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To save fuel United Airlines is adding additional winglets to the wingtips of their airplanes.

To save fuel United Airlines is adding additional winglets to the wingtips of their airplanes.

The radical re-sculpting of traditional winglets adds a new tip below the upturned one that sharply curve backwards like a scimitar. That further reduces wingtip vortices that drag on the wingtips. Each traditional pair of winglets on the 737 cuts fuel consumption by 3.5% to 4% on flights of more than 1,000 nautical miles. The split scimitar upgrade—which costs $545,000, before discounts–will reduce fuel burn by up to 2% more, says United, which hopes to save up to $60 million a year because of the devices, once its fleet is outfitted.

Very smart. Expect to see these winglets appear on all commercial jets in short order.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


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"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

2 comments

  • Any modification to a system that increases efficiency in the 5% range is huge. If the fuel savings are as advertised, the cost recovery time for United’s 737 fleet would be just over two years; likely less as fuel cost rise. That’s the kind of time frame CFO’s dream about.

    And what pilot wouldn’t want to fly a plane with ‘scimitar’ written on the nose?

  • joe

    I wonder what this legacy aircrafts first designs fuel burn and efficiency was compared to the newest design with the scimitar wing tips, the advances in airframe fairings and engine design have been huge, the 737, stands with a short list of aircraft that have enduring time in the skies as well as on the ramp, I believe that there may very well be that there are more 737’s than 172’s out there.

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