People love to moan about airlines. But the statistics show that air travel has improved dramatically in every respect (safety, value for money, punctuality, etc.) over the past few decades.
Airlines provide no-frills service with minimal space as cheaply as possible, and people moan about it… but if offered more expensive tickets for better service, few people buy them. The evidence is that the airlines are providing exactly what people actually want, even if it isn’t what they say they want.
Certainly yes, as regards non-critical maintenance. It may suggest that critical maintenance/inspections are also being stretched, but the lack of in-flight mechanical failures and/or FAA fines for maintenance violations suggests otherwise.
For the vast majority of the flying public, fare price is the absolute number one priority. Go to Expedia, look for a flight, and you can sort the results by price, duration, or departure/arrival times, but you can’t sort by customer ratings like you can when you search for stuff on Amazon. Cheap fares fill planes, even if there are questionable stains on the seat cushions, half the reading lights don’t work, and the flight attendants all know how to give you that “fuck off” vibe without saying a word.
Thanks Richard.
The operations of the various airlines do fascinate me (especially since I witnessed the aftermath of a 707 plane crashing at my grandparents when I was 5, I heard the plane crashing and the next day headed out with my grandparents to look at the wreckage)
Reading up on the fuel capacity of the E175 (4000 km - assuming an ideal situation) and seeing that after 1000 km, we were landing for more fuel, I certainly think that they could have taken on a little more fuel.
However, I do understand that fuel is a MAJOR cost as well as a weight penalty if it is just being carried around.
Although not a direct comparison, my brother drives a bus, and I previously used to manage the operations of a fleet of trucks. In both cases, when starting out for the day, the normal practise was to start out fully fuelled with a much as could be carried.
Intuitively, it seems strange that an airplane would travel with its tanks half empty especially since running out of fuel in the air is NOT a great idea.
The point that I was making is that it appears that many of the airlines are running their planes and crews VERY HARD.
It amazes me to see all the airplanes in the air at once (Often, using the flightracking software, the USA comes up nearly solid white at the peak times). Pretty well all of these flights go up and land successfully.
However, I wonder if the capacity is being reached?
It’s not that simple.
An aircraft has a max landing weight (MLW), the maximum weight it can be for landing. Two other key limitations are the maximum zero fuel weight (MZFW) and the max take-off weight (MTOW). The max zero fuel weight is the maximum weight the aircraft can be with no fuel on board. In other words, any additional weight above the MZFW must be fuel, this limits the amount of payload that can be taken. The max take-off weight is self explanatory.
For an E190 (I don’t have figures for an E175 but the concept is the same) the weights are:
Max zero fuel weight = 40800 kg
Max landing weight = 43000 kg
Max take-off weight = 50300 kg
The fuel burn is approximately 2000 kg / hour.
Fuel for climb might be around 600 kg.
Note that the difference between MZFW and MLW is only 2200 kg. This means that with a full payload, i.e., full passengers and bags, the maximum fuel you can have on board on landing is 2200 kg, or a bit over an hour. Furthermore, this means that the most fuel you can take-off with is 2200 kg plus whatever you will burn in flight. For an hour long flight you could take 5000 kg. This is far less than the max fuel capacity of ~13000 kg.
The point here is that just because the tanks are big enough to take 13000 kg of fuel that does not mean you can actually put 13000 kg of fuel on.
Now that doesn’t mean you can’t take extra fuel if you have to, but doing so means you have to reduce the payload.
Looking at our hypothetical hour long flight, maybe we’ve considered the weather at our alternate airport and possible diversions around thunderstorms en route, and we’ve worked out that we’d like to have an additional 1000 kg of fuel on top of the original 5000 kg. The only way to do that is to off load passengers, about 10.
Now we have a dilemma. We can take the fuel we think we need but it means making 10 people very unhappy. Or we can take a punt on not needing as much diversion fuel, take all of the passengers, but risk having to make a refueling stop along the way and making all of the passengers slightly unhappy.
Note that the cost of carrying fuel around hasn’t factored into this at all. It’s been purely about aircraft limitations and maximising the payload, i.e., keeping the customer happy.
I don’t know about you, but I think most people would rather get to their destination with a stop along the way rather than not get there at all.
So why have a fuel capacity of 13000 kg then? It’s for longer flights. The available fuel capacity is to cater for expected fuel burn, it does not cater for short sectors with a large reserve / contingency quantity.
Some time ago I stumbled across the Wikipedia page for aircraft fuel economy, which included this plot of fuel economy versus distance for a Boeing 777. Very short flights have poor fuel economy because of the takeoff, landing, and taxiing; very long flights have poor fuel economy because they’re weighed down by a shitload of fuel.
The page also mentions this:
The New York/Singapore flight has been revived recently. I knew it was all business class, but I figured that was because this was the only way anyone would want to tolerate a 20-hour flight; surprising, and interesting, to learn that it’s about deliberately limiting the head count so they can carry more fuel instead.
I have flown Detroit-Nagoya several times now (14 hours/6500 miles on an Airbus A330), and it has always been surprising to me that the cabin was not more full. Is the limited passenger count on this flight due to lack of demand, or is it a deliberate choice by Delta to allow them to carry enough fuel to make that trip?
On our flight last week from Vegas to Philly there was NO coffee or tea – as in, not one drop available and AA declined to say why after the flight attendant announced it upon takeoff. People were pissed off!
And I paid $24 for Wi-Fi that worked well for about 15 minutes total, then kaput. And the bathrooms were literally awash in piss on the floor. And we paid a stupid amount for “extra” legroom and to check one bag (when others were bringing on larger bags and taking up entire overhead bins). And my $11 cheez 'n froot platter was tiny and the eight grapes were nasty and shriveled.
Oh, did I mention we sat on the tarmac at McCarran for 90 minutes without air conditioning? Yeah, it was 105 degrees outside.
I despise flying, it’s become a dreary, nickel-and-dimed-unto-death experience/marathon of discomfort. I’d much rather drive to destinations 1,000 miles +/- than pay out the snout for what is essentially New Jersey Transit in the Sky.
The complaints seem to me to break down into two basic categories with some overlap.
It’s fair enough to judge and compare airlines on customer service related factors. So that would include interiors which have been allowed to go too long without refurbishment as well as bad cabin service for any number of reasons*. The problem of course is that market outcomes depend on the votes of the predominant number of 's. And that's exacerbated in a relatively concentrated industry. There isn't going to be a mom and pop airline analogous to the mom and pop store where you can pay more for the same thing (or maybe it's really a better thing in some cases) if you don't like the big box stores though most 's gravitate there. Although you can fly first class or business, though that gets away from the dream state of complaining what you get for low airfares without being willing to pay more.
When it comes to safety stuff though, you simply have to trust the regulatory structure or else not fly. Serious accidents are far too rare to judge airlines comparatively on how often they experience them. And as has been mentioned, there’s no such thing as ‘overusing’ the plane itself if it’s being maintained according to regs. The plane and its engines don’t care how many months/years it takes to reach maintenance milestones of hours or pressurization cycles.
The fuel reserve thing is kind of in the middle since the real effect is to delay people in the unusual cases where planes divert to refuel, though running out of fuel in midair would be a safety issue obviously. But this is back to the extreme scarcity of any serious airline accidents and virtually none ever to fuel exhaustion where planes were correctly loaded with reg required fuel reserves (as opposed to the still very rare cases where a mistake was made in fueling). But practically speaking it’s far fetched to think market pressure from passenger choice could force airlines to carry fuel reserves in excess of regs. Whereas it’s not entirely far fetched to think airlines that let many of their cabins get seedy could suffer in the market.
*fatigue or just bad airline personnel attitudes, latter more common IME. Although if I’m just given the basics and otherwise left alone, and not barked at if I happen to violate some obscure rule, I’m fine, easy to please.
Yes, running out of fuel in the air is not a great idea. But have you noticed that this almost never happens? The last time a commercial flight loaded with the correct amount of fuel ran dry without a mechanical failure was Avianca 52, in 1990. They used up all of their holding fuel, and most of the fuel they would have needed to divert to their alternate airport, and then missed their first landing attempt, running out of fuel and crashing during their second approach. They never clearly communicated to ATC the fact that they were experiencing a fuel emergency; had they done so, they would have been allowed to land far sooner.
There have been other flights that ran out of fuel - most famously, the Gimli Glider, and less famously, Air Transat 236, but these were because of a mechanical failure on the latter, and mistakes by the flight crew on both.
The flight you spoke of in your OP was almost certainly not in danger of running dry because the flight crew was paying attention and landed with plenty of margin. The relative infrequency of in-flight emergencies due to fuel starvation in recent decades would seem to indicate that FAA rules regarding fuel margin are entirely adequate.
Beyond that, it’s not like Houston is remote, or that there’s only one airport that can handle an E75 in case of running out of fuel. They could have diverted to Austin (~25 minutes), College Station, San Antonio (a little bit further), Galveston, or one of the other 3 large Houston airports (there are four- IAH, Hobby, Sugar Land, Ellington) if absolutely necessary.
I think that what you’re seeing though is a concentrated effort to keep the planes as full of people and in the air as they possibly can within legal limits. That’s how they make their money- every second on the ground is regarded as money-losing time. SWA, for example, aims for extremely fast turnarounds- like 25 minutes or something absurd, with Formula 1 pit crews being their standard for ground crew efficiency (or something like that).
People are notoriously price sensitive when it comes to airline fares, and feel like since they’re paying several hundred dollars in most cases, that they’re entitled to a lot more in return than simply being schlepped from point A to point B at several hundred miles an hour.
Thanks for the information and the explanation. Something that I did not realize is the maximum landing weight is a LOT less than the maximum takeoff weight.
Also, I didn’t realize just how close the margins for fuel capacity could be in that taking on more fuel (in anticipation of troubles) could end up bumping a number of passengers.
Another factor is the weather. In the hot and humid conditions we had, more fuel would be needed which is yet another factor to consider.
I do agree that the planes and equipment are being run hard. My experience is the crews that I have seen are being run hard.
The poor flight attendants are being asked to do a LOT more than originally intended. When I see them walking down trying to sell clothes and jewerly in addition to their primary duties of keeping the passengers safe, I feel sorry for them .
You can’t say you agree, because everyone except you has pointed out that it’s actually not true - the planes are not being run hard.
That’s why they call it “work” and give them money in exchange for their time.
You really don’t have enough expertise to make that statement. Those who have experience disagree.
I’ll chime in here as a former airline pilot.
I left to fly business jets a few years ago and I like it much better. Not exactly because I felt overworked in the airlines exactly, it was more about quality of life. I had long days at the airlines, and I have long days sometimes on the charter side now. But I have way less stress on this side of the business, largely because of how I am “based”.
Airline pilots and flight attendants have a “base”. You work out of JFK, Chicago O’Hare, LAX or whatever. But you may or may not live there. If you don’t live in your base you are a commuter, and you travel to and from your base on the first and last day of your work rotation. If you’re lucky.
I found being a commuter really, really stressful. You’re traveling as a non-rev, meaning you’re flying for free, but only if a seat is available (sometimes the cockpit jumpseat, which although interesting at first, can be uncomfortable). You never know if you’re going to get a seat, so you have to go early in order to have a few tries at various flights. So there’s stress not knowing if you’re going to make it to work, and stress not knowing if you’re going to make it home. I found the latter worse, because every second I wasted not getting on a flight was time out of my life at home. There were times it looked like I was going to get on the plane, only to have a passenger or on-line pilot with priority swoop in and take my seat. Really, really frustrating.
The charter side of aviation often works differently. You’re generally hired under two conditions:
You live in your base because the company provides on-demand service, maybe medical evac, which precludes any kind of commuting. The typical requirement is that you must live within 2 hours of your airport.
Home basing. You live wherever you want, although sometimes it’s required you be within a couple of hours of a major airport. You work a certain rotation, commonly 8 days on / 6 off. On day 1 you are given an airline ticket and you go meet your aircraft wherever it is. You are always traveling on a paid ticket, so no non-rev stress.
I’ve been working under option two for several years now, and I love it. So much less stressful than when I was at an airline. I’m being paid for my time traveling, and it’s mostly stress free. If I’m late getting home, my company either pays me for that time or gives me extra time off on the other end. Quality of life is pretty much assured.
If you’re an airline pilot or FA who does not live in base, you’re pretty much screwed. Life as a commuter really sucks, especially as a new hire who will often have a crappy schedule. And I think that counts for a great deal of the “wear and tear” and stress on personnel, irrespective of the actual work.
But at the moment, the airlines are really hurting, struggling to find qualified employees. So they’re sweetening the deal. One friend tells me his company now gives him hotel rooms IN BASE to use at his discretion, which is unheard of. While I don’t predict the airlines will ever adopt a charter style home basing model, something is going to have to give over the next ten years or so as more people fly, but it becomes harder and harder to find pilots.
It’s good that that’s been clarified. The design of a/c (in terms of allowable landing weight v non-fuel payload) reflects long term practice of required fuel reserves, which have almost never proven inadequate from a safety (as opposed to convenience, extra stops now and then) POV. If larger fuel reserves were really necessary, that would eventually feed back to design changes in a/c. They’d have less non-fuel payload capability for a given size and level of technology.
As has been pointed out more than once, there is no such thing as an airplane being ‘run hard’, that’s of any negative consequence safety wise as long as it’s being checked and maintained at the proper intervals in terms of hours and cycles, calendar time intervals corresponding with its general level of utilization, condition monitoring (as of engines) etc. If the plane is properly maintained it does not care if it’s utilized 24/7 other than the time required for those maintenance operations*. And there’s no way for a passenger to know if the plane is being maintained properly. So this point simply has no validity.
Passengers don’t like airliner cabins that have been allowed to go threadbare, but that tells you nothing about the plane’s mechanical maintenance.
*the world average airliner utilization is something like 9 hrs per 24. Long haul planes which fly to one destination all night can get well over 12. Two of three airlines reported in link flew E175’s around 9 hrs per day, another around 11. Very high utilization, in terms of flight hours, is hard to achieve with short haul planes because they spend more time in turnaound and tend to sit around in the middle of the night when airports don’t allow, and passengers don’t much demand, flight departures. But if you flew an E175 continuously on short hops 24/7, except for the time to do checks and maintenance per regs and manufacturer specs, the plane wouldn’t care.
http://www.planestats.com/bhsr_2015jun
Arrgh, I’m flyng United tomorrow and will have a middle seat for some of the journey.
As long as they aren’t overworking the mechanics or pilots, I think we’re safe from falling out of the sky to our grisly deaths.
As for cabin wear and tear, we should probably expect that in these days of most flights being nearly or completely full, which in turn leads to overworking of cabin crews.
[aside]
Do most airlines still have dedicated gate agents? I hadn’t really paid attention before, but the last time I flew I noticed that the employee who acted as gate agent was also one of the flight attendants. Previously I had always assumed they were full time gate agents who spent their entire workday on the ground.
[/aside]
In my somewhat limited experience, a flight attendant doing double-duty as a gate agent would be the exception to the rule. My suspicion is that, when it happens, it’s on small airlines, and / or at airports where the airline in question has very few flights (and likely only uses one gate at that airport, and might well share that gate with other airlines).
Thanks for the stats. Interesting to see how the costs of running a plane are different for each airline despite having the same airplanes.
Surprising (or maybe not) that more is spent on maintenance than the crew.
Also interesting in how little (as a portion of the costs that fuel represents) with the 3 major costs being maintenance, crew and the aircraft costs.
I always fly whichever airline gets me there the cheapest.
If an airline offered flights where the only crew onboard were in the cockpit, locked in, and they were cheaper, I’d be on that flight.
The unions also have rather extensive rules in their contracts that control duty/rest, and which of the rules can be waived.
At some airlines at least, they get paid extra for doing this, and there is competition for the position.
Regards,
Shodan
