American Airlines - Manchester

American Airlines cease daily Boston 757 flight on Sunday 8th January and introduce three times weekly (Mon, Sat, Sun) Boeing 767-300 service to Miami from Monday 9th January.

[Robert5988]

The Boston service starts up again on 03/04 April. - I am booked on it on 7th April

I used it for 5 return trips last year and it was always full, and the AA Manchester staff said it is always pretty full, if not completely full. They also stated that it was planned to keep it as a year round service, perhaps next year.

AA continue to operate their daily service to Chicago from Manchester - a 767-300. This operates all year.

Robert FYI (you may already know)........

American Airlines recently began adding winglets to their fleet of Boeing 757-200 aircraft: N194AA visited Ringway for the first time 30/12/05 after upgrade on the morning AA96/95 Boston schedule.[msnwink]

[Robert5988]

Julie,
Thanks, I read on the AA forum that all AA 757-200s were being modified and the indications are that most 757-200s in service with any airline are being modified. However I wasn't aware that AA had any of their fleet modified yet.

For those who are interested, the modification reduces fuel consumption by 5%(a huge amount in aircraft terms) which can increase the range by 200 miles or so(to about 4,850 miles) or increase the payload.

It is perhaps not surprising that AA will use the modified plane on their longer routes first.

The 757 is being used by several airlines from East coast USA to secondary airports in Europe as it is more economical that the bigger aircraft.

Robert.

[Snapper]

And the crazy thing Robert, isn't quite a bit of that 5% fuel saving because they don't need to carry the fuel to carry the bit of fuel they've saved?

Or working backwards, if a flight saves even a teeny tiny bit of fuel, all of a sudden it doesn't need to expend as much energy (fuel) lifting this (saved) bit of fuel 33,000' and then because the aircraft is that bit lighter it saves a teeny tiny bit of fuel in level flight, I think because the wing loading is a teeny tiny bit less.

And so now the fuel that would have been carried to fly the first (saved) bit of fuel isn't needed this results in another, smaller, fuel saving for all the above same reasons.

And so on, and so on.

It works the same with rockets. The bulk of fuel carried by a rocket (or the space shuttle) is there mostly to lift the, errrrr, fuel. I learned that one time when I was at Kennedy Space Centre.

I also learned that the shuttle burns fuel so quickly that it's main turbo pumps that pump the fuel into it's main rocket engines are so powerful that they could empty my pool in 8 1/2 seconds. Hmmmmm. That's a lot of fuel!!

[Robert5988]

<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote: And the crazy thing Robert, isn't quite a bit of that 5% fuel saving because they don't need to carry the fuel to carry the bit of fuel they've saved?
[/quote]

Exactly right.

In fact there was an article in the AA in-flight magazine by one of their top managers(Operations Director I think) who stated the percentage of the total fuel AA use just to carry the fuel payload.

I can't remember the figure but I know I was staggered - well over 50% IIRC(if I recall correctly)

[Snapper]

I'd well believe it. It's all recursive in terms of the effects of saving just a tiny bit of weight/fuel. I remember watching a documentary once, I think about the design of the 777. One of the key design goals was minimising the weight of each and every component. Not for the sole purpose of saving that amount of weight but because of the way each gram of weight saved multiplies up over and over again in terms of how much fuel it saves, or costs, operationally.