New winglets for 737

Saw this today I've excerpted the paragraphs I felt were the most interesting, particularly the fuel savings part. This winglet applies to existing model 737s. The new 737 MAX will have a somewhat similarly shaped winglet.
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Aviation Partners Boeing (APB), a joint venture, launched its new Split Scimitar Winglet program Tuesday with an order from United Airlines.

The Split Scimitar Winglet is a retrofit of an existing Boeing Next-Generation 737 Blended Winglet. It replaces the aluminum winglet tip cap with a new aerodynamically shaped “scimitar” winglet tip cap and adds a new scimitar-tipped ventral strake. The design was flight-tested in 2012 and demonstrated significant aircraft drag reduction over the basic Blended Winglet configuration.

APB expects the new winglet system, when installed on a provisioned wing 737-800, could save the typical airline more than 45,000 gallons (204,600 liters) of jet fuel and result in a corresponding reduction of carbon dioxide emissions of 476 tons (431 metric tons) per airplane each year. Once Split Scimitar Winglets are installed, APB estimates that United’s use of both the blended and split scimitar technologies will save the airline more than $250 million per year in jet fuel costs fleetwide.

“Fuel is United’s largest, most volatile expense and we are always looking for opportunities to improve the fuel efficiency of our fleet," said Ron Baur, United’s vice president of fleet. "The Next-Generation 737 Split Scimitar Winglet will provide a natural hedge against rising fuel prices while simultaneously reducing carbon emissions.”

Aviation Partners Boeing is a Seattle-based joint venture of Aviation Partners Inc. and The Boeing Company

You mean someone looked at an old Airbus wingtip?

With the Japan 787 fleet grounded ,

It sounds more like B has to stop using Chevy DOLT batt sets as a power source.

The fuel cell B has been working on might work, but fuel cells have been "on the horizon" for 3 -4 decades.


Ni Cads anyone?

Don't need no stinking batteries anyway ... Just drag a prop behind the tailbone and make free electricity. Just like on trawlers

RickB said:

You mean someone looked at an old Airbus wingtip?

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Airbus uses a flat endplate. For years they have been trying to come up with a blended winglet that will work for their A320 series. They tried a winglet somewhat similar to the APB winglet currently used on the 737 (which is patented) but discovered that the A320's wing structure is too weak to carry this sort of thing. They announced recently that they have finally come up with something that will work, but whether this can be retrofitted to older A320s or will only be available on the new A320 NEO I don't know.

I wasn't able to grab an illustration of the new APB device, but it is a retrofit to their existing 737 blended winglet. It's not a whole new winglet. From the illustration and the description, which was announced yesterday in Boeing's daily internal e-newspaper, it changes the shape of the top of the winglet to a raked-back configuration and also adds the lower "scimitar" extension that, in effect, projects the wing itself "through" the winglet into a raked and downward curved tip.

These two devices give the existing blended winglet the same sort of additional drag-reducing characteristics of the all-new split winglet that will be applied to the 737 MAX series.

The APB announcement only talks about the 737 retrofit. Whether it will become available for the larger 757 and 767 blended winglets from APB remains to be seen.

The big APB winglet for the 767 is very effective for that plane. For example, it has enabled Delta to use a 767 on their non-stop Seattle-Beijing flights. Before, the only plane they could use on that route was an A330.

Yes, you are right, the Airbus tips are more like plates. I thought the early versions were V'd out more. McDD had a version with a smaller foil angled out below the larger upper foil.

KLM installed them on the MD-11 for a while.

RickB said:

Yes, you are right, the Airbus tips are more like plates. I thought the early versions were V'd out more. McDD had a version with a smaller foil angled out below the larger upper foil.

KLM installed them on the MD-11 for a while.

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You're correct and even here at Boeing information about the new MAX winglet sometimes acknowledges the earlier development and use of the "split" winglet on the MD-11. Don't forget, McDonnell-Douglas bought us with our money. (Inside joke, sorry ). So we have a lot of ex-MD engineers and aerodynamicists today and they brought what they learned on their own planes with them. The concept of the angled, split winglet was one of them.

To my knowledge, but I could be wrong, the split winglet was a standard feature on all MD-11s. I remember it was the "tell" we used when filming at airports to determine if a plane way out on final was a DC-10 or an MD-11. We did a video in Frankfurt about Lufthansa Cargo's then-new fleet of MD-11Fs, and they all had the split winglet.

I just read our company memo on another computer and am not on that computer right now so cannot directly reference it. From what I remember, we will using it on our entire Boeing fleet.

The DC 10 had a cockpit mechanical handle to pull, and out popped a small air driven generator.

Gave enough to keep flying on instruments. No battset required.

I think many turbine powered transports (and a few fighters) have RAT generators or hyd pumps but that was not the point of the comment.

RickB said:

I think many turbine powered transports (and a few fighters) have RAT generators or hyd pumps but that was not the point of the comment.

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All current Boeing aircraft except the 737 have a RAT. Even the new 747-8 has one although previous 747 models do not (I'm pretty sure). They come out automatically when needed or they can be deployed manually. Once out they cannot be retracted until the plane is on the ground.

That's correct. The 747 doesn't need one but the 747-8 is dependent enough on electrical / hydraulic power to require it.

RickB said:

I think many turbine powered transports (and a few fighters) have RAT generators or hyd pumps but that was not the point of the comment.

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What am I missing? RATs have been around for at least 55-60 years that I know of & probably a lot longer than that. The FJ-3s (F-86) that I worked on in the Navy had them as did the Air Force's F-105s and a lot of other fighters.

I don't think anyone's saying it's a recent development. A Piper Cub often has a "RAT" to provide electrical power for lights, radios, and whatnot as the engine has no generator, at least not originally.

But they didn't start showing up on our planes until the 767 and the advent of ETOPS. (The 767 came before the 757, which also has a RAT.)

Don't know why the 737 doesn't have one as these planes are used on some hellacious long routes now, many of them over water like West Coast to Hawaii and Germany to the US East Coast. Perhaps it's because the 737 is not so electrically and hydraulically demanding.

A "wind generator" is hardly new technology. I used to have a Taylorcraft with one that charged a motorcycle battery ... but only in a dive.

Marin said:

I don't think anyone's saying it's a recent development. A Piper Cub often has a "RAT" to provide electrical power for lights, radios, and whatnot as the engine has no generator, at least not originally.

But they didn't start showing up on our planes until the 767 and the advent of ETOPS. (The 767 came before the 757, which also has a RAT.)

Don't know why the 737 doesn't have one as these planes are used on some hellacious long routes now, many of them over water like West Coast to Hawaii and Germany to the US East Coast. Perhaps it's because the 737 is not so electrically and hydraulically demanding.

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The 737 was not originally designed to be an ETOPS airplane. The work around for 180 minute ETOPS(which is what is required for Mainland to Hawaii) for a 737 is that the APU has to be functioning AND RUNNING the entire flight. You can't just completely redesign an airplane....especially one as prolific as the 737. the -900 has to be very "similar" to the -100.

Just to give you an idea of the redundancy of an aircraft like the 767. It has 3 hydraulic systems(737 only 2) with 2 engine driven pumps and 2 electric standby pumps. Obviously the RAT is at the end of the line as far as redundancy goes. The 737 can be flown without hydraulic power...the bigger ones cannot. So the end of the line on redundancy hydraulically is the pilot's muscle. ANd if it is anything like the simulator, it is not fun nor is it pretty. It has 2 generators and 1 APU generator(like 737) but it also has a hydraulic drive generator(HDG)....yep, hydraulic power is used to generate electricity(737 has no such device). So even if you lose all "normal" generators you will still have enough basic electrical power to fly using the HDG. We had an incident where there was a bus failure that disabled all 3 "normal" generators and the crew was down to HDG power....of course it was at night over the North Atlantic. They ended up having to fly a couple of hours on basic instruments back to Ireland without incident of course. And our company likes to incorporate real scenarios into our training scenarios so that is what we got on our next gig in the simulator. Let's just say my instrument scan is not what it used to be but good enough.

One last tidbit of useless information. The area between the mainland and Hawaii is the longest overwater flight in the world....longest with nowhere to go. Think about anywhere else in the world...there are Islands through all of the other oceans...but not between the mainland and Hawaii.

I'll give ya another bit of trivia then. Did ya know that the 777 was designed to be a swing-wing airplane? It was never taken up as an option... but the swing motor / hinge design was recycled many years later to become the hinges and swing mechanism on the 747-LCF (Dream Lifter).

It was a RAT that saved the Gimli Glider back in the early 80's. They're a good thing in my book.

Baker said:

One last tidbit of useless information. The area between the mainland and Hawaii is the longest overwater flight in the world....longest with nowhere to go. Think about anywhere else in the world...there are Islands through all of the other oceans...but not between the mainland and Hawaii.

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How about PPT to LAX?

That is over 4100 miles and they have to make a dogleg to keep within ETOPS limits.

I think the longest will be the new ETOPS-330 great circle route from Sydney to Rio. Not sure if / when they'll ever fly it though.

RickB said:

How about PPT to LAX?

That is over 4100 miles and they have to make a dogleg to keep within ETOPS limits.

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Hmmm...I am trying to wrap my head around that. The (very)slight alteration in course is to keep within 180 minute ETOPS of Suitable Hawaii airports. I think I read it cost them 80 miles or so. I guess my point was there is nowhere to go from the West Coast to HAW. From PPT to the proximity of Hawaii there are places to go for the first half of the trip. And then from Hawaii to the mainland, now where to go but continue or turn around...if that makes any sense. I have never done this and am talking off the top of my head here. I did a very brief google search and came up with this.

NZ PPT-LAX Etops — Civil Aviation Forum | Airliners.net

There are some nice ETOPS calculators out there. You punch in your level and destinations and it'll show ya if it's possible and how far you need to plan out of your way. Here's my favorite:

Great Circle Mapper

Looks like yoube a little more than 80 miles out of your way. Fun to play "what if" though.

SomeSailor said:

There are some nice ETOPS calculators out there. You punch in your level and destinations and it'll show ya if it's possible and how far you need to plan out of your way. Here's my favorite:

Great Circle Mapper

Looks like yoube a little more than 80 miles out of your way. Fun to play "what if" though.

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I was just basing that 80 miles on the calculation in that link I posted....from a guy that actually flies it.