Boeing aircraft disc weight savings analysis (1990 LGO study)

First LGO thesis student went to Boeing, recovered the proprietary $188/lb value-of-a-pound-saved figure that confirmed Tom's $200/lb rule of thumb.

Two hundred dollars a pound — I remember the first LGO thesis. The first round of students, one of them went to Boeing, and they actually got the proprietary Boeing number for the value of a pound saved on an aircraft. It's proprietary, but they somehow got permission — or they didn't get permission — and it showed up in their thesis. $188 a pound was Boeing's number. Pretty close to 200. I used to use two dollars a pound for automobiles 20 or 25 years ago, and that was when fuel cost — if you read this article, it was early 2000s, I talked about fuel at $1.50 a gallon. We haven't seen that for a while — we might see it again.

1990 MIT LGO students at Boeing found the actual value of weight saved on a commercial aircraft was $188/lb — the source of Tom's "round to $200/lb" figure.

When I tell you it's $200 a pound for the value of a pound saved on an aircraft — back in 1990 we had some students in what's now the LGO program go out to Boeing, and they found it was $188 a pound. My two hundred is rounded to one significant figure, and it's not even that significant, because it can vary by a factor of ten depending on the speed.