ANZ 767 today with blended winglets

[Russell D]

Was on the train today citybound around 9ish and watched an Air New Zealand 767 fitted with blended winglets fly overhead on finals for 16R.

Any chance of ever seeing some/all of the QF 763s fitted out with the winglets???

So far I know American Airlines and LAN have introduced them on the 767s.

Cheers

[NickN]

A host of 767 operators now have them fiited, including Hawaiian Airlines also operate one into Sydney on occasion, and a few in Europe have them.

[Russell D]

Yes you are right Nick. I just did a little search on airliners.net, and seems like quite a few have them fitted now.

Oh, and I just found out (also on a.net) that all the ANZ 767s have them now with ZK-NCI the last to be fitted out.

But i must admit, they do look quite attractive on the 767s just as much as they do on the 737s and 757s.

[Dan Hammond]

I noticed with the 767 winglets the strobe lights are on the tip of the winglet. As far as i know the 767 winglets are the only ones to have strope lighting fitted to the top unlike other models fitted with winglets

[Nick Te Mata]

The chances of QF having the winglets fitted would be very slim at best; the benefits of these winglets are felt primarily on long sectors (over about 3500kms, if memory serves) and the cost not insignificant -- some strengthening has to be done to the wing structure and for QF's high-utilisation 767 fleet, the downtime would be a factor too.

QF use their 767s on really unique 'missions' for the type. These winglets, in addition to reducing drag (thus fuel consumption), they also increase takeoff performance, give higher optimal cruise etc. These factors aren't a concern for QF 767s in their dominant missions -- SYD-MEL at full payload is a cakewalk and in many ways, the 767 is overqualified for many of the jobs QF use it in which make winglets redundant. Result of this is probably the shortest average sector length of any 767 operator worldwide, with quite high cycles. 10 years ago QF would've jumped at winglets for the GE aircraft (sector lengths of 9-10 hours almost exclusively -- these 767s worked as far afield as YYZ) but nowadays that's an exception to the norm for QF's current day 763 deployment.

QF has a 'sub-fleet' of international config 767s (8 frames) with the remaining 21 in domestic configs, though those 8 intl aircraft still do a lot of short-haul and are probably on borrowed time flying to HNL, MNL and NRT, and will eventually end up where the majority of 763s have. Winglets are a longer-term investment and it doesn't seem like they'd end up paying for themselves if they were to be installed, even on the few aircraft doing medium-haul.

The usable life of QF's 767s is probably much shorter than AA et al frames which still do a lot of 6+ hour work. For NZ, their winglets have been netting some massive fuel savings (reportedly 19%) but the shortest sector they'll do is 3 hours trans-tasman and balance those with many longer ones (AKL-PER, HNL, KIX and RAR/LAX).

[NickN]

AA, CO, UA etc seem to have their 767's in Europe a significant amount of times from what I have seen on JP.net etc.

What sort of engine equipment are they using on them? P&W?

[matthew mcdonald]

The operators that currently have at least one 767 with winglets are:

LAN Airlines
LAN Cargo
DHL Cargo
Thomson Airways
Air New Zealand
American Airlines
Delta Air Lines
Hawiian Airlines
Condor
Neos
Austrian Airlines
ABSA Cargo and
TuiFly Nordic

[Daniel C]

Originally Posted by Russell D

Was on the train today citybound around 9ish and watched an Air New Zealand 767 fitted with blended winglets fly overhead on finals for 16R.

Any chance of ever seeing some/all of the QF 763s fitted out with the winglets???

So far I know American Airlines and LAN have introduced them on the 767s.

Cheers

Would have been ANZ101 AKL to SYD.