A discussion about how efficiently the major US airlines are using their domestic fleets of Boeing 737 800 aircraft

In order to design an aircraft with adequate operational flexibility that satisfies the requirements of several operators on a variety of routes, a civil passenger jet aircraft has to balance a range of conflicting requirements. To this end, the aim of this work is to assess how efficiently one of the worlds most popular narrow-body jet airliners - the Boeing 737-800 - performs operationally in terms of its payload and range performance. The study is limited to operations in the domestic US market by the four major US airlines. Actual payload and mission length data for every flight performed in a given year of operation are obtained from the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics,T-100 Domestic Segment (All Carriers). This allows actual operational data to be plotted and assessed against the aircraft design potential, as typified by its payload-range envelope. Three main conclusions are apparent: (i) no flights are operated at either limits of maximum payload or maximum range and there is a considerable amount of unused performance potential; (ii) there is clearly scope to use a smaller aircraft type on many routes; and (iii) there is empirical evidence that shows that efficient and profitable operations occur within a very distinct area of the payload-range envelope