Fuel Tankering Economy
Dear All,
I here again request your help. This time it deals with fuel tankering.
In my company, (737classic operator), we calculate a recommendation about fuel tankering for each flight (mentioned in the flight plan delivered to crews).
The problem is that it only takes account of fuel price differences between the two planned stations (departure and arrival) and the extra fuel burn (associated to the extra fuel carried).
Even though, it is most of the time a loss. No extra fuel should be carried.
Time to time, it is a gain but no credit is taken into account for heavier take off and landing weights.
Further more, if you carry 6t of extra fuel on a 3h flight sector, you may not have the same optimum vertical flight path... the economy is then worse than the one calculated (and it is not definitively an environment friendly practice).
To carry extra fuel may lead also to other problems (wing icing on ground after landing…), even if it is a rare event on 737Classic.
Without considering impact on commercial load, let's take an example: 50€ gain per ton of extra fuel carried... and you carry 6t of extra fuel. This represents 300€... Almost nothing compared to the overall operation cost. (the 50€ gain is calculated for the 1st extra ton, so carry the 2nd is less than 50€ gain and the 3rd even less...).
People justify fuel tankering because:
1/ you cannot evaluate precisely the impact of the other parameters (heavier weights...) so we should not take consideration of it.
2/ the theoretical Gain x Number of annual sectors when you can "earn" (even if it is a reduced number of flights) represents a large amount of annual saving...
As you understand, I believe it is an erroneous analysis.
I strongly believe fuel tankering should be considered only when abnormal fuel price differences are encountered or for operational reasons. I have asked Boeing help to complete the study but they have no data to carry out such calculation.
Could someone share their practice and the reasons behind?
(we used to say that below a 15€ gain, we do not carry extra fuel. This is a value I am not comfortable with neither because I cannot solve an equation to come out to that result).
In advance, thank you!
Fin