Southwest Airlines may not own a plane with a headrest infotainment system, but it's still far and away the most enjoyable commercial flight you'll find in the US of A (save for
Virgin America, naturally). Granted, we'd like to see
in-flight WiFi offered on a few more of its flights (read: 100 percent of them), but hey, we'll take free checked bags and friendly employees any day of the week. We'll also take fuel savings and environment stewardship, both of which Southwest is aiming to give us by creating the planet's first "green plane." By utilizing recyclable InterfaceFLOR carpet, weight-saving seat covers and life vest pouches, a lighter foam fill in the seats and aluminum (as opposed to plastic) seat rub strips, the newfangled Boeing 737-700 ends up some 472 pounds lighter than a conventional one. The savings? 9,500 gallons of jet fuel per year. We're not sure when the bird is expected to take her first voyage, but here's hoping a few others are hatched in the near future.
[Via
DailyFinance]
Read - Southwest press release
Read - China View's fuel calculations
posted October 25th 2009 12:11AM
This is crazy. Instead of wasting all the resources that went in to "redecorating" the interior of this plane, and generating all that garbage, why don't they stop painting their planes. All that paint weighs quite a bit!
I don't care how much fuel it burns or how heavy it is. Give me a plane that doesn't burst into flames when it crashes into things.
Actually, stripping off all that purple and orange paint would probably save more than 400 lbs by itself. Years ago FedEx made a big deal about just that, removing the layer of purple paint on all of its planes and how much fuel that would save.
I agree that 472 lbs on a 737 is probably negligible, hell, why not fill the tires with helium while you're at it. How about inflatable seats filled with helium?
m.
That's actually quite true. I have seen quite a few tests on exactly that point, and it so happens that not applying the paint at all would save a lot more than 472 lbs. In fact, it would save a little over 1 metric ton
I have flown in Southwest a few times. They save fuel by not starting the engines until the plane leaves the hanger, and they shut off the engines when the plane lands and let the plane coast to the gate.
I know for a while, Southwest was the only airline making a profit.
The maximum fuel capacity of a 737-700 is 6,875 gallons (U.S.), so they're only really saving a full refuel - and a third - a year. Is it possible to make the engines more fuel efficient? Or do anything other than cosmetics, like lighter electronic components, trolleys and what not.
Maybe the flight attendants could stop wearing hats...
Wow, they managed to save about half and hour of fuel per year. God this is stupid, but whatever I still love South West. I just wish they would have spent that 472 pounds on head rest units and not publicity.
kind of nuts that a 472 lbs saving on a plane that big will save that much fuel...
What a joke... they could have saved twice the weight just by stripping the paint job.
So it saves maybe 10% of what it will burn sitting around waiting to take off. Maybe fixing the ATC system would be a better option, but the government runs that, so don't hold your breath.
Yeah, the legacy carriers like UA and US are much safer.
Oh wait.
I'm not defending what WN did, and living in Colorado I do like to see Frontier win (although less so since the Republic buyout) and I know that they work hard on maintenance.
But to pretend that safety issues aren't endemic throughout the airline industry would be naive and dangerous. WN may have been the airline that got caught (well, and now UA and US), but the fact is that cheaper fares and higher utilization puts more pressure on mechanics, pilots, and management to cut costs.
The strange thing is, despite all of the corners that we're cutting, airlines are still safer than they have ever been. We saw far more crashes per year, per aircraft, and per passenger mile *before* deregulation and cost-cutting than we do now.
The correct number of airline-caused fatalities per year is 0. In 2002-2008, we achieved that in the US. In 2009, we didn't. I agree with the FAA's fine on Southwest (it should have been larger), but the fact is that Southwest has flown hundreds of millions of passenger miles with very few serious accidents (most notably, the MDW accident).