Aviation Fuel price records

[Tanada]

Holy Crack spread Batman!!
Latest update....
Avgas= 4.87/gal
jetfuel= 3.18/gal
This is just becoming depressing.

Hell at those rates AP the only difference between the price ofjet fuel and ULSD road fuel for OTRT is the taxes!

[AirlinePilot]

YIKES!!!!
Avgas 4.97

jetfuel 3.42

I dont even want to think about hurricanes right now. The season is rapidly approaching.

[bl00k]

AirlinePilot, do you happen to have any graphs showing the increase in jet fuel prices over the past years?

[AirlinePilot]

Ive been looking for that recently, funny you should ask. Ill post something here ASAP.

[AirlinePilot]

Boy, these guys sure didnt do a very good job of forecasting! Check out the graphs and estimates on this page. I wouldnt be hiring them anytime soon.

Jet fuel forecasts

Here is a graph of price from 98-05. Its at @ 3.50 right now.

Jet fuel price graph

[AirlinePilot]

And the Upward climb continues.....

Avgas 5.06

Jetfuel 3.46

I'd say we will be at the point fairly soon, where you start pricing a lot of General aviation flying right out of the market. A good portion of small aircraft flying is purely recreational.

I'm starting to think that we will have zero warning when we reach certain price levels which have some sort of cascading effect on the rest of the economy. If we are not there already I wonder what it will take?

[AirlinePilot]

Avgas 5.12 this week and Jet fuel down a bit to 3.36 which is always good news.

[AirlinePilot]

Avgas is still climbing, up to 5.22 nationally this week.

Jet fuel had moderated ever so slightly but is back up to 3.61 nationally.

[sparky]

I've read somewhere that fuel is ~30% of an airline operating cost ..
That was some time ago, do you have some data or guesstimates of the fuel component now ?

On engines, a long time ago ,some big gasoline engines with dirty cylinders heads, when switched off hot would "diesel " and kept on running without ignition
the solution was to restart the engine and get it to run at low rev to cool it somewhat, then switch it off again

a typical snafu also was to mistakenly put some diesel in the gas tank, the engine typicaly had been running and was hot, the lines and pump would have untainted fuel, The car would restart normally but a few moment later, run very badly with no guts and a lot of smoke, the chamber and the plugs would usually be dirty.

[Sketh]

Rising fuel costs push airfare sky high

Airlines ratcheted up the pressure on fliers ahead of the holiday weekend, significantly raising ticket prices to offset the runaway cost of fuel. The three biggest carriers each boosted most domestic fares by up to $60 roundtrip, while budget airline Airtran Airways raised its leisure fares by $30 roundtrip.
UAL Corp.'s United Airlines led the bigger round of increases late Thursday, lifting roundtrip ticket prices by $10 to $60, depending on how far passengers fly and the competition on the route. Travelers will pay the biggest increase on routes of 750 miles or more - less than the distance from New York to Chicago - that low-cost carriers such as Southwest Airlines Co. do not serve.
"It's part of all the work that we're doing to try to offset fuel costs," spokeswoman Robin Urbanski said.

[dohboi]

"Airlines ratcheted up the pressure on fliers ahead of the holiday weekend, significantly raising ticket prices to offset the runaway cost of fuel."

The MSM are now using terms like "runaway" and "sky high" to describe the rising cost of fuel. We have long bemoaned on these threads the lack of attention that the media have paid to the issues of PO oil.

But now they are starting to use terms that match reality, and yet somehow I am not comforted.

How long till another airlines folds. How long can the industry as a whole continue at these levels, not to mention the much higher levels to come.

[Sketh]

Don't want to spam the thread with news links, but the wires are heavy today with very pessimistic forecasts for the airline industry.

UK Telegraph:

British Airways warns oil surge will put a rash of airlines out of business

British Airways believes it can ride out the storm caused by the rocketing oil price by making capacity cuts of only around 2pc this winter.

Willie Walsh, BA's chief executive, said he had no plans to follow the swingeing 12pc cut announced by Oneworld partner American Airlines on Wednesday, that will see it remove at least 75 of the 954 aircraft in its fleet.

But he warned that, with the oil price topping $130 a barrel, the entire aviation industry was heading into uncharted territory and predicted a rash of airline failures. Fares would also have to rise.
...
Mr Walsh said: "I don't think the industry can absorb these significant increases. Our fuel bill represents 35pc-37pc of our cost base. In 2000 it was 9pc. For a low-fare airline it represents about 50pc. Some of the low-fare carriers can't make money at $85. For them this is life threatening. Those that are weak are going to go out of business."

[phaster]

Avgas is still climbing, up to 5.22 nationally this week.
Jet fuel had moderated ever so slightly but is back up to 3.61 nationally.

wow, been on this board for about a year now and just found this thread...

anyway just filled up with 100LL here in San Diego and I paid $4.95 a gal

since it sound like you're also an airport bum, just thought I'd share with ya something pretty darn unique, I got to check out a pretty unique russian figher which was at the airport this afternoon
Polikarpov

if you look at the spinner (there is a photo) of the aircraft from the above link, it looks pretty darn big and that is because the engine in this thing is the same engine from the AN-2 (ironically enought there was on in the pattern this morning)
Antonov

This is one plane I wish I could own, you can buy them pretty cheap, like for 40k
Barnstormers

and there are some really nice ones that are ground up restorations
Contoller

but they burn 50 gal/hour at cruise, which works aout to about 2 MPG, and since its a radial it also burn I've heard about a gal of oil an hour. Then there is the hull insurance, which I'd guess is in the neighborhood for 10 to 20k per year a year cause its a big old trail dragger...

[AirlinePilot]

Avgas 5.39


Jet Fuel 3.98


The airlines are in nothing less than Deep Shit. I expect some rather major announcements soon about further capacity cuts which will be more significant than any yet.

Cant keep this up for the long haul. Its either that or air travel gets really expensive really quickly.

[Ferretlover]

Flint Hills Resources explores options for North Pole refinery
By Christopher Eshleman
… Company President Brad Razook wrote in an e-mail to employees in Alaska on Monday that the Kansas-based company will explore three options — selling the plant, “reconfiguring” the site and expanding operations to increase volume and reduce operating costs. …
Razook’s e-mail indicated changes may be “needed” at the 30-year-old refinery, which relies heavily on oil as a feedstock — unlike many other refineries in the United States, which can rely largely on natural gas. …
May be losing a refinery by the end of the year
60% of the crude processed there is for aviation fuel; they are having EROEI problems due to lack of NG for processing, and, Alaska recently added new fees which were backdated to when the refinery was purchased by current owner which is adding millions to the operating costs.

[dukey]

airlines generally hedge their fuel costs or a certain %
so complicates the picture somewhat

for the us airline industry i seem to recall south west airlines hedged a lot of their fuel costs

meanwhile in EU land ..

British Airways profits soar 45%
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7404085.stm

[AirlinePilot]

UAL announced today they are parking all 737 and some 747 aircraft.

100 aircraft in all. I know what I predicted yesterday but didn't think it would come so quick. With credit markets and money lending the way it is, I predict UAL is Chapter 7 within 6-9 months. They are on their death bed.

UAL parks jets

[caliginousface]

Paying 5.85 for avgas up here. Woowoooo!

[paimei01]

Why do airline companies suffer ? Can't they just raise the price of tickets and make a profit ? or are there not enough travelers already ?

[mcgowanjm]

Avgas 5.39


Jet Fuel 3.98


The airlines are in nothing less than Deep crap. I expect some rather major announcements soon about further capacity cuts which will be more significant than any yet.

Cant keep this up for the long haul. Its either that or air travel gets really expensive really quickly.

"Friday, June 13, 2008
Upcoming Flight Conditions
Reeling from zooming fuel prices, more airlines have just announced they will charge $15 for the first piece of checked luggage. Some are even starting to charge $2 for water and soft drinks. But why stop there? Here are some alternatives for the post-peak world.

1. Waste-The-Waist fares. Anyone over 100 lbs. gets charged $1/lb extra.
2. Deals-For-Meals. Planes will only carry one quarter of the meals and drinks required to serve all passengers. Attendants will then proceed to auction them off to the highest bidders. Should work particularly well on long international flights....

Check it out:

http://suddendebt.blogspot.com/