago when fuel was nearly free and mainline employees were a lot more expensive (before their bankruptcies and employee wage concessions). Now, on the other hand, mainline employees are much less expensive than they used to be and fuel is more than five times more expensive than 10-15 years ago. Small RJs will continue to be phased out if fuel stays where it is or goes higher, and large jets will slowly make a return. For some cities, that will mean a return of mainline planes but with fewer frequencies.

This movement has been underway for years, with some disclosure of financials. See slide #24 in the December 2010 investor presentation. ATL-DAB was 7x (CR7, IIRC) that went to 4x MD-88, now 3x MD-88 + 1x 757.

http://images.delta.com.edgesuite.ne...lor_recons.pdf

And unfortunately, this may also mean that more and more smaller stations lose service altogether!

I think we will continue to see some really small planes, sometimes pretty empty, on government subsidized routes.