"...20 tons of fuel per hour..." holy cow. Pretty impressive statistics all around, apparently the A380 uses closer to 12.5 tons per hour to put it in perspective.
Few facts from the excellent An-225 pilot interview and the plane tour video [1] put by @prehistoricdog in this comment section:
- The plane, when empty, can fly for about 16 hours without refueling covering about 13000 km
- Cruise speed is 800 km/h (maximum 840 km/h)
- Fully fueled plane can include 350-370 m.tons of kerosene (around 450000 liters)
- When empty it consumes 16 m.tons of fuel every hour, when fully loaded with cargo - 22 m.tons/h
- The weight of the plane is 290 m.tons (with all the cargo loading equipment and spares carried along)
- There are 35 seats and 20 beds for crew, engineers and cargo escort personnel
- Important for plane spotter, I guess :) Right before departure, at the beginning of a runway, the plane always stays for 4 minutes stationary with engines running at 70% thrust to heat them up, which is imposed by their manufacturer
Type MTOW [kg] ICAO category
Antonov An-225 640,000 Heavy
Airbus A380-800 575,000 Super
and that 225 is made with much less than an ideal aerodynamics, heavy frame, 6 thrust reversers, and oversized control surfaces to accommodate external cargo.
Its 6 engines are also prehistoric. D-18T was made with a much more focus on getting the highest take off thrust over cruise speed performance.
Such a large, wide wing apparently gets very little aerodynamic losses, even with all above considered.
Curious where you got the category info there. ICAO doesn't have a super category (proposed designation was `J`, but they don't publish anything under that).
FAA list the 225 as NOWGT, which puts it over "heavy", requiring 10nm separation.
Why is 60% more fuel for 10% more weight "pretty impressive"? I mean, you just listed several reasons why it might be "not bad", but what's your baseline expectation that makes it impressive?
One is a passenger airliner, made with relatively new engines, and material technology, designed with the aim of flying as economically as possible, another is a one of a kind cargo plane, that from the start had, uniquely, no design aim of flying efficiently.
Also, for that 20t per hour, we need to know if it is for the loaded, or a ferry flight.
Yes, that is why it is not surprising if it uses 60% more fuel. My question was why is it impressive? What would you expect given all the things you have mentioned? Twice as much fuel? Ten times? 100 times?
I'm not arguing against your opinion, just asking for context that seemed to be missing.
> What would you expect given all the things you have mentioned? Twice as much fuel?
Pretty much. Most 4 engine airplanes can fly with just 2, or 1. Take off thrust is few times the cruise thrust an all jet airplanes. In flight, the engines needed to achieve the take off thrust are dead drag, and dead weight.
This is why one of crazy ideas for very early large jet planes was to have parachutable, jettisonable engines, or having RATO on civilian planes.
I've heard the opposite: that the large, high-thrust engines needed on twin-engine wide bodies for takeoff and ETOPS certification can have greater aerodynamic and performance losses at cruise, as well as higher maintenance costs, than the smaller engines on four-engine wide bodies. And in the specific case of the A380, having four engines did not put them at a fuel economy disadvantage, notwithstanding the widely held belief that it did.
A greater difference in fuel economy, however, comes from the generation of the engine. The A380 is no longer cost efficient not because it has 4 engines, but because those 4 engines are 1.5 generations behind modern engines.[1] Airbus and Emirates killed the A380 mere months after Rolls Royce firmly shut the door on developing an engine upgrade, and the whole multi-year saga hinged the entire time on Rolls Royce's vacillations. (Of course, Rolls Royce wouldn't invest in the engine because the market was too small, and they were also struggling with other issues that required their time & capital, but those are different matters.)
[1] Likewise, the 747 was less efficient than the 777 partly because the 777 was equipped with a newer generation of engines. But this difference was never factored into the calculus that gave rise to the belief that two engines were inherently more efficient than four, regardless of context.
Speaking as a passenger, the right solution is CATOBAR. Passenger airports should install linear motor catapults that can get a 500-ton aircraft up to Mach 0.85 in about 10 seconds. (it can support the plane, allowing launch with already-retracted gear) They should also install arrester cables, or something better, such as a moving platform that could handle both tasks.
- The plane, when empty, can fly for about 16 hours without refueling covering about 13000 km
- Cruise speed is 800 km/h (maximum 840 km/h)
- Fully fueled plane can include 350-370 m.tons of kerosene (around 450000 liters)
- When empty it consumes 16 m.tons of fuel every hour, when fully loaded with cargo - 22 m.tons/h
- The weight of the plane is 290 m.tons (with all the cargo loading equipment and spares carried along)
- There are 35 seats and 20 beds for crew, engineers and cargo escort personnel
- Important for plane spotter, I guess :) Right before departure, at the beginning of a runway, the plane always stays for 4 minutes stationary with engines running at 70% thrust to heat them up, which is imposed by their manufacturer
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TX9L62_Eac (in russian with english subs)