American Airlines flight crosses the Atlantic with five passengers aboard

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3-06-2008 @ 6:51PM

Mikael said...

Before people start to moan about empty flights they should learn a bit more about how airlines work. An aircraft carries two types of payload: passengers and cargo. Depending on the passenger loading the remaining payload capacity is being used for cargo, which essentially allows airlines to turn passenger aircraft into cargo aircraft. Put simply: thanks to "payload-range" charts (and nowadays loading software) operators can easily replace passengers with cargo so they don't have to fly aircraft empty.

Considering the 777 has a maximum payload capacity of 55 tons at least 54 tons would have been available for cargo. Due to space issues not all of it would have been used but that would still mean about 30 tons of cargo...

Since 30 tons of cargo + passengers is not near the full load the aircraft wouldn't fly with maximum fuel (no point carrying 50 tons of fuel you're not going to use)so in the end the fuel consumption works out to be a lot less per kilogram payload than the environmentalists try to make it sound like...

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