Flying slow to save fuel?

[dickburns]

What's up with some of the regionals flying slow to save fuel these days? Do they NOT want to get to the destination asap? A CHQ was doing 250 over the ground at FL300 the other day on his way to IAD, and had his speed pulled back to "conserve fuel" wtf, is this a company directive?

 

[flyguy81]

what do you care? why the hell would you want to go fast to make your sit last longer? you get paid when the plane is moving. if you're showing early, why not pull it back? you get in on time, save a buck or two on fuel. the pax don't know any different, and the codeshare gets a lower bill on fuel, and your paycheck goes up. win for everyone.

 

[BoilerUP]

What's up with some of the regionals flying slow to save fuel these days? Do they NOT want to get to the destination asap? A CHQ was doing 250 over the ground at FL300 the other day on his way to IAD, and had his speed pulled back to "conserve fuel" wtf, is this a company directive?

Airlines operate MUCH differently than 91 or 135 operators. For them the priority is GET THERE NOW, for the airlines every gallon of fuel you save at $2.25/gal while still arriving on time makes a huge difference when operating on that scale.

I pull back the thrust if we've got a big tailwind and/or if we're so early we'd have to wait for a gate. Passengers don't know the difference between 335 and 250 but they sure as hell know the difference between flying and sitting on the ramp.

Seems many regionals' cruise profile is .74/300kt for fuel conservation, while legacies are up around .77 and SWA is at MMO.

 

[LogbookSlave]

Depart 10 minutes early . . . arrive on-time. That's my motto. 10 min. extra pay per leg . . .

 

[UnstableAviator]

Its a damn small world, I gotta say. I was in the aircraft doing 250 indicated from YOW to IAD. We were on schedule to be 35 minutes early do to the overblocking. I heard you guys behing us, and in case you didn't notice we said we could do any speed they needed to accomodate other traffic. Believe me, I'd rather always go faster back to the hub since there's a tremendous amount on traffic all doing as filed speed, but the captain I was flying with didn't really seem to care about that.

 

[GINCHBLASTER]

Its pretty easy to save 200-300lbs of fuel by flying a little slower, even on shorter flight that are less than an hour. Think about it, 300lbs = roughly 45 gallons. Thats $100 just on that one flight. Multiply that by thousands of flights each day. Thats a lot of saved oil, money, and not to mention less pollution.

 

[captainv]

At CMR we have a poor man's approach to cost-index flying. The majors can just plug a cost index number into the FMS and the autothrottles take care of the rest.

We use a book that selects the optimum speed based on weight, altitude and headwinds. In a lot of cases, we're cruising at 250 or 260 knots indicated.

when it first rolled out, we made a lot of extra money because we were 15-20 late everywhere. they've now built the speeds into the block times, so you still get there on time. When you think about it, flying slow doesn't add that much time to a leg and it does save some gas.

 

[Baronman]

I'm an XJT Captain and if we're early I will absolutely pull the speed back a little to save gas and avoid getting to the gate too early. Instead of doing .78 I'll do .74 or so...Saves about 100lbs/side/hr.

And common, really what's the difference between .78 and .74?? Maybe 25kts? The difference between 450kts and 425kts is 2-3 minutes on a 90 minute flight.

 

[BcPilot99]

Depart 10 minutes early . . . arrive on-time. That's my motto. 10 min. extra pay per leg . . .

Yep, we get paid by the minuteimp:

 

[zasca]

Ha! When PDT guys pull it back, it's not for fuel savings....