The vast majority of that weight is in the white paint on the body of the plane, which has to be thick because of mechanical abrasion in flight so that weight is largely unavoidable.
Then again, given how airlines would cram in even 1 more passenger if they could, and the absolute minimum robustness of other mechanisms on a plane as a result of weight-saving, I think they will still chase after <1% gains.
It's a lot more than you'd think: https://www.kiwi.com/stories/united-prints-lighter-magazine-...
Reports annual savings of about $300k by shaving a few grams off each of the pamphlets they stick in the seats.
Now every employee applies the same mindset and the company starts to fly (pun intended).
Or otherwise, you just not care about everything lose money everywhere.
"Another thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all probability a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet.
And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this poor innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity as a whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale any more." -DA
But I'm not sure why anyone would want to paint one?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transair_Flight_810
(Sorry, could not resist...)
It does tend to be a limiting factor for fliers (hence hollow bones, etc). The heaviest flying creature on Earth does not exceed about 40 pounds.
Including extinct animals, the heaviest flier was not more than 550 pounds. A blue whale can weigh almost 1,000 times that.
Being on a plane is the single safest place you could possible be at any time as a human.
Further the places you'd be that aren't a plane have plenty of their own safety risks, that people aren't checking for constantly as a matter of course. Whereas on a plane, there's very little that can hurt you, and your job is to, well, remain seated. A fairly safe activity, in moderation.
Combined with the fact your risk of dying due to a fatal accident is about 500 in 9.4 billion, I stand by my rough assessment.
Plane flight is an additional risk, it doesn't mitigate existing risks in place.
For example, if you're on a plane, you're not scuba diving, base jumping, driving a car, etc.
If all I do is sit in a chair, getting up to use the restroom occasionally, my home is probably safer than a plane. However the data will presumably show a much higher accident rate at home, because I also do things like cook, clean, and move goods.
Related, I bet cleaning and moving things have a fairly high accident rate on airplanes, but the accidents happen on the ground to employees so won't show up in the data.
Part of my premise is that a place you're forbidden from doing dangerous things is safe. I'm sure it's more dangerous to operate a chop saw on a plane, but you're not allowed to do that either. That's part of what makes it safe to be there ;) You're not allowed to do anything dangerous up there and neither is anyone around you. You're also screened on the way in for dangerous goods, and your ID is verified, and that of your fellow passengers.
> Related, I bet cleaning and moving things have a fairly high accident rate on airplanes, but the accidents happen on the ground to employees so won't show up in the data.
Sure, I meant as a passenger, not as a ramper or cleaner.
Global accidents per million departures usually hovers around 2, and that's not fatal accidents, which are about an order of magnitude less frequent.
Here's the 2023 ICAO safety report. [1]
[1] https://www.icao.int/safety/Documents/ICAO_SR_2023_20230823....
[1] https://www.npr.org/2022/02/03/1077996126/furniture-tip-over...
Or to put it another way, does clear paint weigh less than colored?
> The metallic fuselage skin of modern airplanes is made of alclad aluminum alloy.
The word “alclad” means a thin layer of pure aluminum is applied over the entire aluminum alloy fuselage skin, generally a variant of 2024 alloy, at manufacture.
This pure aluminum layer almost immediately turns into aluminum oxide: and then begins its magic.
A bit of polish applied periodically keeps the pure aluminum layer at a silver shine, otherwise it grows dull — but still continues to protect.
https://www.quora.com/Why-did-American-Airlines-stop-paintin...
Depositing a layer of pure Al on the surface seems... heavy.
Especially if you have access to high performance paints.
> Alclad has been most commonly present in certain elements of an aircraft, including the fuselage, structural members, skin, and cowls. The aluminium alloy that Alclad is derived from has become one of the most commonly used of all aluminium-based alloys. While unclad aluminium has also continued to be extensively used on modern aircraft, which has a lower weight than Alclad, it is more prone to corrosion; the alternating use of the two materials is often defined by the specific components or elements that are composed of them. In aviation-grade Alclad, the thickness of the outer cladding layer typically varies between 1% and 15% of the total thickness.
It's unclear where exactly alclad is used in modern aircraft.
For clarity: I'm sure that aeronautics engineers have thought extensively about that question, and while it's possible that a small fraction of the answer is "we've always done it this way" and there might exist better alternatives, my expectation on balance is of learning the reasons why it's done this way.