Originally Posted by
Rated De
Ah, not sure I agree with you there.
Statistics are all about lies, and damned lies.
Qantas doesn't have the fleet that I would choose, however, for all that, it is not bad at all. Qantas fuel policy is a minimum fuel policy with enroute despatch. It keeps the crews interested in the proceedings. Of all the airlines that I have conducted audits on, Qantas is one of the most frugal. That doesn't mean that it is insufficient, it is mere efficient.
Aircraft wise, yes, a B773ER is relatively fuel efficient against a B744, but it is not 50% more efficient. Not even close. The B773ER will burn around 7.8T average on a long haul for some 360 pax or so, dependent on cabin installation. The B772ER does the same leg with 300 pax and just on 7T average burn. The B744 flies the leg and burns 8.5-8.8T or so on average, and can accomodate from 380 to 450 pax. If you start getting the same amount of seat volume as the B744, the figures start looking worse for the 777. The B787 is not shabby at all. A plane that gets to 410 at MTOW is going to do rather well Transpac, particularly westbound. Both the B744 and the B773 have limited initial cruise level which plonks them right in the middle of the noserlies across the pond,
The A380 is not a bad performer, but Qantas gave more liebenstraum to the passengers, as do most of the 380 operators. That makes the metric considered here misleading (or suck)
Cargo load is a high value revenue earner, particularly across NOPAC or SOPAC. The metric considered here is misleading as it doesnt take into account the cargo load.
The appropriate metric is to consider revenue/cost, which of course assumes that you can nail down the load factor to that level of resolution, so that high value seats can be compared to others. Overall, if you want to look at the efficiency, look at the types within a single operator for a comparison of efficiency of the types, and look at common types fuel burns for a sector across varying airlines. This type of comparison is worked by Air Commerce in their analysis of aircraft, and permits a rational assessment of a particular types efficiency, and of a particular carriers efficiency with that type.
Consider the following simple logical point:
The article states Virgin, flying effectively the same route as Qantas achieves 33 ASK/L compared to 22 for Qantas.
The B777 vs the A380 presumably.
The VA B773ER seats 334 in 37J 24YP 278Y configuration. The plane does a 13,5 hour flight to LAX ex SYD and will burn around 110T of fossils.
The Qantas A380 seats 14P, 64J 35YP and 371Y.
With 100% LF (right, flat earth stuff) current revenue for pax only payload is about 809900AUD for the A380 and 449350AUD for the B777. Yield is dependent on customer quality/cost tradeoffs that are personal, but the airlines charge what they can. Effectively, the A380 is getting nearly double the revenue for the pax load that the B777 does.
The fuel burn is considerably higher for the A380, it is around 50% higher per flight, but even just with the seat number alone, the difference in seats for the aircraft are 42% more seats in the A380.
On sear numbers alone, the fuel efficiency per pax runs out to about 13% more fuel burnt by the A380,
On the pax revenue at 100% LF, the A380 gets 80% more revenue form the seats than the B777, so is more efficient.
The A380 carries 2 less LD3 containers than the B777-300ER can...
Overall, the maintenance cost of the different MPD's comes into play, as does passenger preference. I am a long in the tooth Boeing driver, but I will take an A380 for comfort over any Boeing currently built. I'm not a fan of Airbus, but having qualified on the A320-340 as well as the B727-B787, in the end they are just tubes (until the control logic changes).
The metric chosen in the ABC report is misleading. The seating as fitted is chosen by the airline to meet their market and achieve what they consider to be the best total revenue, which is determined by the yield per seat in each class. The A380 gets about 11% more than the B777 per gram of Jet juice.
Across the Pacific, an aircraft that can climb above the jet west/south bound is going to have a tactical advantage, which points to the B787 being a good transpac aircraft consideration, if the batteries and cabin compressors keep the smoke in the right spot.