this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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For anyone wondering, a 172 can hold 3 adults including the pilot, cruises at 115mph, and burns about 9 gallons of fuel per hour so it gets 12.8 miles per gallon. A Learjet 45 can hold 11 people, cruises at 510mph, and burns about 200 gallons per hour so it gets 2.2 mpg. A Boeing 787-9 can hold 290 people, cruises at 560mph, burns 2000 gph, and gets 0.28mpg.
The 172 uses 2.63 gallons per person to go 100mi, the Learjet uses 4.06 gallons, and the 787 uses 1.23.
A 2022 Toyota Corolla gets around 40mpg highway and squeezes 5 people inside so it uses 0.5 gallons per person per 100mi.
These are all talking about max capacity too.
The 172 is more likely to be full and the pilot has a good chance of being part of the group instead of just a pilot.
The 787 is likely to be at least 90% full and the crew are a much smaller proportion of the load.
If there are just two people missing from max capacity on the Learjet then that’s making things even more inefficient than the others. And it’s very likely that they will be at least that much under capacity.
Working in that industry, in a jet with seats for 8 non-crew passengers (in ~50% more space than a Lear 45) most flights have 2-4 passengers, 1 is common, 7-8 hardly ever. Also you need the 172 if you want trained pilots in your 787.
5 people in the Corolla is 2–3 times as many people as are at all likely to be in there. That's a very skewed number.
When using realistic numbers, cars come in at about the same per mile as large commercial airliners. (Flights tend to be far, far longer of course.)
your calculations would probably badly crash against electric vehicles
It's also 100LL vs jet-a. It's not really an apples to apples comparison.