Originally Posted by
FBWFTW
Thanks for the details!
Couple of avgeek ?'s
-Any idea if the new seats are in the wild yet?
-Would an A320 with sharklets (a la VX) be able to make these transcons without fuel stops? Giving that the endurance at 8 hours?
-What are the alternates that force the fuel issue?? Is it like LAX for BOS-SFO and vice versa (adding on about an hour to the fuel req'd)
FBWFTW, you're welcome! Addressing your questions in order:
-New seats for the A320s have been delayed until the 3rd Quarter of 2017. No information has been provided to us about the reason for the delay, though I suspect it has to do with keeping aircraft in-service through the summer rush.
-The fuel burn savings on an A320 with sharklets versus without is in the neighborhood of 4 percent. That's 25-30 minutes of extra endurance which certainly makes the aircraft more reliable for a westbound transcon.
-You pretty much hit the nail on the head. Normal alternates for bay-area airports (which are the furthest from BOS specifically, versus southern California or the Pacific Northwest), would be other bay-area airports. Once we start calculating fuel burns to places further away such as PDX, LAX, SAN, etc we have that much less fuel that can be planned for enroute use.