Dirty data and fuel burn numbers

The competition between CFM and Pratt & Whitney is furious. They compete on every order. Their respective engines, the LEAP and GTF, are at the cutting edge of aero engine technology. We have been tracking this competition for several years

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The US DoT is the only public data source that clues us into comparative performance.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that some airlines are careless (to be too polite) about their data filings.  We’ve reported on this before, calling out Alaska and Southwest.  There is, of course, another responsible party here—namely, the DoT, whose data audits are woeful. Dirty data is everyone’s problem.

On to the data.  The following chart reflects fuel burn for aircraft flying these two engine types.  Our source is the DoT T2 dataset. The first table lists the fuel burn.  Notice the impact, though, from misfiled data by Spirit Airlines.  The airline has consistently misfiled its T-100 data which is the feedsource for the T2.  We collaborated with A4A, who reported this to the DoT.  Spirit has agreed to refile the ast two years.  Not the optimal outcome, but what can you do?