Friday, May 23, 2008

Jet Fuel

This morning while listening to Minnesota Public Radio I overheard an interview with some big wig at Northwest Airlines. He stated that NWA uses as much fuel in one day, as 2.5 million cars (daily I assume). That's a lot of fuel!

Being interested in what a gallon of Jet Fuel costs, I did a quick search and found this site called Air Nav. I'm not sure if most commercial planes use 100LL, Jet A, Mogas, or something else. However, what ever they use is more expensive than the stuff we fill our cars up with.

Mogas is the cheapest at $4.25 a gallon. 100LL and Jet A both average around $5.19 and $5.63, respectively. According to ArcaMax a Boeing 747 carries 57,285 gallons of fuel. 57,285 * $5 (I just picked an easy number) is almost $300,000 ($286,425 to be exact.) for a tank of fuel. A 747 can fit around 416 people. That means if jet fuel is $5 a gallon, each person is responsible for $700 ($688 to be exact) in fuel charges.

Now of course the plane would not use all that gas. Or at least you hope not ;). But the numbers really show that operating an airline is tough business. If gas continues to increase, which it will, plan on spending a bit more for your upcoming travel tickets.

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