Long haul 'kiss'
 

Any truth in the rumours there was a bit of contact between 2 Qantas jets at Sydney last night?

We'll know for sure in 9 months!

If I remember my GFPT theory correctly, I believe the gestation period of a dugong is actually 13-15 months

Just the tip... Said the jumbo to the dugong

Well, if you were flying to Japan on the 747-400 to Japan last night and you were looking out the right hand windows, it would've looked as though you were flying on a 747-200/300.

:}

Do they take other other one off to keep it "balanced"/pax happy?

I don't think so. ISTR several comments here about a -400 flying with only one winglet.

And after a bit of Googling, we have this video of a Qantas 747 landing with but one winglet...

Just a peck really. 744 will fly without winglet, 380 will not

It was quite some time back when I crewed a B747-400 minus one winglet. We were surprised there was no fuel penalty required with the applied MEL and don’t recall any additional fuel burn over the flight plan (AKL-SYD). Made us wonder what purpose they served. Not sure if current manuals are any different for the same situation.

This was debated here some time ago and I recall that it is permissible to operate without one winglet but not both. I don't recall ever hearing a satisfactory explanation for this counter-intuitive requirement.

I flew on a All Nippon Airways 747-481D Haneda-Fukuoka (about a two-hour sector) which had no winglets. The story was that on short-haul they made no difference. I'm beginning to wonder whether they make any difference at all on long-haul now.

Where I fly the B744, the CDL penalty for 1 winglet is 2.5% fuel burn. RTOW has a 9435kg penalty.

In Japan where the B744 was used for domestic ops, the short cruise time meant that the winglets actually increased fuel burn because of their weight.

The Japanese domestic B744s were delivered without winglets and initially flown on short sectors. As the number of cycles got to a certain level they were then fitted with winglets and used on long haul flights. The aircraft would get to the end of its service life having used all its hours and cycles so full value for money was obtained.