Fuel Saving Ideas
 

Sorry I started Happy Hour a little early today. But does anyone "in the know" at UPS, ever hear rumors of winglets on our 757s or increased use of re-dispatch flight plans on Int'l segments to help reduce fuel purchased and fuel carried (10% rule) which in turn helps us to haul more "stuff".

Just curious...martini's usually give me these wild ideas.

Thx,

FF

FedEx has been doing the "re-dispatch" thing on the Md-11 for years now. It usually works out OK but I always worry about contingencies down the road?

Never heard of us using 757 winglets, but we redispatch quite a bit to save fuel when able. They are really pushing us to redispatch everything international with 4+ hours of flight time. There a few factors that make it impractical sometimes, such as ETOPS add fuel, weather, ATC issues, or old airplanes overburning and landing short in TPE. Many times you will put an aircraft below the FOM suggested 75 minutes of landing fuel or even below emergency fuel at alternate. Some captains and dispatchers don't mind, but some some do.

Winglets, redispatching, I would be happy if we had the airplanes loaded correctly to get the CG aft to 32% for cruise. This idea and this idea alone would save millions and there is nothing required than an extra 15 to 20 min in the load planning stage.

Trimming the aircraft correctly saves a lot of gas on a crossing and even domestic. I just takes a minute.

Fish

Speaking of loading correctly I remember seeing a 10 sitting on its tail at IND a number of years ago.I bet ya that was a ricky ricardo moment.
Lucy you got some splaining to do .lol:eek::cool:

Supposedly we were asked to be the 767-300ER winglet launch customer but declined. Not that we don't have the $$$ but it probably has to do more with keeping the airplane down for several weeks during the mod. Same for the 757, right now return on investment is probably in the 1.5 year range, but once again we can't afford to keep a plane out of service that long. Interesting question is if the new 767s will come with winglets since they're brand new anyway.

I don't think they care...
 

Why UPS doesn't redispatch me on EVERY flight is beyond me. Not only could we save fuel, but we could carry more rubber dog shizha too. We were redispatching for a while, when our initial fuel conservation kickoff occurred two years ago, but I haven't sen a redispatch flight plan for quite a while now....

We're too busy making money to worry about the paltry millions we'd save through redispatching!:eek:

Shaggy,
A line pilot brought this to the attention of the company years ago. (That alone killed the idea <g>) He made a model and a great presentation, etc. You can see the answer. One can make helpful solutions to the company, but it sadly is generally a waste of time. It is apparently more cost effective to load as we do than save fuel. Am glad I'm not the fuel saving manager at UPS. What a riddle, turn the APU off, turn the packs down, uh huh, in your entire career that might save fuel that will be wasted on one hot launch that contingency launches unnecessarily or an efficiently loaded airframe going intl. Oh well. Glad they still make money.

The captain threw his wallet out the cockpit window...:D