It is a slow day at the office so I am going to add to this. Hope I do not get overly complicated...
I used to do refueling for the vendor at
PHX.
The numbers below on the narrow body aircraft i list below are at 40psi. And in
PHX, 95% of the time the airlines show up with only an hour to hour and half of fuel remaining.
757s built up to 1992 or 93 take fuel into the wings around 185-190gpm. That means if your going wings full(which almost all 757 flights that leave
PHX do) on that airplane, you are going to be on it for about a half hour. Newer 757s take fuel into the wings about 300gpm. No mechanic I have talked to can explain this to me as to why that is. The center on a 757 takes fuel a lot faster as it has two valves leading into it. Out of
PHX, unless its going to Hawaii, its not going to ever need much in it anyway. *UPS has modified their older 757s to refuel faster.
Airbus A318-320 your looking at about 220gpm into the mains, 260gpm with the center open as the manifold restricts more than the individual valves. I have topped off several buses before. Takes about 35 min. However, some airlines require that their buses be fueled with the computer controlling it. On the older models, the refuel computer wont put fuel, or only a limited amount of fuel, into the center until the wings are full. Got into a head butting match over a certain airline about that. They wanted me to do it their way and they ended up taking the delay. They needed topped off as
WX was present in their east coast destination. Took about 45min. A321 takes fuel faster. Over 300gpm. It only has one fuel cell in each wing(only airbus I know of like that) and is plumbed bigger. The the 320 and smaller craft, the outer cell drains into the wings after landing. And refueling the wings, the fuel goes through the outer cell into a spill pipe to the inner.
737NGs, all three tanks open, take fuel at around 450gpm all three open. 260gpm into the center and 280gpm into both wings. I know that comes up to 540gpm but we do have a manifold restriction. When the fuel rig is properly calibrated and with at least a 450gpm capacity, I never was on a 737 longer than 17min. And yes I have topped them off.
737300-500s take fuel about 300gpm with all three open. 25min to top one off. (Alaska was tankering fuel in summer of 08 during fuel price spike)
Wide body aircraft.... Well, before I get to them I must first talk about the equipment that I am familiar with.
First I have never seen a hydrant truck pump faster than 450gpm. Even though they were rated up to 800gpm. I am not going into why, just in case I'll ever need that job back...... The stationary carts I never seen fuel faster than 320gpm, most around 280gpm. British Airways in
PHX takes about 1:15min to 1:30min to refuel by one hydrant truck. And the majority of the time, not much fuel goes into the center.... Hydrant fuel equipment don't pump. They are pressure regulators. That fuel in the pipeline underground can be up to 170psi or more. They can be hard to calibrate the proper nozzle pressure because of that. Tankers on the other hand pump and are much easier to set the pressure limitations.
With two tankers on a 747, DC10/MD11 I have seen as much as 1300gpm. But on a 747 that will eventually slow as the smaller tanks in the wing fill and slow the rate.... DC-10 and
MD-11 you get that with their three mains open. The
MD-11 does have aux tanks but I have never fueled them. And have never topped one off.
The last airplane I am going to talk about is the Airbus A300. It has an outer cell in each wing that holds 8200lbs side. Similar to the 737NG only wing tank at 8600lbs a side. I felt bad when UPS or Fedex rampers when the airplane mechanics would drain the outer cell into the inner cell. (A300 does not do it automatically like the A320 does). With any fuel in the inner cell, the outer cell has to leave full. The A300 has a nice refuel rate, except for into the outer cells. That means that no matter how much fuel is going onto it, the outer cells get refueled to full at 45gpm EACH. That means a tanker is in the way for 30minutes minimum! I do not know why they were piped so small....
Sorry about leaving md80s out and Rjs. I have rambled on enough....
