Winglets on airplanes are nothing new. We’ve seen them big and small on all kinds of airplanes. The most visible ones these days are the huge ones that you see on 737s, but what the heck is a sharklet? Well, that’s the Airbus-designed winglet for the A320, and here is an exclusive photo of it from Airbus.

Or maybe not. A sharklet is actually just a winglet with a cool name, and Airbus is going to put them on A320s, if the buyer so chooses. “But wait,” you say, “doesn’t the A320 already have winglets?” Well, sort of, but not really. Those little guys in the top photo above that go above and below the wing are technically wingtip fences. Yeah, I know. Whatever. But these new ones will look more like the big ones you see on a 737 that are blended into the wing and point up. Here’s an actual mock from Airbus of what they’ll look like.

The upshot here is that winglets are good. They reduce the wake given off by the wings and that means that the airplane is more fuel efficient – by 3.5% in fact. Hooray, environment saved, right?

Yeah, that’s a nice thing but there’s another big benefit here. Better fuel efficiency with the same sized fuel tanks means that each plane can go further on a tank of gas. In this case, it is estimated that an A320 can go another 110 miles on the same amount of gas.

That may not sound like a lot, but have you ever been on an A320 heading west and had to make an unexpected stop in Vegas? Salt Lake? JetBlue fliers know what I’m talking about. During the winter, the winds kick up and that means flights east are shorter with the wind at their back. But flights west have to go right into that wind and it can slow things down significantly to the point where they don’t have enough fuel to make it the whole way. So an extra 110 miles can really help on those long sectors.

There is one problem here. The winglets, or sharklets as they’re calling them, are only for new-build A320s. I guess there’s enough wing work required that so far they don’t have a program for retrofitting existing airplanes, but they say one is in the works. Hmm, that sucks. I’m sure some airlines want it now.

But it’s good for airlines like Air New Zealand which conveniently just announced an order for Airbus narrowbodies to replace their Boeing fleet. They’ll be getting sharklets first.

So one day, you’ll be spared that painful fuel stop on a domestic flight, and you’ll have to remember to thank those big, hulking sharklets bouncing at the end of the wing.

No, you didn’t miss my first post, but I’m sure you’ve seen about a million since the US Airways A320 plopped down into the Hudson River yesterday. So, I won’t bother to recap what happened, and I’m probably the only site that hasn’t posted pictures of the incident. Let me just say a couple of things.

• Can we just think about what happened for a minute? Un-friggin-believable! A full A320 (nice loads for a midday, midweek trip in January, by the way) ditches into the ocean river, everyone lives, and the plane stays intact.




• I keep hearing that bird strikes brought the plane down, but it’s way too early for us to know that. It sounds like there probably was a bird strike, but that doesn’t mean it was the cause for what happened. Let’s wait until the NTSB tells us more.




• Everyone’s calling the pilots heroes, but I bet they’ll tell you they were just doing their jobs. Also, while the landing was truly amazing, we don’t know that the pilots didn’t contribute to the fact it had to ditch in the first place just yet. Again, let’s wait for the NTSB.




• If I have to watch one more news teaser that says, “We have birds here in LA, see what LAX is doing to prevent them from flying into engines,” I’m gonna lose it.




• What’s the chance this gets people to actually pay attention to the safety demo before the flights from now on? Nah.




• US Airways really put out a lot of communication yesterday with what appears to be four updates, one being a briefing from CEO Doug Parker. That looks pretty good, but the ultimate test will be how the airline deals with the passengers that were onboard. I’m sure the ambulance-chasers are circling as we speak. Grrrr.




• Wanna see something cool? Check out Passur’s AirportMonitor. Put in January 15, 2009 at 15:25 and watch the plane on radar as it takes off, curves around, and finally puts down in the river. Cool.




• As a former America West guy, I first wondered if it was one of the “West” (former America West) planes, but it’s not. It was N106US, an “East” (former US Airways) plane which would have turned 10 years old this year.




• I thought this was the first modern jet to have ditched into the water and maintained full structural integrity, but it doesn’t appear that way. Apparently a JAL DC-8 in 1968 ditched in San Francisco Bay and the plane actually returned to service! See more ditchings, some more successful than others.




• Did you see how fast those ferries got to that airplane? In that freezing weather, that must have really saved some lives.

US Airways announcement today that they’re adding winglets to their 757s made me think it’d be a good time to repost an old piece I wrote on winglets back on the PriceGrabber Airline Discussion Forums back on July 19. So, with a few updates, here it is . . .

Chances are good that if you’ve flown on a 737 or a 757 lately, you’ve seen some abnormally large pieces of metal sticking straight up off the end. These things, called winglets, look pretty funny if you’re not used to seeing them, but airlines are installing them like they’re going out of style. Why? Yup, you guessed it – they save fuel.

The real problem here is called a wingtip vortex. As airplanes fly through the sky, they obviously disturb the air. At the edge of the wing, drag is created becuase the shape causes the air to swirl around in a funnel shape. And when drag is created, it destroys efficiency.

Aircraft manufacturers realized that if you could reduce these disturbances, you could increase fuel efficiency and therefore range. Airbus was the first commercial manufacturer that I can recall to start tackling the problem with wingtip fences. These extend both above and below the wing and have been used on the A300/A310/A320 families. (A320 at left)

Boeing first got into the game with the 747-400 when it came out in the late 1980′s. They installed winglets, which just go above the wing (though most people use “winglet” as the generic term for wintip fences as well). These winglets weren’t very large, but they had the desired effect or reducing the amount of drag created in flight. Most recently, Boeing has moved toward the “raked wingtip” design. This is essentially a horizontal winglet. The 767-400 was the first Boeing aircraft to receive the raked wingtip, as shown at right.

Now, third parties have started to create after-market winglets that airlines can install themselves. The most popular of these is the Aviation Partners Boeing winglets for the 737s and now the 757s. They are blended, which means they curve directly into the end of the wing. These winglets may be really tall and funny looking, but they enable planes to fly further on each tank of gas. This is good for the environment, it saves money, and it extends the range of each plane, and that’s why US Airways is installing them now. It allows them to carry a full load year-round between Phoenix/Las Vegas and Hawai’i as well as from the East Coast to Europe.

So what’s the next evolution of winglets? Well, it may actually not involve winglets at all. Boeing has found ways to incorporate the drag-reducing technology into the wing itself. The new 787 has a pretty radical looking wing design, and the assumption is that winglets won’t be necessary. Look at this picture on the right to see the amazing curvature that you’ll find in the wing. This new wing along with other fuel saving features mean the 787 should see fuel savings around 30% over the 767 it replaces.