How much fuel does a jet use per mile?

Answer 1

After flying from PHL (Philadelphia, PA) to Madrid, Spain in an Airbus 330, I asked the pilot how much fuel we used. It is approximately a 6.5 hour flight, about 3667 miles or 5900.4 Km. The pilot said we burned about 110,000 pounds of jet fuel, or about 22,000 gallons, since jet fuel weighs about 5 pounds per gallon. In metric units, 49,940 Kg. Since jet fuel floats on water (is less dense, therefore takes more than a liter per Kg), the volume would be more than 49,940 liters. Multiplying 22,000 gallons by 3.785 gallons per liter gives us about 83,000 liters (a first order estimate).

Since there are 390 minutes in 6.5 hours, we burned about 30 pounds of jet fuel per mile, or about 8.5 Kg per Km. Per minute (remember, the jet is doing about 10 miles per minute, or about 600 miles per hour, about 900 Km per hour), 282 pounds of jet fuel (which smells a lot like kerosene), or 128 Kg per minute.

At approximately 4 USD per gallon, the fuel cost was about 88,000 USD, or about 13,500 USD per hour of flight. At 3.00 USD per gallon, the fuel cost is about 66,000 USD, or about 10,150 USD per hour. This covers the current price range for kerosene type jet fuel as of today (3.23 USD spot price), Tuesday April 10 2012.

Prices for Jet-A (higher grade jet fuel) range between 4 and 7 USD per gallon, so if the A330 requires Jet-A, the cost would be much higher. The A330 seats between approximately 250 and 335 passengers, depending on the specific model (-300, etc) and the seating arrangement (3 classes (First, Business and Coach), 2 classes (First and Coach), number of seats in each class, etc).