Is the 737/900 (or any other variant) used on regular transatlantic services.Jim C

Hi.I went trawling and found this part-post in a forum on another site:"Transatlantic operations with the 739 are really not practical - the aircraft, in its current configuration, simply does not have enough range.....when issues such as transatlantic winds and diversions are taken into account, operating restrictions would be so dramatic that there would be no possibility of making a profit on the route. Alaska operates (or has operated) the 739 on certain routes out of Seattle to Florida cities and has to be very careful with route planning and payload. Remember that the 739 was a very simple strech of the 738 by Boeing - basically nothing more than a adding length to the fuselage - thus the 739 gained capacity but lost range when compared to the 73G or 738."... but that is an old pre-ER post from 2004.Have a look at the more recent http://www.boeing.com/commercial/737family/media_kit/pdf/737-900ER_Range_Charts.pdfIt suggests that the same is still true: London is on the extreme of the range from Boston so a return journey might not be possible.Hwyl,D

Yes, the 737 is indeed used on transatlantic services, although it's not especially common to do so. Astraeus is one airline which does it (to Halifax Nova Scotia), Privat also do it on behalf of both Swissair and Lufthansa with I think either the 700 or 800 series, but the aircraft involved are generally configured as all business class and have a considerably improved galley as a result of that, since business class passengers expect a better dinner for the six grand they've spent on their ticket than you could possibly have on an EasyJet sardine tin. Even smaller airliners make the trip actually, both the Airbus A319 and the tiny Airbus A318 do it, with Privat and British Airways being two airlines that operate such flights (BA out of London City airport, which is the main attraction of it to business class passengers), although the BA A318 has to stop in Ireland in order to make the range.Beyond those examples, privately-owned 737s could easily be be used for it and almost certainly are, i.e Boeing Business Jet (BBJ) versions of the 737 which have the extended fuel tanks and avionics better suited to that kind of thing, although most BBJs in existence aren't based on the 900. The military versions of the 737 that are a mixture of several of the commercial 737 variants (mostly the 800) with a few custom tweaks, such as the Poseidon US Navy variant, (which can be refueled in the air and doesn't have to follow ETOPS rules) could also do it with ease, and probably does, since it is essentially a maritime anti-submarine patrol aircraft, so trips across the Atlantic (and back again without landing) would be a fairly routine occurrence for those guys.However, as you can see, it's a pretty specialised affair when the 737 does it, because smaller jet aircraft such as the 737 have other problems related to making such a flight which mean they aren't always ideally suited to operating in that way. You'll notice for example that the 737-900ER is not too far off the Boeing 757 in terms of passenger capacity, but the 757 is better-suited toward making long flights because of the engines it typically has which are likely to be optimised for longer cruise at higher altitudes, and the galley facilities for feeding passengers etc are already pretty good on a 757. The 737-900ER's range is more about it being able to operate several short flights without a delay in refueling, and it is better suited to flights at lower altitudes than the kind of cruise flight levels you get up to when roaming across a big ocean for a few hours. The 737 is also better suited to flying into rougher airfields than most larger airliners, since it has a landing gear which is pretty tough and often has a rough strip kit fitted to it.But probably the main reason the 737 doesn't make as many flights of that kind as it actually could, is that it is simply more economical to fly a Triple Seven over the pond, but you'd have a hard time filling a B777 up with business class passengers, so there will probably always be that niche which a 737 can fill where it can carry more business passengers than a Triple Seven and fly a specialised service to suit those clients.Al