2025 fuel burn

Airbus A321

The A321 is the stretched A320, in service since 1994. American, Delta and JetBlue fly the most of the original-engine version.

A flight deck view of a night approach to a lit runway — Illustrative photo. It doesn't identify an aircraft type or airline. Photo: w3design, DepositPhotos Standard licence.

1,076gallons per airborne hour
77.9seat-miles per gallon
185seats per flight on average
2,768gallons burned per flight

What the figures say

Airbus A321 ranks 10 of 25 types for seat-miles per gallon in 2025, at 77.9. The Boeing 737-800, the most common type in the table, flew 79.1, so a gallon on the Airbus A321 carried a seat 1.5% less far. Over 1,000 miles, one seat on this type accounts for about 125 kg of CO2 from the fuel burned.

US airlines burned 1,557 million gallons on the Airbus A321 in 2025, 8.3% of the fuel burned on all scheduled passenger flying, over 1,448 thousand airborne hours and 562 thousand departures. The average flight spent 2.6 hours in the air and burned 2,768 gallons.

Since 2012, when it was first flown in volume, the type's figure has risen from 76.5 to 77.9 seat-miles per gallon (1.8%). Its best year was 2020, at 84.4.

Airlines get different results from the same aircraft. Frontier Airlines flew 94.7 seat-miles per gallon on it and American Airlines 73.4, a gap of 29%. The seat count explains most of it: Frontier Airlines put 230 seats on each flight against 181 at American Airlines. Flight length differs too, at 2.2 hours in the air per flight for Frontier Airlines and 2.5 for American Airlines. Longer flights normally burn less fuel per seat-mile, so the longer flights at American Airlines should have helped it, not hurt it. What's left comes from taxi and holding time, weight, engines, how each airline operates and how it allocates fuel to types when it reports, and the filings can't separate those.

What one seat costs the climate

CO2 for one seat on an Airbus A321, from the fuel burned, at the 2025 average.

63 kgover 500 miles
125 kgover 1,000 miles
250 kgover 2,000 miles

Airbus A321 seat-miles per gallon across all US airlines flying it, by year, from the first year it was flown in volume.

Who flies it, and how they burn

Airbus A321 by airline, 2025

Airline	Fuel (million gallons)	Gallons per airborne hour	Seats per flight	Hours per flight	Seat-miles per gallon
American Airlines	747	1,118	181	2.5	73.4
Delta Air Lines	448	1,094	189	2.3	77.0
JetBlue	230	951	174	4.2	86.0
Spirit Airlines	67	1,038	222	2.1	93.5
Frontier Airlines	56	1,042	230	2.2	94.7

Seats on the Airbus A321, airline by airline

The Airbus A321 has 177 seats at JetBlue and 230 at Frontier Airlines, 30% more on the same model. The seat count is what each airline reports for its own aircraft in 2025, for airlines with 10 or more.

Airbus A321 fleets, 2025

Airline	Aircraft	Average seats	Fewest to most	Average age
JetBlue	63	177.2	159 to 200	9.1
American Airlines	218	183.5	102 to 190	12.9
Delta Air Lines	127	191.0	191	6.5
Spirit Airlines	29	222.0	222	8.4
Frontier Airlines	21	230.0	230	8.8

See every airline's fleet on the fleets page.

Similar-sized aircraft

These types carry within about 25 seats of the Airbus A321, so they compete for the same routes.

Airbus A321neo105.0 seat-miles per gallon, 889 gallons per hour Airbus A320neo100.6 seat-miles per gallon, 780 gallons per hour Boeing 737 MAX 9100.3 seat-miles per gallon, 828 gallons per hour Boeing 737 MAX 896.8 seat-miles per gallon, 800 gallons per hour

How to read this. Fuel is what airlines issued to the type in 2025, as filed with the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, counted only for the hours spent on scheduled passenger flights and divided by the hours in the air. It includes fuel burned taxiing and holding, so it's higher than the cruise figure in a manual. CO2 is 9.75 kg per gallon of jet fuel.

More from Airbus

Browse the Airbus manufacturer hub and its other profiled types:

Nearby in fuel efficiency

Types on either side of this one in the seat-miles per gallon table, regardless of size:

Boeing 787-974.5 seat-miles per gallon Airbus A330-20076.1 seat-miles per gallon Airbus A330-90078.6 seat-miles per gallon Boeing 737-80079.1 seat-miles per gallon

Aircraft references

Wikipedia: Airbus A321

Source: US Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), Schedule T-2 fuel and airborne hours; US EPA jet-fuel CO2 factor. See the methodology and flight-hour definitions.

Back to all aircraft types, or see how the airlines compare on the airline pages.