Cheaper than a chip wrapper

Wrong. You'd be surprised how much it costs in aviation fuel to lift a
human.

 

It didn't have a "Norton" sticker on it, by any chance?[/QUOTE]

A scary thought. How many Norton rotary engines went into aeroplanes?

I saw a very nice Norton rotary bike (Commander?) recently at one of
our bike club nights, it looked fresh from the factory but had done
some miles.

 

Christopher Des Clayes wrote:

Military used them in drones I think.

 

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember
(The Older Gentleman) saying
something like:

Ok; Ryanair aren't in business to lose money, so it makes some sort of
sense somewhere along the line to superficially lose money per seat/mile
on these flights.

So what's going on, then?

--

Dave

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I'd assume they've bought the fuel in advance or something, filling with
a fixed amount of fuel, based on calculations where the plane was full,
so it doesn't matter if you give seats away for nothing as you've
already paid for the fuel, IYSWIM.

 

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember (SteveH)
saying something like:

Aha... fuel duty differences...right.

--

Dave

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If it hasn't been burnt to carry the unburnt fuel, iyswim.

Tbh, I'd have thought that the airline would have factored in expected
flight loads as part of their budgeting for fuel, in that same way that
a mail order company would budget everything down to the stamp used on
the envelope to send out the invoice. Simple business logic (which I'd
expect SteveH to understand, tbh.)

Budget airlines are in a price war. Nobody makes much money in a price
war, the trick is to lose the least, or be the last man standing.

Unless I'm missing something really obvious.

 

SteveH emerged from their own little world to say

They would never turn aircraft around in 30 mins if they needed to refuel
at every stop. Too many safety protocols.

 

SteveH
() says...

Dumping fuel is an emergency-only thing.

It would be done partly to reduce fire risk, but mainly to
reduce landing speed. The heavier an a/c is, the faster it has
to go to stay in the air, so the faster the landing speed. If
you land too fast, the tyres cannae take it.

So, if you need to land PDQ for some reason, and you're fuelled
up for a long flight, you may need to lose fuel in order to get
your weight down to a point where you can land at a reasonable
speed. That's the sort of situation where you'd consider dumping
it.

(BA's 767s don't have the equipment to dump fuel. Their
procedure in such cases is to fly around the North Sea for an
hour or two with flaps and landing gear down.)

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It costs fuel to lift fuel.

In other words, aircraft don't fly with full fuel loads if they don't
have to.

As I understand it, the fuel load is not calculated until quite late in
the pre-take off sequence.

 

So it's not a case of "if it's not used it stays on the plane", more a
case of "if it's not used it stays on the account with the fuel
provider."

So it's still all about bludgeoning the competition.

 

That's interesting

A bit of a bugger if you have to make an emergency landing in a hurry.

 

Exactly. They've calculated the expected load, which is likely to be
'full' for most budget airlines. They've secured a price on a fixed
amount of fuel (most likely from the airfield abroad if they're landing
with part full tanks - that was a surprise to me, as I thought the idea
was to land with empty tanks), so they have a fixed cost no matter how
many people use the plane.

If they're short of capacity, it makes sense, from a marketing point of
view, to 'give away' the seats rather than fly with them empty.
Calculating the cost of the fuel once you know the load is financial
suicide, IMHO, as you could find yourself well over budget if the plane
is carrying more than it's forecasted load.

 

Budgetting year by year for buying the fuel is finger-in-the-
wind compared with calculating how much to take on a specific
flight, over a specific route, with a known load and known
weather conditions. The pilots can cut back the fuel uplift
depending on the payload.

Certainly the weight of a human plus luggage would account for
more than 1p of fuel.

But a much more significant part of the avoidable costs incurred
by taking on a 1p passenger is the airport handling charge. All
those check-in desks and airbridges and carousels have to be
paid for somehow. IIRC the airlines at LHR have to fork over
about 26GBP per passenger to the airport. (NB that's not a
straight incremental cost when you pay 2600GBP if there's 100
pax on your flight and 2626GBP if there's 101. That's an
average.)

Of course, the low-cost airlines will be paying out a lot less
than that because they don't use LHR. But there's still a cost.
Now, is the cost avoided if they leave a seat empty rather than
filling it with a 0.01GBP passenger? Depends on the contract. it
could be "We'll pay 13.00GBP per passenger". Or it could be
"We'll pay 1,500GBP for a 737".

Here's another thing: a lot of the airports used by low-cost
carriers are heavily subsidised, because the local authorities
want to attract people to the region. eg there's one in SW
France... I think Bergerac? where the possibility of the low-
cost crown pulling out had the locals really worried, 'cos expat
Brits are driving a house price boom in the area.

I don't know if it's legal for the local authorities to say
"We'll give you 10EUR for each passenger you bring in". If
they're doing that, that would account for it. But it needn't be
like that.

It could be along the lines of "You'll get airport services for
this price, IF you bring in 30,000 people per year" and a less
advantageous price if you don't. If it's working like that, then
it *could* make sense to fly some people purely to make sure of
making the target.

(Similar sort of things: a lot of bike dealers get big end-of-
year bonuses dependent on shifting certain numbers of bikes, or
meeting turnover targets. If they're close to a significant
cutoff point at the end of the year, it makes sense for them to
cut their own froat on a few bikes in December to trigger a big
payout.

That's correct, innit TOG?)

Moral: pricing is not always a matter of two variable related by
a straight-line graph. Nor is costing. And the two aren't the
same.

--
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That's about it, yes. In the same way that filling stations never fill
their underground tanks full, and get the supplier to send the tanker
trucks out every few days instead.

Nobody wants to hold stock.

 

>, The Older Gentleman
() says...

But then. if you have a heart attack when you're 4h out of LHR
en route to JFK, you're in trouble.

Now that I think of it, it could be that *some* of BA's 767s do
have fuel dump equipment, but certainly some ofthem don;t have
it- I remember one having to do the North Sea inefficient-flying
thing. IIRC BA had longhaul and shorthaul 767s, differently
equipped.

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BA flight crew arrive 2-3 hours before STD. One of the things
they do in that time is calculate fuel uplift, based on their
then current knowledge of load and weather.

If it's not used, it's not purchased and not put on the
aircraft.

You may say that. The airlines couldn't possibly comment.

--
<8P Wizard
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It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the

Then, of course, with Ryanair; they know a certain percentage of
passengers won't turn up for the flight - those folk have maybe only
paid 1p for a seat, but they've paid government taxes up front too.

Do Ryanair refund the passengers the unused taxes?
Do Ryanair pay the no-show taxes to the government?

Of course not. In 2003, Ryanair trousered some €23,000,000 (that's
right, 23 million Euros) from non-refunded and non-forwarded taxes.

--

Dave

GS 850 x2 / SE 6a
SbS#6 DIAABTCOD#16 APOSTLE#6 FUB#3
FUB KotL OSOS#12? UKRMMA#19 COSOC#10

 

SteveH
() says...

Carrying more fuel than you need incurs a cost, so usually
you'll aim to arrive with as little as you can- bearing in mind
safety margins, of course.

If fuel prices differ drastically from place to place, then it
can make sense to fill up where it's cheap and fly around with a
lot extra on board, but it would have to be quite a big
difference.

It may. If you don't sell your tin of baked beans today, you can
hold onto it and sell it tomorrow. If seat 12B on today's flight
to Trieste isn't sold, it's perishable; when the door closes,
it's gone.

Yes, but budgetting for your business plan a year or three ahead
is one thing; tactical on-the-day decisions on fuel uplift are
another thing.

You may have budgetted on there being 100 people in your 737,
paying 50GBP each. That doesn't mean you'll fuel it to carry 100
people if only 80 paying passengers show up. You'll get less
revenue than you budgetted for, but you'll be able to trim your
costs a little.


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Curmudgeon
() says...

'kinell!

And even if they refunded it it would still be a pretty handy
source of loans.

It all adds up, dunnit.

--
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