I am seeing the great "newest addition" pics of classic airliners and I wonder if winglets would have helped increase fuel efficiency and distance? Also, would they have given those airplanes better handling?

It's a complicated answer really. On a per aircraft basis winglets don't gain you much. It's at the fleet level where you actually realize any potential fuel savings. You might get a range boost but not much once you factor in other wing reinforcements you would have to do. Depending on the size of the winglet you might see some benefits in yaw but again, probably not noticeable by the pilots.

There is a company called Tamarack aerospace that is doing "active" winglets for business jets right now. The premise is that with their active system you don't need to reinforce the wing for added loading because the system will deflect an "aileron" type device that should counteract loading at peak load events (such as gust events and what not). I don't think they've gotten to the point where they're considering commercial aircraft mods, mostly because that market is pretty tough as it is. But they've had success in the smaller business jet market.

[photoid][/photoid]The benefit just wasn't there. Winglets were installed on. 737-200' 727, 747-200, MD-80 and even D.C.-10. The only marginal success was the 727 program and that was for just a few dozen units at most.

We added them to 2 727's back in 2012ish, they were saying something like 5% boost in efficiency. Honestly, I don't think it did much at all. We did about Mach 0.82 instead of 0.80 for about the same burn so I guess that was some savings. Part of the mod was to have the flap tracks changed which actually had the flaps out a degree or so, increasing the chord. Because of this we would cruise nearly level vs 2-3 degrees nose up. It felt strange the first few times you flew it, like you were leaning forward, but got used to it. Guys said it would have a tendency to float more and I think it might have but that thing would stop flying at idle over the runway whether you wanted it to float or not lol. I can't think of many other differences other than it looked cool even though she was beautiful already.

Ironically, just looking at my memories on FB, I flew one of them 5 years ago today and the post reminded me of the increase in takeoff weights from the winglets. They allowed us to do up to a Flaps 30 takeoff and I want to say we increased something like 25,000 pounds vs non-wingleted aircraft for similar conditions.

tb727 wrote:

Ironically, just looking at my memories on FB, I flew one of them 5 years ago today and the post reminded me of the increase in takeoff weights from the winglets. They allowed us to do up to a Flaps 30 takeoff and I want to say we increased something like 25,000 pounds vs non-wingleted aircraft for similar conditions.

That’s a huge increase in payload


I remember doing F25 takeoffs and they were something else, like a Harrier rotating its nozzles when it does a rolling take off, it just lept off the ground



F30 is a landing setting, can’t imagine what that was like for take off, did you ever do one ?

tb727 wrote:

they were saying something like 5% boost in efficiency.

5% boostin efficiency - nowerdays thats a new generation aircratf!

Max Q wrote:

tb727 wrote:

Ironically, just looking at my memories on FB, I flew one of them 5 years ago today and the post reminded me of the increase in takeoff weights from the winglets. They allowed us to do up to a Flaps 30 takeoff and I want to say we increased something like 25,000 pounds vs non-wingleted aircraft for similar conditions.

That’s a huge increase in payload


I remember doing F25 takeoffs and they were something else, like a Harrier rotating its nozzles when it does a rolling take off, it just lept off the ground



F30 is a landing setting, can’t imagine what that was like for take off, did you ever do one ?

We did a lot of F30 takeoffs with the winglets. It was like getting in an elevator lol! Crazy though that all of the sudden we could take all this weight with a couple winglets and flap mod. Made the difference a lot on the horse airplane making ONT out of LEX which is only 7000' when we used to have to stop for fuel or go out of SDF. Not when we had a full load of horses but times when we weren't as full but could take all the fuel we could put in it.

She has -15 motors so it was already better than the -9A we had in prior years, the winglets were icing on the cake for us, we weren't gonna get much better.

PhilBy wrote:

tb727 wrote:

they were saying something like 5% boost in efficiency.

5% boostin efficiency - nowerdays thats a new generation aircratf!

Haha, yeah it was more like 0.5%.

tb727 wrote:

Max Q wrote:

tb727 wrote:

Ironically, just looking at my memories on FB, I flew one of them 5 years ago today and the post reminded me of the increase in takeoff weights from the winglets. They allowed us to do up to a Flaps 30 takeoff and I want to say we increased something like 25,000 pounds vs non-wingleted aircraft for similar conditions.

That’s a huge increase in payload


I remember doing F25 takeoffs and they were something else, like a Harrier rotating its nozzles when it does a rolling take off, it just lept off the ground



F30 is a landing setting, can’t imagine what that was like for take off, did you ever do one ?

We did a lot of F30 takeoffs with the winglets. It was like getting in an elevator lol! Crazy though that all of the sudden we could take all this weight with a couple winglets and flap mod. Made the difference a lot on the horse airplane making ONT out of LEX which is only 7000' when we used to have to stop for fuel or go out of SDF. Not when we had a full load of horses but times when we weren't as full but could take all the fuel we could put in it.

She has -15 motors so it was already better than the -9A we had in prior years, the winglets were icing on the cake for us, we weren't gonna get much better.

Well that’s impressive, I had read about that mod but didn’t realize it gave that much of a performance boost


One of the many things that made the 727 such a blast to fly was the incredible difference in certain take off profiles


We used to do Flaps 5 full reduced thrust
as a matter of routine with the -9 engines and in Houston in the middle of summer you would roll and roll and roll a bit further before very gently raising the nose for a slow, easy rotation



After rolling on the mains for what seemed like forever she would finally, reluctantly pick herself off the ground and you’d stagger away, in Denver or Mexico City you’d use all the power you could, packs off sometimes and you’d roll even longer



One night leaving MEX at maximum weight for the conditions I very gently rotated with the end of the runway coming up rapidly and right after we lifted off the stick shaker activated


Just for a moment but it brought home how close to the limit we were, I made sure we had full power and eased the pitch a tad, it didn’t go off again



For a moment I thought about fire walling the throttles and would have done if the shaker had stayed on but it only activated for a few seconds, overboosting the engines could have given us even more problems at that point



Contrast that with a light weight departure in cold weather or as mentioned a F25 take off out of LGA and like you said, it was like
going up in an elevator



Fun times in the best flying aircraft I’ve ever flown

Max Q wrote:

tb727 wrote:

Max Q wrote:

After rolling on the mains for what seemed like forever she would finally, reluctantly pick herself off the ground and you’d stagger away, in Denver or Mexico City you’d use all the power you could, packs off sometimes and you’d roll even longer

One night leaving MEX at maximum weight for the conditions I very gently rotated with the end of the runway coming up rapidly and right after we lifted off the stick shaker activated

Just for a moment but it brought home how close to the limit we were, I made sure we had full power and eased the pitch a tad, it didn’t go off again

Fun times in the best flying aircraft I’ve ever flown

I've flown with some ex-Champion guys that told stories about LAS departures using Flaps 5 heavy going to DTW and scaring golfers at the end of the runway in Vegas lol.

Yikes, a stick shaker at that point would get your attention pretty quick I'd imagine!

Agreed. Just finished up a 3 day with an FO that flies KC-135's. A couple guys in their mid 30's in the front of an Airbus, watching it do an autoland on one of the legs, comparing notes on flying old Boeings and how much better they are!

tb727 wrote:

Max Q wrote:

tb727 wrote:

I've flown with some ex-Champion guys that told stories about LAS departures using Flaps 5 heavy going to DTW and scaring golfers at the end of the runway in Vegas lol.

Yikes, a stick shaker at that point would get your attention pretty quick I'd imagine!

Agreed. Just finished up a 3 day with an FO that flies KC-135's. A couple guys in their mid 30's in the front of an Airbus, watching it do an autoland on one of the legs, comparing notes on flying old Boeings and how much better they are!

Yes, the newer aircraft are cool, capable and still fun to fly



But the 727 was something else wasn’t it ?
just a blast, like all that generation of aircraft


We were lucky to fly it