- Hi, I'm Cristen,
and this is Brain Stuff.
When you think about it,
airplanes are pretty much amazing.
Despite their weight, these
enormous metal contraptions
can lift hundreds of people into the air,
and most of the time
they can do this safely
if not kind of comfortably.
Take the Boeing 747-8, for example.
It has a maximum takeoff
weight of 487.5 tons.
Now for comparison, that's
about the same weight
as almost 140 average
sized African elephants,
and that's a bunch of weight to move,
and the engines need a lot
of fuel to make that happen.
But how much fuel do they need, exactly?
Now before we answer that,
let's ask another question.
Why should we care?
Well, fuel efficiency and
fuel cost is part of how
an airline determines ticket prices.
So a more efficient
airline can theoretically
result in lower ticket prices for you.
Let's look at a plane
on an international trip
to see how much fuel it uses per person.
And since we're dealing
with a lot of numbers,
let's set it up this way.
I'll use US standard measurements,
but since the rest of the
world uses the metric system,
we'll pop those up on the screen too.
So save those comments for something else.
So here we go, we're ready for takeoff.
A plane like the 747-8 can carry
around 63,034 gallons of fuel,
giving it the ability to
make extremely long flights.
So flying from, say, LA
to Australia is no problem
as long as it's gassed up.
However, the plane uses approximately
one gallon of fuel every second,
and this means that over the
course of a 10-hour flight,
it might burn 36,000 gallons of fuel,
which sounds like a lot, right?
Now, according to
Boeing, this works out to
approximately five
gallons of fuel per mile
when the plane is in flight.
And at first this might
sound like the plane gets
a terrible miles per gallon
rating and isn't very efficient,
but let's remember that the 747-8
isn't some four-door sedan.
It can carry as many as 568 people
on a very uncomfortable flight.
So how does all that
fuel work out per person?
Well, let's say, for
example, that there are
500 people on a plane.
So a 747-8 is transporting 500 people
one mile using five gallons of fuel.
This means that the plane
is burning about .01 gallons
per person per mile.
In other words, the plane is getting
100 miles per gallon per person.
For comparison, the
typical car gets around
25 miles per gallon.
So in this respect, the
747 is actually much better
than a car carrying one person,
and compares favorably even if there are
four people in the car.
Now of course, this isn't
exactly an apples to apples
comparison for a number of reasons.
But still, 100 miles per gallon per person
isn't all that bad when you consider
that the 747 is flying at
about 550 miles per hour.
So how about you?
How fuel efficient is your private plane?
Let us know in the comments below.
And don't forget to like and
subscribe to Brain Stuff.
And hey, you should also
check out my channel,
Stuff Mom Never Told You.
