fuel supplier contracts

[groundbum2]

slightly mad question but hey ho..

I know the monthly contract costs demanded by fuel suppliers are based on an airlines fuel bill at that airport. So an airline buying $1M worth of fuel a week may pay 200K for a contract whereas a smaller airline buying 100K of fuel a week may be offered contracts for 20K.

I wonder if it's possible to suspend all flying for a week so that the fuel bill drops to zero, contracts are offered very cheaply, then flying can resume? On what interval are fuel contracts recalculated, every so many weeks? And how far back do they look at the fuel bill?

Simon

[schro]

I would suggest that you'd lose far more money suspending flights for a week than you would save by acquiring a favorable fuel contract.

[Sami]

Even if that would work (not sure since can't remember how it is coded), you would cause way more losses to your airline by "temporarily downsizing" compared to the gain you get from a cheaper fuel contract.



edit: Too slow

[knobbygb]

The fuel contracts are not updated very often - I think it's at least a month between updates, maybe longer.  The only favourable thing you can do with these is to be sure to take out a long contract immediately on opening a new base.  Because the price will (eventually) be so low, you'll be saving so much that it's often better to go for a long (4 year) contract offering a couple of percent less than a shorter one.