Oiling airline innovation Hrush
The airline industry’s single largest expense is fuel cost–oil prices have skyrocketed 84% over the last year, hitting airlines where it hurts the most. Necessity is the mother of invention and airlines are busy inventing new ways to save on fuel.
American Airlines instructed their pilots to taxi around the airport with only one engine turned on, a measure that will save them about $4 million a year. Southwest and JetBlue are flying just a little slower and reaping the rewards–JetBlue adds an average of just under two minutes to each flight, and saves about $13.6 million a year in jet fuel.
American and Southwest are washing some of their jet engines every night instead of only during periodic maintenance overhauls. Southwest claims savings of $1.6 million in fuel costs since April by reducing the drag caused by dirt and debris; American assumes that reducing drag will help them save over $300 million over the entire year.
Airlines are even throwing things off the plane to reduce the weight of the aircraft when it’s in the air–less water is being placed on board, excess food galleys have been removed. Delta has replaced heavy passenger seats with lighter models, while Northwest has made a 25% reduction in the amount of water available in toilets on international flights. Reducing weight is a quick win–according to Northwest, every 25 pounds they reduce saves them $440,000 a year
The remarkable thing about these measures is that they’re all about the little things. They’re not about mammoth changes or year-long projects; they’re about people paying attention to a lot of tiny details that add up to make a big impact.
Yes, instead of these corner cutting measures what is needed is some big sweeping changes.
There are a few measures that can be undertaken by the airlines to have some "real" impact and correct me if I am wrong.
One, hedging against any further increase in oil prices. This would be a very useful strategy as the oil prices are bound to continuously go up over the next decade or so.
Secondly, how about some in flight promotional / marketing campaign, whereby the airlines can charge the corporate for the advertising. May be a sector can be offered for a limited period (a week lets say)to say Vodafone or Apple so that they can use all the flights on that sector during that time for promoting their products. They could have their teams onboard. Putting some "skin" on the outside of the plane body for displaying their logo could be another. But this can only be done by companies selling niche brands as the audience is very specific.
These could be used to increase revenue per flight. What do u think?
Cheers! D
When the going get bad, Companies start innovating.
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I think these are great measures. Anything that can reduce the consumption of this natural resource should be welcomed with arms wide open.
I wouldn’t call them ‘corner cutting measures’. Isn’t it a surer, cheaper and quicker solution to introduce efficiencies in your consumption / costs than to go out and try something completely unproven? In today’s world every business and individual has a responsibility to use natural resources efficiently!
GoGreen–that was my original point actually.
I applaud these airlines for their "corner-cutting." Who would’ve guessed that these small changes would have such huge impact?
Fantastic and interesting forum will look through more a little later, i drive a taxi in Portugal so if anyone from this forum comes on holiday to the Algarve Portugal, come and have a coffee with me, and i can also let you know lots of history from the area…