How do airliners and cars compare in fuel efficiency?

Question

Suppose a car gets 40 mpg carrying 2 people and their luggage. You could call that 80 passenger-miles per gallon. A bus carrying 20 passengers, getting 4 mpg would still be 80 p-mpg. How do typical airliners stack up in terms of passenger miles per gallon? Today one airline announced they would add a fuel surcharge of up to $80 per person for a round-trip domestic flight. Ripoff?

Answer 1

Airline do everything for you and all you do is sit down on plane. Airline have to do service and maintained airplanes and airports.  

Answer 2

Compare a four seat car to a four seat aircraft the aircraft is better over distance.  if you can do 150 miles at 9gph you're getting only 150/9, 16.6 miles to the gallon but you are getting it in a straight line without fuel consuming events you'll encounter on the road.  You also get there much quicker.  And time is money.  

Answer 3

Cars are more fuel efficient when carrying 1-4 people.  Airliners are more fuel efficient when carrying 20-500 people.

Answer 4

maybe, they are being mor effient tho

Answer 5

The Airbus A380 with a full passenger load is more fuel efficient per person that a Ford Fiesta or similar small car.

Answer 6

Although the airlines have a very indepth complicated formula for this, I did a simple calculation from the specs on WIKI.

A380  get 60 passenger miles per gallon in a 3 class config.  The B787-8 gets 70 pass mpg.

Surprisingly close to your examples AND flying over 500 mph.

Ripoff? No, as the cost of doing business increases, like gas prices going up, they have to pass the cost to the people flying.    

It'll be the same as you and a friend taking a trip in your 40mpg car and your friend pays for half of the gas at last years prices and thinks you're ripping them off by paying more.

Any  car getting over 15 mpg with four people in it is getting over 60 passenger mpg, which is  more than a fully loaded A380.  I don't know where you got that Fiesta figure from.

A fully loaded A380 flying it's max range gets the same passenger mileage as 6 people in a 10mpg Hummer.  

BTW flying light or shorter distances results in better fuel mileage. At max take off weight, almost half of the total weight is from the fuel.