Slowing down flights to save millions of dollars
It turns out that what works on the highway, also works in the air.
Fuel-conscious drivers have long observed the rule that to drive a little slower is to save on gas - and as it turns out, this also applies to air travel. While slowing down only a few miles per hour will indeed add a few minutes to your flight time, those few minutes are allowing the airlines to save literally millions of dollars.
The Associated Press reports that Southwest Airlines will save a projected $42 million this year by extending each flight a mere one to three minutes. Jeanne Leblanc reported that just earlier this week, a Northwest Airlines flight from Paris to Minneapolis saved 162 gallons of fuel by slowing down a bit, a cost savings to the airline of $535 for that flight.
Time added to the 8 hour 50 minute flight? An additional 8 minutes.
My question is this: when you’ve already been on a flight for 8 hours and 50 minutes, what’s another 8 minutes, really? If even a tiny percentage of the savings begins to trickle down to the consumer, this could breathe (at least a little bit of) new life back into the industry. An extra minute or two here, a hundred gallons or so there — the savings quickly starts to add up.
In addition to raising fares and adding fuel surcharges, some airlines have also started charging passengers for checking a second bag, rather than a third. With so many airlines filing for bankruptcy and citing high fuel costs, slowing down slightly to save hundreds of dollars per flight is looking more and more like a workable idea - and one that is being implemented with greater frequency.
Certainly it’s not to say that something as simple as slowing down a little bit will be some “magic solution” to all of the current financial woes carriers are now facing. All of the moving parts in this industry, so to speak, are finely tuned to come together in what one AP report recently described as a “delicate balance”.
I don’t know how “delicate” that balance is but I know that increasing individual flight times, even by as little as a minute or two, could begin to add up across the board to spell major headaches for carriers and passengers alike, in ways yet to even be thought of.
However, when you look at the fact that JetBlue saves about $13.6 million a year in jet fuel costs, by adding an average of less than two minutes to each flight, it seems like it’s only a matter of time before all carriers are following suit and perhaps then we’ll see how this plays out.
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The chances of any savings trickling down to the consumer are slim to none because some, or perhaps all, of the savings are illusory. When crew time, additional depreciation and earlier maintenance requirements are factored in it is hard to see where any savings will be realized..