From paper to dirt, airlines pare it all to save fuel

How much is the weight of a magazine? A few hundred grams.
But for domestic airlines that are bogged under rising fuel costs, the pages of an in-flight magazine that carry a wee bit extra gloss are a burden.

Also is the dirt on the exterior of the aircraft, which are now receiving additional scrubbing to get rid of the unwanted weight.
Fuel prices surged 29% year on year during the March quarter and 18% over the December quarter. Between April and June 1, they slid by a mere 4.5%.

So airlines are doing all sorts of things — making seats of lighter material, removing unnecessary ovens and chillers, washing the aircraft exterior frequently to get rid of dirt and even monitoring the quantity of paper in in-flight magazines - to make the aircraft lighter and, therefore, lower fuel costs.

Jet Airways, the country’s largest airline by passengers carried, has decided to use lighter seat material on both its international and domestic flights.

Kingfisher Airlines says it has made some of its aircraft (acquired when it took over Deccan Aviation) lighter by as much as 100 kg by adopting smart weight reduction techniques.

“Keeping the aircraft exterior clean makes a difference, we wash aircraft more frequently so that the weight is reduced. Other measures such as using light-weight cutlery, removing extra chillers and ovens without affecting food service quality, carrying just enough water for actual passengers on a flight against stocking up as per number of seats — all these measures have been used to reduce fuel consumption,” a spokesperson said.

While Jet officials did not specify the weight reduction in seats, they said this would be combined with reduction in galley weight (ovens and trays) and other measures.

KG Vishwanath, VP commercial strategy and investor relations, told analysts recently that this would begin with newer aircraft being inducted.

“We are looking at lighter weight galley equipment, lighter weight crockery, whether the quantity of paper in the in-flight magazine can be reduced and quite a lot of different things which will basically help us reduce the weight of the aircraft.”

Chief commercial officer Sudheer Raghavan said the airline is committed to achieving a fuel burn efficiency of 2-3% year on year. Fuel burn efficiency is number of litres of fuel burnt to carry one tonne of weight over a km. In fiscal 2010 the airline’s fuel burn efficiency came down to 8% from 10% in fiscal 2009. “This is the kind of reduction we have achieved in two years. But going forward it would not be possible to achieve the same scale of reduction.”

Amber Dubey, director (aviation) at KPMG, says aviation turbine fuel in India is 58-65% costlier than competing locations like Dubai and Singapore and airlines have no option but to extract bigger bang from each rupee spent on fuel in India. “The low-cost carrier model has done away with the ‘hot food for all’ concept. This reduces the need for food trays, steel cutlery, heavy trolleys and above all the need to heat material at a height where the outside temperature is -35 degrees.”

Then, apart from lighter aircraft, Jet is also looking at ways to be flexible in the type of seating it offers to enhance revenue. “In case the demand on a particular sector is good, we convert low-fare seats on Jet Konnect to full-service seats of Jet Airways by just adding the meal service on a flight. This flexibility helps us in keeping costs under check and maximising yields,” an airline official said. On its part, Kingfisher has increased aircraft by more than 10% to offset capacity loss due to grounded aircraft — this leads to more capacity through more efficient use of aircraft in hand.