Tankering Fuel - Yes or No?
 

We are often asked to tanker fuel between LGW and Scotland and sometimes even as far as Italy. It makes me uneasy to carry extra fuel, which burns extra fuel, increasing our overall fuel consumption to save a few dollars.

In these days of sensitivity to carbon emissions, threats of global warming, and even if you are a 'global warming denier', the finite nature of oil reserves, I believe we should be doing our utmost to save every drop we can.

Does anyone else believe it to be immoral and unwise to tanker fuel? Should the use of these resources overide any economic considerations? Should fuel-tankering be regulated?

(Please note, I am not talking about bringing fuel into LHR and other places where local supplies are themselves limited - that is a practical consideration.)

When you drive an electric car, live in a house powered by renewable resources and recycle everything then you might want to consider cutting down on tankering to save the planet. Whilst your sentiment is admirable you really need to keep a sense of perspective. The extra gas you burn tankering on every sector this year is likely to be considerably less than the gas I burned on the last sector I did. The excess burn from tankering really is a tiny drop in the ocean!

Tankering fuel saves more than a few dollars and multiplied by several or more times a day and all the year round will save one hell of a lot of dollars and could make the difference between remaining employed or becoming unemployed.

Whilst I am one for concerns regarding the environment, my house is full of low energy light bulbs etc, I would like to remain employed to continue paying the mortgage etc.

BlueDog makes a valid point in an altruistic sense. But the real question is - why is tankering necessary? Is it a genuine shortage in Scotland (so near to the North Sea), or is it supply monopoly artificially raising the local price?

Airlines are the "fuel suppliers of last resort" when conventional market sources come up short. It's unfair to point the finger of blame at an airline when more efficient surface transport is failing to do the job. :ouch:

dog,

i am very suprised your tankering from lgw to gla! never seen that before.

don't think i ever tank'd without a good reason. i take it you work for BA. in fact every time i tank'd when on SH it made sense and was more often to do with fuel quality issues at the dest.

if your so worried about the inviroment you should probably quit flying :O

ps if we built more new nuclear plants then maybe we could save on finite resources and have a cleaner world. the greens are going to destroy the planet!:hmm:

Burn it all!! NOW the soon its gone the sooner we will be FORCED into developing new technolgies! and the soon the planet can start to recover.... till then ill keep my V8 and Rotary cars of the early 80's :}

Hey "Blue Woof" ,

You reinforce my decision to get out of this stupid business............ever felt the outflow valve tension release when when you get the ZFW and its less than planned,tankering is policy on route, and youre heading back towards "Mitch"?????????

I think carrying a little extra fuel is good common sense for unforseen events that can occur.. ala last Monday evening in EGSS.

The only time you have too much gas on an airplane is when you are on fire.

Sorry, I wouldn't bother with this for starters. For me, it would be round trip catering, water tanks always being full (ever returned from a long flight with less than 1/2 water?) crew bags ramining onboard regardless. Want me to harp on any more?

OOOOhhh, and the weight of the tech log could come down too...

In our company we periodically get a list of sectors on which Tankering is recommended. It lists the total cost savings per kilo-litre of fuel.

This includes not just the price difference between fuel at departure and destination, but also factors in the approximate expenditure (extra fuel burned) incured in carrying the extra tankered fuel.

The net figure is provided in the list, and it is plain to see the immense cost savings involved in tankering on certain sectors.

The extra fuel burned to tanker the extra fuel is minimal as compared to the savings from the difference in cost of fuel at an expensive destination.

BlueDog


Tanking fuel-what a waste, turning fuel into money to keep the accountants happy. Is it a good return ?

In the future when fuel supplies dry up people will look back in amazement at how we burnt fuel transporting fuel.

You are right we should be saving fuel.

If you care about your companys commercial success - you tanker fuel. If you don't give a damn about it, go plog minimum. The difference in terms of emissions, well - you could choose to be a good guy & fly ECON climb/cruise/descent at all times, looking carefully for wind/altitude trades at all times and drive a SmartForTwo (unless you already do all of these).

It's a shame if one company tries to hold a slightly greener profile and ends up going under due to extra fuel expenses. It's a lot of money if you fly between destinations with index 89 and 164 - even on a 73 landing with 7 ton vs. 2 ton equates to almost 1700 USD saved.

Just me tupppence worth
Empty

Oh, and then we don't even talk about ferry flights. Evildoers.
BTW, what costindex do you guys fly most of the time?
We have apolicy of 16 for the 737-500 and 12 for the -700.
Econ climb, cruise and descent. Cost savings over index 30 appeared to be €15 per 1500 NM. Those savings tok also into account the added mainenance cost of longer flighttimes. Go figure.

Of course the accountants love it....

On a single route into LHR, 10 flights per week, we can save over $100,000 per month by tankering fuel. That includes the additional cost of carriage/ wear and tear!

Mutt

Mutt,

I think that SV may be an "extreme case" here, with the economics of the fuel supply "at home" and the situation,say, at LHR.

However, I suppose you could say that the UK government bring it on themselves, and us, by taxing fuel (road, air) so highly.

I wonder if BA used to and BMI now do, tanker out of RUH, JED? Certainly would make "commercial sense"!

Our flight plan system used to add tankering fuel for flights into ARN. The saving was guoted at 8 UKL/ton. (Yes eight)
And people took it. Then we needed deicing because of the tankered fuel which costs aroun 600 UKL a go. So we didnt save a lot overall. I finally wrote a long treatise about it to ops planning, and they stopped doing it.

[However, I suppose you could say that the UK government bring it on themselves, and us, by taxing fuel (road, air) so highly.
Aviation fuel is not taxed (yet).
and neither is engine oil either. When I buy engine oil from Mobil I pay no VAT on the bill!

Yes, I know, thread drift
 

And maybe by then we'll also stop burning oil to transport truck loads of "designer" water half way across the continent!!!!

The fuel is only cheap for SV ex-Saudi, EXSIMGUY, all other airlines pay thru the nose, for quite a long time, according to the cost index lists I've seen.