fuel savings
 

Hi,would be glad if someone could enlighten me on this topic.
Just how much fuel does a wide body saves when track shortening is provided? I need to know the approximate amount saved in US$$$ so that we controllers can roughly help out whenever direct tracks are available.
Is it legally ok for acft to accept direct tracks?
I am particularly interested in enroute acft. However I do also welcome fuel savings on ground and approach sectors.
Thanks for the replies.

Veloo

Well ..... let's take a B747-400 burning approximately 10 tonnes of fuel per hour in the criuise travelling at 480 kts tas. That means it travels 8 nm per minute. So if you can shorten its track by 8nm it will save one minutes worth of fuel. 1/60th of 10 tonnes = 166 kgs of fuel. I am guessing that Jet A1 presently costs US$300 per tonne, so an 8nm track shortcut would save about US$50 in fuel costs alone.

For other types adjust the fuel burn accordingly.

HTH

One problem that a lot of controllers don't understand though is that of airline routing aircraft to take advantage of weather or the lack of it. So even though you are giving an aircraft a more direct routing you wind up actually costing the company more money due to more fuel burn due to winds aloft. Then in the rest of the world there is also the issue of taking them from a cheaper ATC provider into a more expensive one <G>. There are a couple of airlines out there who gladly have an aircraft go out of the way to stay out of someone's airspace and much higher ATC fees.

regards

Scott

Direct routings are a plague! Everybody takes everybody as direct as possible and thinks this is a benefit to pilots.
The best way to really help pilots with a direct is if you look at the profile; they don´t care for any track if you give them the opportunity to climb to their requested level without intermediate stop. Saves a lot more fuel than a direct track.