American Airlines Goes On A Diet

Airlines are taking huge steps to cut fuel consumption as fuel prices start inching up. Airlines are currently running on such slim profit margins that even slight increases in fuel costs can nearly cripple an airline if unprepared for the increase.   Airlines across the board have begun jacking up prices and have already started grounding aircraft to reduce capacity and maximize the usage of the current aircraft (read: extremely full aircraft).  I’ve even heard that some airlines are toying with the idea of offering variable rate tickets to transfer some of the risk of increasing oil prices on to the passenger – although I don’t know who in their right mind would buy such a thing?  I guess people bought variable interest home loans so maybe they will do the same for an initially cheaper airline ticket.

In addition to increasing fares and grounding aircraft, American Airlines is working especially hard to be prepared for increased oil prices.  They have put together an entire program called Fuel Smart consisting of fuel saving measures that individually may not have a significant impact, but across a fleet of hundreds of aircraft will begin to add up.  AA is currently working on modernizing a fleet of older Boeing 737 aircraft with weight a primary concern.  Here are the current 737 airplane weight saving changes:

• Replacing all 19,000 drink carts with new 12 lb lighter carts
• Testing a new paint coating that is meant to improve airflow over the airplane body
• Removing seat back phones and their heavy wiring
• Installing lighter seats
• Lighter carryon luggage bins
• Lighter TV monitors

          (not specifically related to the 737):

• Buying more tugs to tow airplanes from terminals to hangars for when maintenance or testing is needed instead of starting the jet engines to taxi

All told, these improvements add up to and estimated $370 million in savings relating to fuel burn.  I’m not sure how that relates to their overall operating budget but I’m sure it makes a difference.

This story gave me an idea though.  AA is investing in tugs to pull aircraft from the terminal to hangars and have apparently done the math to figure out that the extremely expensive tugs are still less expensive than taxiing the aircraft to maintenance hangars.  In fact, AA saved 3.6 million gallons last year just by towing instead of taxiing to maintenance hangars.  I started to think about the savings and wonder, wouldn’t airlines save even more money by towing the airplanes to the run-up area for takeoff? Especially if the airplane is delayed for takeoff. 

Imagine a tow-taxi procedure in operation at the larger airline hubs such as JFK, Atlanta, Dallas, and Chicago among others where departure delays regularly drag on up to three hours, if every jet sat with engines off, being both tugged and cooled via the much cheaper to operate Diesel or electric Tug engine, couldn’t that save the industry millions if not billions of fuel dollars?  I did a little poking around online to see if the idea has already been presented and sure enough, it’s out there - sort of. 

Apparently Virgin Atlantic had been working on this very idea as part of the airlines various “green” initiatives.  Virgin claimed that towing aircraft to a starting pad at the end of the runway could save two tones of CO2 per flight if it normally takes a non delayed airplane 10 minutes to taxi. Obviously a conservative estimate.  The project was gaining steam in 2006 with the first 6 flights starting with a tow to the runway when Virgin received information from both Boeing and Airbus stating that repeatedly towing airplanes at full gross weight would weaken the landing gear and potentially shear it off after repeated full capacity towing.  Additionally, they stated that they would not offer product support to aircraft that had been towed at full capacity. Virgin has since stated that the towing initiative is indefinitely grounded.

My question is this:  If reducing a few jet powered trips to the maintenance hangar saves AA 3.6 million, easily justifying the investment in new tugs, wouldn’t the drastic reduction in fuel consumption from an entire airline industry towing their airplanes to the runway be enough of a savings to justify investment in stronger landing gear that could handle the stress of towing a full aircraft?  I guess I am just surprised that when one airline is looking at even small weight reductions as a means of saving fuel, that there wouldn’t be enough industry pressure on Boeing and Airbus that they could find a solution if the airlines collectively requested a fix.  As it is, I read airline news on a daily basis, and have been for around three years, and had never heard of an airline talking about this solution until I looked for it.  As a note, airlines are not blind to the issue of taxi fuel burn as most if not all request that their pilots taxi using only one engine to reduce consumption, but even on one engine, the fuel burn is significant.

Oh well.  And I though I had a little jewel of an idea too!! 

Here are my links:

American Airlines Gets Creative to Save Fuell

Virgin’s green idea loses its pulling power  

  

Why is the Airline Industry Doing so Poorly?

This is an article I found in the December/January edition of Flightline, the Allied Pilots Association union publication, I found it fairly clearly described some of the reasons behind our poorly performing airline industry.

By Captian Robert Herbst:


One of the most frequent questions I get asked during
interviews is: "Why is the airline industry doing so poorly?"
There can be a long list of answers to that question depending
on if you are the passenger buying a ticket or the employee
working for an airline.
The question actually has an easy answer. Contrary to what
politicians frequently attempt to suggest, airfares on average are
simply too low to cover the ever-increasing and required costs
for safe air travel.
In 1990, the average passenger cost to fly one mile in the
United States was 13.4 cents. Twenty years later, the cost was only
12.7 cents per mile. During the last two decades, the average U.S.
domestic airline passenger fare measured on a per mile cost basis
stayed in a range of 12.0 cents to 14.6 cents. Note: This is revenue
to the airlines and does not include government taxes, fees, security
charges etc. that are now approaching 30 percent per passenger fare.
Comparing 2009 with 1990, the cost of air travel decreased
by 9.9 percent while the Consumer Price Index for inflation
increased by 64.1 percent (cost for air travel excludes government
taxes and fees).
If airline passenger travel costs had kept up with CPI inflation
over the last 20 years, the average fare to fly one mile in 2009
would have been 22 cents per mile, a 59 percent increase over
the actual cost.
Here are a few staggering statistics for the U.S. airline industry:
• In 1990, there were 460 million passengers. In 2009, there
were 704 million passengers.
• In 1990, there were 546,000 airline employees. In 2009,
there were 536,000 airline employees.
• The U.S. airline industry has lost money in 12 of the last 20
years and accumulated a net loss of approximately $29
billion (excludes airline bankruptcy and reorganization
write-downs).
• The price of jet fuel for 2009 was at a four-year low and still
240 percent higher than the airlines paid in 1990.
• Since Jan. 1, 1990, there have been 98 U.S. airlines file
for bankruptcy.
After 20 years of on and off airline industry growth, there
are now 2 percent fewer airline employees responsible for a 53
percent increase in passengers. The numbers make it easy to see
why there are so many complaints against the airline industry.
Sometimes the old cliché: “You get what you pay for,” has
true meaning.
The chart below provides average passenger revenue per
mile for U.S. airlines, commuter rail, and intercity/Amtrak travel
as compared to the Consumer Price Index from 1990 to 2009.

Night Flight with Joel

So I didn't exactly make it out to the airport before sunset, but I still managed to go flying!  What's more, I was able to get my brother Joel out for the flight which is exciting.  While he had been flying with me before as a rear seat passenger, this was his first time in the front where he could do some of the flying himself.  Here are some of the photos from this evening:








It's hard to tell, but Joel is currently flying the airplane at around 3,000 feet!!




In addition to quickly picking up how to make controlled turns in the aircraft, Joel also managed to smoothly take off at the Yolo County airport with only a little rudder assistance from me, good job Joel!!

I want to go fly in that sky!!

We finally got some good weather today after seemingly weeks of bad weather keeping me on the ground, and just look at that blue sky!!  A pilot couldn't ask for much better weather than we have today, cool temperatures and only the slightest breeze, I have a serious itch to get up there.  It's been since January 14th since I last flew which feels like way too long in my book.  Plus, I've been doing mostly night flights which is great fun in it's own way, but common, blue sky like today deserves to be flow in!!  We'll see, maybe I can pull myself together and make an early evening flight happen.