Arliners Are Losing 50lbs a Day

Quite often I keep asking myself: "how do we really measure progress?". And in some remarkable cases the answer is very precise. Like in the aviation industry: in tons per year.

Lufthansa has begun phasing out the A340-600 jets. Two weeks ago I saw a number of them sitting by a service hangar in Munich. And some have already made their farewell flights to Arizona. I remember - it must have been around 2002 when the 4-engine jet came into service. So exactly 15 years have passed and we now have the new queen of the sky - the A350.

A350 is identical to A340-600: 300 passengers, 12000km range. With the one striking difference: it weighs 100 tonnes less. Which is incredible, considering this thing is design to float in the air. So if it is capable of carrying the same load for the same distance and has managed to shave 100 tonnes of ballast, imagine what it does to fuel efficiency. It is like not having to carry this weight across an ocean...!

100 tonnes in 15 years is about 50lbs a day. An incredibly easy number to understand and keep as an indicator of progress. And a remarkable achievement. No wonder why other airlines rush to accelerate the retirement of their old fleet.

Finally my faithful readers may wonder what airliners have in common with wireless IoT. I will tell you next week :)