I went to a United Airlines sponsored fuel savings class this morning. It was required. I am going to try to be omnipotent here as best I can.
Southwest Airlines is the only airline making money. You will not find a Southwest Express anywhere will you? This isn’t to say that this is the reason for their success, but there is something to be said for all their employees working for Southwest and all being on the same page. Well, United Airlines is tanking badly due to rising fuel costs. The airplanes are full, or close to it, so there isn’t a shortage of folks flying. But apparently they’ve done their research and are of the opinion that raising the prices will result in losing many of those customers, which is likely true. At the present you can fly to your destination cheaper than driving your car. I mean, didn’t flying used to be a privilege afforded only to those who could afford it? We are in the time business. You fly because your time is valuable, not because it is just cheaper. Anyway…….
In an effort to try to educate pilots of ways to save fuel, they came up with this presentation. It was basically an hour and a half of conflicting information. Here are some interesting points that I took from the presentation….
First off, United Airlines, in all of their brilliance has determined that the most important metric to consider as regards fuel saving is how much fuel remains on the airplane when it lands. The theory behind this is that it costs money to haul the extra weight of extra fuel. So, it has been decided that an effective measure is to reduce the amount of fuel that the airplane carries. The number crunchers have figured out that over the many flights that occur in a day, the company pays $X to haul Ylbs of extra fuel for “just in case scenarios”, of which that fuel is actually only used by a small percentage of the flights – a very small percentage. Typically the fuel load is computed based on the flight planned burn (information pulled from the performance software for the airplane based on weight and flight planning altitude), alternate fuel, and reserve fuel (45 minutes in LRC (long range cruise) power). Then there is this thing called “contingency fuel”. This is the wildcard. If ATC throws a delay on you or similar then this fuel is your extra little bit of air. So you have Burn, Alternate, Reserve, Contingency, which in the business we call BARC. BARC is also called “min fuel”. This is the amount of fuel required to be legal from the last brake release to completion of the landing roll at the alternate, plus the 45 minutes of reserve and contingency. We cannot change what the feds say we must have on board (although the bean counters would love it if we could take off with zero contingency fuel, which on clear days we often do), so the new game is to compute minimum fuel and to put only that amount on board. Sounds good right?
United has crunched all the numbers based on this metric and it is determined that, in general, airplanes are landing with right about an hour of fuel left on board. In their eyes, the smaller the number the better, and in fact when they look at regional airline performance they want to see small amounts of fuel on board upon landing. My question, which is probably yours too, why aren’t they looking at burn as the critical metric? Well, that is probably a factor in United’s demise. Did they pick the wrong target here? I’m just saying.
So, as a contracted business such as Trans States, often what is good for United isn’t good for us at all. And the other way too. For example, we fill up a flight to exactly min fuel. No alternate required for this flight. So in theory we should land with reserve fuel only in the tanks. However, the flight plan isn’t direct. But after a few minutes in the air, ATC says “Waterski xxxx, you are cleared direct to XYZ”. This is a shortcut. We are all over shortcuts like flies on shit. However, we’ve just caused ourselves to look bad. Why? We were flight planned to burn a certain amount of fuel, we got a shortcut, and we now land with more fuel in the tanks. “Bad, Trans States!!!!”. “Well, The Man, we saved you fuel!!!”.
Muddying in the waters further….not all airports charge the same amount for fuel. Chicago charges A LOT for fuel, as do many other airports. Well, United Airlines is paying for the gas. So, why not be good stewards of their money and overfill the airplane at the cheaper outstation, fly into ORD, and just add a little bit of fuel there. It saves United money!! Again, we’ve just landed with extra fuel in the tanks and had to burn more fuel to move that extra fuel along with us.
Additionally, there is a pumping charge that we pay. It varies from a fixed cost “consortium” type deal at the hubs (where we pay approx $73 per scheduled departure whether we take on a drop of fuel or not) to outstations which are a few cents per gallon. So, at the hubs, if we pay $73 per flight regardless, if we get more fuel at the hub, we are actually, spreading that fixed cost over more gallons, whereas at the outstations, we are paying a small fee per gallon AND still spending the $73 at the hub. Every flight as an optimum solution of how much fuel to get where and I think that type of calculation is above their heads. But, they working on it, I hear.
And lastly (not really, but the last thing I’ll mention), everything we pay as regards the airplanes is “power by hour”. This means that engine overhauls, APU overhauls, electrical maintenance, pilot pay, flight attendant pay, etc is all based on flight hour. United has determined that if we slow down a few knots in cruise, it’ll only add on a few minutes to the flight, but since drag is exponential, it’ll save fuel. This is a fact. However, it adds more flight time to the airplane. Engines are overhauled more often, pilots are paid more, etc. So United wins, we lose!!!
What is the answer?
What will I do? I’ll stay up high as long as possible, and chop and drop for crossings. If I have a hefty tailwind, I’ll slow down a bit to take advantage of it. Single engine taxi when possible, turn on the APU at the last minute. Thats about it. There is a distinct disconnect between the people sitting at the desks and the pilots in the tube. If there is any reason at all to ask for more fuel, its going on the airplane!!!! Aviation is sort of a one way ticket. United says they pay all this extra money to carry extra contingency fuel that is rarely ever used. But if it saves the day one time, it was worth it! You don’t mess with fuel.
Aviation 101 says that the 3 most useless things in aviation is runway behind you, altitude above you, and fuel still in the fuel farm. In a very round about way, United is trying to hinder us on that third point. Hopefully that makes you feel fuzzy next time you get your $200 ticket. Luckily, as professional pilots, we’ll take the needed steps to keep it safe. Its why we get paid the bigs bucks right?
I am still waiting for my first big buck.