Reducing Airline Fuel Consumption and Cost

Fuel costs have become a major percentage of total airline operating costs. Fuel accounts for roughly 40% of total operating expenses and for U.S. carriers it totaled $47.3 billion last year (Grose, 2013). In an attempt to reduce such high costs, airlines have implemented a variety of fuel saving strategies.

Weight Reduction

Weight reduction is a major concern for airline fuel savings. Every aspect of aircraft design is looked at from a weight/safety standpoint. Below are a few of the most novel approaches to weight reduction that airlines have implemented in the past few years.

Phasing Out Paper

In 2011, United and Continental pilots began using 1.5lb iPads as electronic flight bags to replace the traditional 38lb paper flight manuals. The projected fuel savings was calculated to be 326,000 gallons of jet fuel for a savings of $1.2 million per year (United Continental Holdings Inc., 2011). This year, American Airlines received regulatory approval for flight attendants to swap out their 5lb paper manuals for 1lb Samsung tablets for a fuel savings of $650,000 per year (Dastin, 2014). While there is a large upfront capital cost for the purchase of thousands of tablets, this is offset by no longer having to print millions of sheets of paper each year for manuals.

As for in-flight magazines, Singapore Airlines has been experimenting with providing digitized content for its three magazines on long-haul flights. For every 25lb reduction in paper, a savings of $400,000 in fuel cost can be realized. A single long-haul aircraft carries up to 880lb of paper. That amounts to over $14 million dollars in fuel costs per year, just to carry paper (Kolesnikov-Jessop, 2011).

Tray Redesign

Over the past few years, Virgin Atlantic has spent $168 million to redesign how it provides meals to passengers.