Asymmetric Winglets - how do they effect performance

[Scottie Dog]

I was interested to see a recent photograph of a 737-800 which had had one blended winglet removed. How would this effect performance? Would there be any potential problems?

This aircraft was not just on the ground, but was in service - although possibly operating a positioning flight.

[747FOCAL]

Air Canada was recently flying a 747-400 with one winglet missing for quite some time because they had no money to fix it. The assymetry would only cause you to stand on the rudder slightly harder to one side. Some fuel burn hit and maybe some oops restricitons, but not too bad.


By the way which airline was it?

[alatriste]

Scottie dog, you can check this topic on a previous thread of the Tech Log forum. "Where is the winglet?" started by 152captain on September 2003.
REGARDS

[Captain Stable]

The simple answer is that they don't effect performance - they affect it!

Call me a pedant - it's been done before!

[Scottie Dog]

Thanks for the replies and the information supplied.

Using Pprune is almost as good as having a spell-checker on your pc!!

The aircraft in question was operated by Eurocypria at EGCC, and I understand from a later posting that it had had an argument with a 767. Presumably if the aircraft had not had winglets then the fight would never have happened.


Thanks again.

[CR2]

As far as I can remember there is a MTOW penalty on the B747-400, though can't remember how much (3T-5T? ). We bent one a couple of years ago

[747FOCAL]

CR2,

The penalty on the 747-400 for a missing winglet is 20,000 pounds at sea level standard day and 2.5% fuel burn hit I believe.

[CR2]

Thanks for that 747FOCAL.