Aircraft performance
Airliner cruise fuel estimates
Steady-cruise fuel flow and true airspeed for common airliners from the open OpenAP performance model (TU Delft), by flight level, Mach, mass and temperature — a planning estimate, not flight-manual data.
OpenAP cruise estimate · B735
Model estimate — not flight-manual data. Use your aircraft's AFM/FCOM or operator flight-planning figures for operational fuel planning.
B735 · Boeing 737-400 · 2 × CFM56-3B-2uses B734 data (same family)
OEW 33,700 · MTOW 68,000 kg
| FL | TAS kt | kg/h | kg/NM |
|---|---|---|---|
| 250 | 470 | 2,788 | 5.94 |
| 270 | 466 | 2,667 | 5.73 |
| 290 | 462 | 2,564 | 5.55 |
| 310 | 458 | 2,481 | 5.42 |
| 330 | 454 | 2,416 | 5.33 |
| 350 | 450 | 2,371 | 5.27 |
| 370 | 447 | 2,347 | 5.25 |
| 390 | 447 | 2,345 | 5.24 |
| 410 | 447 | 2,364 | 5.28 |
Steady level cruise, clean configuration, no wind; climb, descent, holding, step climbs and reserves are not included. Litres use Jet A-1 at 0.8 kg/L.
Source referenceOpenAP open aircraft performance model (aircraft, drag polar, engine & fuel data) · commit 46753ac
- Publisher
- TU Delft — OpenAP project
- Document
- OpenAP open aircraft performance model (aircraft, drag polar, engine & fuel data)
- Retrieved
- 2026-09-24 22:02 UTC
- Licence
- Data GPL-3.0, code LGPL-3.0. Cite: Sun, Hoekstra & Ellerbroek, OpenAP: An Open-Source Aircraft Performance Model for Air Transportation Studies and Simulations, Aerospace 7(8), 2020
https://github.com/TUDelft-CNS-ATM/openap/tree/46753acb988c1e8c9d47ec5ae72d6fb75b9cf260/openap/data
Method & limits
OpenAP computes drag from each type's drag polar at the given mass, speed and ISA atmosphere, sets thrust equal to drag, and converts thrust to fuel flow with an engine fuel curve fitted to the ICAO engine emissions databank. OIBK's implementation is checked against the Python OpenAP package to within 0.01 %.
Expect differences from real operations of several percent or more: engine variant and wear, cost-index speed, centre of gravity and actual temperatures all matter. Treat the numbers as a first estimate for planning and training, never as dispatch data.
Types without their own OpenAP data use a same-family model only (e.g. B737-300 → B737-400) and are labelled; types such as ATR 72, A300, A310, MD-80 or Fokker 100 have no estimate rather than one borrowed from an unrelated aircraft.
36 supported types: A19N · A20N · A21N · A318 · A319 · A320 · A321 · A332 · A333 · A343 · A359 · A388 · B37M · B38M · B39M · B3XM · B733 · B734 · B735 · B737 · B738 · B739 · B744 · B748 · B752 · B772 · B773 · B77W · B788 · B789 · C550 · E170 · E190 · E195 · E75L · GLF6