The Boeing 737 Next Generation is one of the most popular families of commercial airliners
ever built.
From its four basic variants, the 737-600, -700, -800, and -900, thousands of 737NGs
have been delivered, and they’re a common sight at airports all around the world.
Equally common are the distinctive blended winglets on the vast majority of 737NGs.
Very briefly, these devices help to improve an aircraft’s fuel efficiency, an all-important
metric in the notoriously slim margins of the aviation industry,
by approximately 4%-5% for the 737.
Early 737NGs were delivered without winglets,
most having been retrofitted with them at a later date.
However, there is one notable exception.
The shortest variant of the 737NG, the -600 model, never actually had these installed,
and it remains a rare example of a 737NG without winglets.
So why is that?
Well, it’s important to note right away that, while the -600 is the smallest 737NG,
it was also the least popular basic model.
Only 69 737-600s were ever built, with most of those being delivered to launch customer
SAS starting in the late 1990s.
Canadian carrier WestJet also took delivery of its 737-600s from 2005 to 2006, and took
the last -600 model ever built.
Today, WestJet is the largest operator of the 737-600 in the world,
with 13 aircraft in the fleet.
Given the present state of things though, these are all parked at various airports across
Canada and a few are even stored in Arizona, at the time of uploading.
When they were first delivered, these 119-seat 737-600s were intended to be used on “routes
and schedules with lower overall demand”, or in “new markets until demand grows”
at which point WestJet would substitute a larger 737.
At the time, winglets were a big deal for WestJet, and they were even the subject of
their first ever April Fools joke in 2006.
In 2005, WestJet was the launch customer for Aviation Partners Boeing’s 737-600 Blended Winglet program.
Aviation Partners Boeing is a joint venture between Aviation Partners, who developed the
737NG’s blended winglets, and Boeing themselves, to offer these winglets for Boeing aircraft.
According to a press release issued in January of that year, WestJet would team up with them
in certifying Blended Winglets for the 737-600, and also provide an aircraft for flight testing.
That would take place from March to May of 2006 with the Federal Aviation Administration,
and certification from Transport Canada was expected the following July.
Clearly, that plan didn’t exactly happen, as WestJet’s 737-600s, as well as those
around the world all remain wingletless.
Ultimately, WestJet decided to abandon the program the following year,
owing to several different factors.
According to their 2006 Annual Information Form, the 737-600s mainly flew shorter routes,
and therefore wouldn’t benefit as much from the installation of winglets.
Furthermore, WestJet had to consider the “resulting payback period on [their] upfront investment”,
in addition to data collected from the company’s experience with winglets on the 737-700s and -800s.
Because of their use on shorter flights, and presumably the extra costs associated with
being the only customer for them, the benefits of winglets on the 737-600 were less significant,
and therefore the program was discontinued.
Although the 737NGs all share the same basic wing design, winglets do affect flight characteristics,
and require some structural changes, and therefore this certification process was still required.
The trouble with the 737-600, like other aircraft “shrinks”, is that it carries fewer passengers
relative to the weight of the aircraft, which is more optimized for the larger variants.
Since those larger variants can carry more people and sell more seats, the -600 isn’t
the most economical 737.
As we all know, the 737-700s, -800s, and -900s all sold substantially better, and these Aviation
Partners winglets were eventually fitted to virtually every new-build 737.
Of all 737-600s built, over half of them have already been scrapped, likely owing to their
limited resale value.
SAS retired the type in 2019, and aside from WestJet, the aircraft only flies with the
secretive Janet Airlines in the US, along with Air Algérie and Tunisair in Northern Africa.
So, throughout the decades of the Boeing 737’s service,
the -600 model remains a bit of an oddity.
With WestJet sending some of these aircraft to the desert, we aviation enthusiasts can
only hope that Boeing’s smallest 737NG will stick around for a while longer.
Thank you very much for watching this video, and I’ll see you next time.