Blended Winglet-nut
A twerpy right-wing high-schooler has all the answers on his PatriotBlog:
Southwest Airlines has spent millions of dollars to retrofit its fleet of 737-700 airplanes with a device called a blended winglet.Not only does the budding corporate pawn slobber incorrectly (Continental also has invested in this aerodynamics technology), but has no idea of the irrelevance of 3% in the greater scheme of things. As monkeygrinder notes, the energy savings of new aircraft ideas pass on to corporate pockets as profits. Shaving a few percent in oil costs has an immediate impact in a competitive setting, whereas offering up something truly revolutionary will likely only get you fired. For the corporatists, plunder and profits always come before future concerns.
Quite simply, Southwest will be able to fly farther on a tank of gas.
**** This is amazing. Not only has Southwest Airlines better hedged their fuel costs for years to come compared to their competitors, but they've added a new wing technology that saves them 3 percent of their fuel usage. Their cash-strapped and bankrupt competitors haven't been able to afford fuel hedges nor this new wing technology.
Altercation has an interesting take on how corporatists take advantage of their corporate jets.
posted by @whut at May 25, 2005
2 Comments:
Yeah, fuel efficiency only works as a process when there is fuel to burn on something as wastefull as air travel.
In the future, maybe we'll go back to zeppelins. (A happy combination of wind and solar; but takes a little longer to fly to Iceland.)
Exactly. The only real way we make progress here is to creatively cut back on the number of miles flown. Gravity and drag are not our friends.
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