Originally Posted by
Jazzop
2. Aerial refueling. See: military. (Side note: I've always wondered why this has not happened yet with air carriers. It's a safe and well-established procedure, and most long-haul airline captains probably have prior experience with tanking in the military).
I can't think of many commercial situations where mid-air refueling would make any economical sense. For any large airlines, a refueling stop is much cheaper than having to pay for a plane, pilots, and fuel to let a tanker plane work. If we couldn't fly to Australia directly, would you pay $3K to fly direct and pay for the tanker or $1.5K to fly a routing like SFO-HNL-SYD?