Winglets Responsible for 10 Billion Gallons of Fuel Saved

Aviation Partners, Inc. (API) based in Seattle, Washington, recently announced that its unique (and trademarked) Blended Winglet and Split Scimitar Winglet technologies have saved the world's commercial and business jet operators more than 10 billion gallons of jet fuel, resulting in a corresponding global reduction of over 105 million tons of CO2 emissions.

To put that amount of fuel savings in perspective, API looked at U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics for 2018 and found that 10 billion gallons of fuel would operate Alaska Airlines’ entire fleet of aircraft for nearly 14 years, or power roughly 450,000 cars in the city of Seattle for 34 years.

Blended Winglets using Aviation Partners technology have now been installed on almost 9,000 aircraft worldwide, including the Dassault Falcon 900/2000/50 series, Hawker 800 series and Gulfstream II. Through the company’s partnership with JV Aviation Partners Boeing, their blended and split scimitar winglet technology is now being used on several Boeing models, including the Boeing Business Jet, and some variants of 737, 757 and 767 airliners.

“We've kept an exhaustive database of every delivery of a shipset of winglets on every business and commercial airplane,” said Gary Dunn, Aviation Partners, Inc. Vice-President of Sales & Marketing. “The data used to calculate the fuel savings worldwide is constantly being updated as new aircraft are put into service. For each type, we know how many were delivered, as well as the type’s average energy utilization and typical average stage length. After running our algorithm, the database tells us the worldwide fuel savings across all the airplanes using winglets with API technology,” Dunn said.

The API winglet technology saves fuel by reducing wingtip vortices, resulting in less drag, a lower fuel burn and superior climb and cruise characteristics. Joe Clark, founder and chief executive officer of API first introduced the company’s patented winglet technology for the Gulfstream II in 1992.