We’re talking about an airplane that is representing aviation in the 21st century in terms of efficiency
Jens Bischoff

The Airbus A380, currently en route to New York’s JFK airport, departed Frankfurt this morning kicking off a ’round-the-world “sales pitch.” Today’s flight operated by Lufthansa will arrive at JFK just past noon EST. My favorite piece from the AP/NYT article is this quote from Lufthansa’s VP for the Americas: “We’re talking about an airplane that is representing aviation in the 21st century in terms of efficiency.”

You’d think that was the best part. Think again. The A380 burns 1 gallon (4 liters) of fuel for each passenger every 80 miles. Today’s flight carries 519 passengers, 4 pilots, and an assortment of Lufthansa and Airbus employees. Let’s round it up to 530 total people for fun. For those passengers to fly 80 miles, that’s 530 gallons of fuel. The trip from Frankfurt to JFK is 7,683 — a total of 96 segments of 80 miles. What does all this mean?

The first leg of a ’round-the-world tour for the world’s most fuel efficient plane requires 50,880 gallons of aviation gas. I haven’t run the numbers in a long while on a ‘regular’ plane’s flight across the Atlantic, but holy crap! Let’s go one step further. If the price of avgas in New York is $4.43 (source: AirNav), this trip is costing $225,398.40 — one way.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 8 am and is filed under environment, news, travel.