What is the mileage of Aeroplane per Litre?

Posted 23 November 2021

In Onboard the airplane, Operationally about Aviation

What is the mileage of Aeroplane per Litre?

It is not easy to answer what is the mileage of Aeroplane per litre, but we will give it a try.

The main reason why it is hard to answer is the definition of an “average passenger aeroplane”. The next reason it is hard to answer is that there are large variations in fuel consumption depending on the current conditions. The current conditions are e.g. the weight of the aircraft, the altitude of the aircraft and the weather conditions.

The speed it makes sense to look at, if you have to calculate km /l, is groundspeed. Groundspeed will depend on e.g. altitude and wind conditions. A B737 will typically burn 20 liters per minute per engine at travel height. Ie 40 liters per minute. The ground speed will typically be around 900 km / h, or 250 meters per second per second. The calculation is thus, fuel consumption per hour 2400 liters, distance flown in one hour = 900 km. So for every km, 2.6 liters are burned, or in other words, it flies 384 meters per liter. Before we wake up the environmental activists, it is probably worth noting that with 189 passengers on board, the calculation will be like this. Fuel distributed per passenger 2400/189 = 12.7 liters. If we take the 900 km again and distribute it per passenger, we get 900 / 12.7 = 71 km/liter. It’s a bit misleading if you only look at fuel consumption at altitude. The aircraft will burn significantly more in the takeoff phase, but conversely, during the descent, the engines will burn significantly less.

We have managed to find some details about a lot of aeroplane burn per hour. In the end, we have included some helicopter details too. It is word noticing that fuel burn is referenced in kg per hour. This is because of the change in the density of the fuel.

Fuel burn for various selected aeroplanes in kg/ hour

Аn-225 — 15900 kg/h
Yak-40 — 1200 kg/h
Concorde — 20500 kg/h
Avro RJ100 — 2160 kg/h
Jetstream J41 — 450 kg/h
Fairchild Dornier 328JET – 800 kg/h
Fairchild Metro III – 320 kg/h
Bombardier Dash 8-Q400 — 1060 kg/h (355KTAS)
Bombardier CRJ 900 — 1600 kg/h
Embraer E-195 — 1830 kg/h
Beechcraft 1900D — 350 kg/h
Pilatus PC-12 — 200 kg/h
ATR 72-500 — 660 kg/h
Saab 340B — 430 kg/h
Saab 2000 — 950 kg/h (355KTAS)
Boeing 737-900 – 2650 kg/h
Boeing 747-8 — 10200 kg/h
Boeing 757-300 — 3900 kg/h
Boeing 767-400ER — 5200 kg/h
Boeing 777-300ER — 7800 kg/h
Boeing 787-9 — 5400 kg/h
MD-83 – 3100 kg/h
Airbus A319-100 — 2370 kg/h
Airbus A320 — 2500 kg/h
Airbus 320neo – 2100 kg/h
Airbus A321-231 — 2740 kg/h
Airbus A330-300 — 5900 kg/h
Airbus A350-900 — 5800 kg/h
Airbus A340-600 — 8600 kg/h
Airbus A380 — 12000 kg/h