Airline fuel use and operations strategy

Jan has been on a data kick lately (see here, here and, oh yeah, here) so here is a picture he might like:

It comes from a report by the International Council on Clean Transport entitled “U.S. domestic airline fuel efficiency ranking, 2010” that was published earlier this month. (It is also discussed in the Washington Post.) Here is the question that it is attempting to answer: Given that different airlines do different things, how can we fairly compare their ability to use fuel efficiently? What’s cool about the answer is that you see with in the answer firms’ strategic and operating choices.