Savings in the Air | Green Energy News

October 23, 2005 – Vol.10 No.31

SAVINGS IN THE AIR.

Airlines whisk passengers between cities to meet preset schedules and to be competitive. Get them there as fast as possible, this is the jet age after all.

But jet or turboprop aircraft won’t fall out of the sky if they fly a little slower to save fuel. However, imagine what would happen to an airline that decided to take a half-hour longer to get to a destination than its competitor. The major legacy airlines are already in enough trouble. The slowpoke in the sky would most certainly fail.

While passengers may balk at slower travel times, packages don’t care if a few minutes are added to flight times in order to save fuel and help the bottom line of the carrier.

UPS, which flies more than 265 heavy jet cargo aircraft, has initiated a program to save more than $1 million per month in fuel costs. The program includes:

--- Reducing the amount of extra fuel carried by aircraft. (Reducing the amount of fuel reduces the overall aircraft weight thus reduces fuel burn.)

--- Using only one engine while taxiing. (Why burn fuel on the tarmac at a few miles per hour on the taxi way or while waiting in line for take off?)

--- Having more aircraft use electrical power from the buildings and in-ground electrical hookups instead of the airplane’s auxiliary power unit (APU) which runs on jet fuel. (Next time you’re at an airport look at the tail end of a jetliner. There’s a small exhaust pipe. It’s for the APU, a small gas turbine generator. If there’s heat rising from it, it’s running, gobbling up fuel even though the plane might be at the gate waiting for passengers.)

--- Slowing down flights to the most fuel-efficient speed possible except where arrival time is critical. (Again, a few minutes longer flight time won’t upset too many packages.)

--- UPS is also experimenting with continuous descent approach (CDA) as opposed to the traditional stepped landing approach. CDA would, in essence, allow planes to glide from cruise to their destination down a long straight slope instead of dropping down bit by bit.)

--- The company, too, will test Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast (ADS - B) a technology, now used only by UPS, to proactively manage departure queues. (Why leave the terminal only to wait in line for take off and waste fuel?)

Passenger airlines could initiate similar practices - and save fuel - if they’d all do it at once and didn’t put passengers in danger. Does it really matter if we arrive 10, 20, 30 minutes later if the bottom line is saving fuel and the environment? Visit UPS at http://www.ups.com/ .