A330-300 Actual/true range

[clipper777]

I see that virgin atlantic flew there A333 on MAN-LAS is this possible with 314 pax and no load penalty. And is this the longest A333 route in the world. how can virgin pull it of while others can't or won't. Can the A333 take any cargo at all on a 5000nm route with 314 pax?

[SloppyJoe]

It has the flight time as about 9:45, that is not that much. I have done 10:20 in a 330-300 before. Doubt there is much cargo going to or from LAS from UK.

Max fuel is about 76 tonnes and you burn about 6 an hour.

Your right though, not much cargo if full of people and fuel, if any at all.

[toffeez]

Don't forget there are many versions of the A330-300. The early ones were quite short range but the take-off weights were later increased a lot.

p.s. I think it's not just folklore that VS once flew an A340-200 from Hong Kong to London departing north-east and passing Japan before turning west to fly over the top to the UK. Something to do with China overflight restrictions that day.
.

[PappyJ]

Depending on the variant and engine combination, it could carry a pretty good load for nearly 10 hours.

Example: RR powered A330-300

MTOW - 230,000
MZFW - 173,000
BOW - 121,000

Full payload - MZFW-BOW=52 tonnes (314 pax * 90 kgs = 28,260 kgs) which leaves room for about 23 1/2 tonnes of cargo.

Max Fuel - MTOW-MZFW=57 tonnes

Average fuel burn at this weight, with these engines, average over ten hours = 5385/hour

Alternate = LAX - 2700, plus 600 for G/A = 3300
Reserve fuel for 30 minutes = 3000

Fuel for trip = 50,700 / 5384 = 9:40 hours

The numbers seem to work and include capacity for a good lot of cargo.

[RobertS975]

Delta (DL) #9971 Flight Tracker ? FlightAware (http://flightaware.com/live/flight/DAL9971)

Although an A332, this DL bird flew 18:36 nonstop from Changi to KATL on May 26th. Of course, it was an empty ferry flight. I wondered about the economics of this flight being nonstop, obviously hauling a max fuel load as opposed to stopping somewhere along the route to refuel. Balance between an extra landing fee, an extra couple of hours enroute and the cost of hauling the extra fuel for the first half of the flight.

[Kestrel_Stu]

I think Jetstar still hold the A330-200 record non-stop flight (TLS-MEL on an empty delivery sector in Feb 2011). 19h48m.

I've done 11:30 in an A330-300 (empty), but I've quite comfortably done LGW-CUN (10:00), GLA-SFB (09:00) and LGW-YVR (09:30) in it with a full pax load (233t MTOW). You are right to say cargo capacity does then become quite limited though.

MAN-LAS should be no issue.

I believe the longest regular scheduled routes by A330 aircraft are:

A330-200: Delta DTW-HND (12:10, 6,413nm)
A330-300: Turkish IST-ORD (12:10, 5,490nm)

Both are probably payload restricted I'm guessing.

[Snakecharma]

Virgin Australia beat Jetstar last year with a 20 hr flight time sector. They did 19:30 flight time earlier this year (block times were longer)

[puff]

VH-XFE ? 18-Jun-2012 ? LFBO / TLS - YMML / MEL ? FlightAware (http://flightaware.com/live/flight/VHXFE/history/20120618/1500Z/LFBO/YMML)