What happens when you decide to treat people as payload? The DoT allows for an average weight of 209 pounds per passenger. So, doing some math, we can get the weight of people, their bags and the mail. Then divide all this by gallons of fuel and some neat numbers pop out.
Our model has two views of the data. As part of this process, we first focused on the passenger carriers, but then it became obvious to add the freighters as well. That really opened up the numbers.
Page 1: A suggestion – First select the Play button on the chart and watch the magic. The select an airline or aircraft model. The table provides a summary of how many ton-miles and aircraft flies on one gallon of fuel. Special mention here for the Boeing 787-10 with its eye-popping performance. The 747-8F is the King of the Hill as one would expect. The higher the number, the better.
Page 2: Because you know you want to see how the airline fleets compare, we added this view. here we recommend starting with a Play before selecting. You can select airline and aircraft type as well. It becomes clear that newer generation aircraft are significantly more fuel-efficient.
While freighters are always going to win a payload/fuel race, the performance of the newest generation of aircraft is impressive. Typically freighters are retired passenger aircraft. But we see the 747-8F and 777F do very well. Moreover, within the passenger airlines, it is clear the state of art aircraft are very efficient. Special mention here for the A330-900.
