I have noticed recently that there appears to be an issue with the fuel burn on the A330. I always seem to consume far less fuel than the flight plan suggests I should and, therefore, I land a lot heavier than forecast, sometimes having to hold to allow the weight to drop below the MLDW.
So today I thought I would track it carefully to see if there is an issue or if I am mistaken. I flew from Amsterdam to Oranjestad in Aruba. The flight plan, created on simbrief, required a minimum Block fuel of 65,600kg, as shown in the photo below.
Here is a summary of the discrepancy between the predicted fuel burn and the actual fuel burn :
Required block fuel : 65.6t
Actual block fuel : 66.4t (extra taken for weather) ~220kg extra would be burnt by this
Predicted fuel burn : 58.9 + 0.3 = 59.3t
Actual fuel burn : 44.3t (15t less than expected)
Predicted landing fuel : 6.9t
Actual landing fuel : 21.9t
This suggests that the A330-200 on IF is over 25% more fuel efficient than simbrief suggests it should be. I understand that getting this 100% correct is almost impossible, but an almost 15 tonne discrepancy is massive.
I know that the thrust performance of the A330 was recently fixed and that this wasn’t a particularly difficult or time consuming process. Could the same be possible with fuel consumption?
Ah, I hadn’t seen that. Although, that topic appears to have closed automatically. Is this issue known to the developers? Also, the fuel flow was already too low prior to the thrust update.
I know this doesn’t seem like a huge issue but a 25% over efficiency really ruins the realism and makes fuel planning pointless. It also makes the A330, by far, the most fuel efficient aircraft ever made and also the aircraft with the longest range.
Did you creat a custom SimBrief airplane using IF figures, adjusting cruising altitudes, and fuel offsets? This is your key to precise planning, my friend.
There’s longer. I can recall a specific modern narrowbody that puts the in Infinite Flight when it comes to range.
It seems this issue is affected by specific conditions rather than the aircraft type. Some people consumed a lot of fuel, while others used very little.
I think that’s because of AP+. If you fly raw (no AP+), you should get the true consumption IF does, which is still more efficient (most times), but AP+ can significantly inflate that.
The A339 has the old (more realistic) profile. The new A333 and A332 are both 28 hour jets. Someone I know loaded Simbrief fuel for a 9 hour flight and had to dump a good 30% of it.
Also for some reason the 332 and 333 weigh the same. If the 332 had the same type of thrust with its real weight, it would probably be a 30 hour jet or very close to it.
Fuel efficient is a relative term but the 777s in this game have something like 40-60% more range than IRL. You can genuinely fly antipodal with a full passenger load in the 77L and not even touch your reserves.
Simbrief is not the issue here, it’s that the A330 consumes less fuel than even the NEO would, making a new profile on Simbrief doesn’t change that.
I followed all the step climbs, Mach speed changes and have even accounted for the extra fuel burned by taking an extra 800kg. And no, I did not use AP+. I even followed the AFP and checked my actual fuel burn vs predicted fuel burn at each waypoint to track the discrepancy.
I have no doubt that it is simply an issue with the fuel consumption of the A330. The flight plan predicted an average fuel flow of around 5.6t/hour. At TOC, when cruise fuel consumption will be at its highest, the highest I ever saw was about 4.5t/hour.
I see, maybe it could be adjusted for the 777 as well then? I understand that flying around the world in an A330 is probably fun, but is it realistic?
When I landed in Aruba the aircraft was predicting I could fly on for another 6 hours!
I know the developers like data on these things so I am happy to continue to track the fuel consumption vs the fight plan to provide more data on this.
Having the neo initially cruise at FL330, step climb to FL350 and having final altitude to be FL370(at 40% load) is not what i would call a realistic profile. Any higher and the N1 goes way past 91%
I hope you take the winds into concideration in your flight during the diferent time periodes aswel ?
Plus the step-climbs that also helps you save more fuel in that mater, including you weight distribution if you are loaded equally or have a more Aft CG ( center of gravity ) it also means that your aircraft is very light, maybe you should add more pasengers and cargo to your aircraft in order to reach your expetations
Because I realised the average fuel consuption of all planes of the Game initial page have been removed, don’t know why they did that but now we no longer have/can do average fuel estimations of each aircraft.
I used to calculate my A330-300/900 trip-fuel base on an average FF ( Fuel-Flow ) of around 5.0 or 5.5T/H ( Tons per Hour ) because their initial 4.5T/H does not match with applied weights and winds
So if they have added an average FF for the A330-200 your fuel estimations would be diferent as it burns way less
I think it’s to account for people who aren’t so serious. IF has a lot of younger players so I suspect that they want to build in a “buffer” of sorts. My guess is that they account for people just running it straight to the red tape, so they give most planes a buffer. That way, when some 12 year old puts 15 hours fuel in a 777 and flies 0.89, they don’t run out of fuel and crash 10 hours in and quit the game. It is just a guess, but I know the devs are smart people and this is likely not accidental because it happens so often.
Yes, all of these things were taken into account in the flight plan. The flight took 10 hours 29 minutes and the flight plan predicted 10 hours 24. The pax and cargo load weren’t light either, I was only 10t off the MZFW. The issue is that the aircraft is more fuel efficient than a real world 787.
You might have a point, it would be a great shame if that is the case as I always assumed they were committed to realism. It explains why I have seen so many threads of people doing loops around the planet with fuel to spare!
Tell me about it, I once flew 158 hours on a single A380 tank
It does break the realism a little bit but for a mobile sim I think it’s fine. I made publically available fuel calculators for all the relevant airliners in the game so back when I played I just used that instead and didn’t have to deal with dumping.
The way we work the fuel burn is with a N1/Alt → Fuel Burn in Kg/hr.
If you’ve found a source that can give us the info for this it would be nice. The issue is when I have “It’s supposed to be 5t/hr in cruise” it doesn’t tell me much. What altitude, what N1?
The current fuel burn was configured from the sources we have and sometimes we have holes we programmatically fill, so they may not be completely accurate.
in Infinite Flight when it comes to range.