Every Type of Aircraft Winglet Explained

Look at any modern commercial aircraft and you will almost certainly see some form of wingtip modification — a curved, angled, or split tip that departs from the simple flat-ended wing of older designs. These are winglets, and despite their visual diversity, they all solve the same fundamental problem: wingtip vortices. Understanding the different types reveals both the engineering ingenuity and the competitive pressures driving fuel efficiency innovation.

Why Winglets Exist: The Vortex Problem

Every wing generates lift by creating higher pressure below and lower pressure above. At the wingtip, this pressure differential has nowhere to go — air from the high-pressure underside rolls up and around the tip to the low-pressure upper surface, creating a rotating vortex that trails behind the aircraft. This vortex has two negative effects:

1. Induced drag: The rotational energy of the vortex represents power extracted from the engine without contributing to lift — it is purely wasted energy. On a typical commercial flight, induced drag accounts for roughly 30–40% of total drag at cruise conditions.
2. Wake turbulence: The trailing vortices remain powerful enough to flip smaller aircraft for several miles behind large aircraft. This is why air traffic control requires separation between aircraft of different size categories — the vortices only slowly dissipate through viscous interaction with the atmosphere.

Winglets work by disrupting vortex formation. By redirecting some of the spanwise airflow upward (or in multiple directions on split designs), they effectively increase the aerodynamic span of the wing — capturing lift from air that would otherwise roll into a vortex — without increasing the physical wingspan or the bending load on the wing root.

This last point is crucial. A simple wingspan extension would also reduce induced drag, but a longer wing weighs more and creates greater bending moment at the wing root, requiring a heavier structure throughout. Winglets deliver most of the aerodynamic benefit at a fraction of the structural cost. The tradeoff is that winglets create some additional profile drag and wetted area — but the net result is positive for fuel efficiency across nearly all conditions.

Blended Winglets: The Classic Solution

The blended winglet, developed by Aviation Partners and Boeing in the 1990s, was the first widespread retrofit solution and remains one of the most visually distinctive. It curves smoothly upward from the wingtip at roughly 65–75 degrees, with a swept leading edge and a "blended" transition from the wing surface that avoids the stress concentration of a sharp junction.

Blended winglets were originally fitted to the Boeing 737 Classic and 737NG series, and subsequently to the Boeing 757, 767, and 737-800. They deliver fuel savings of approximately 3.5–5% on the 737-800, recovering their installation cost within about 18 months of typical operations.

The design is deliberately conservative: the single-surface blended winglet is structurally simple, reliable, and well-understood. Its limitation is that it only redirects airflow upward, capturing about 70% of the theoretical maximum benefit of an infinite-span wing. The next generation of winglets sought to capture more.

Split-Tip Scimitar Winglets: The Double-Sided Approach

Aviation Partners Boeing's Scimitar Winglet, introduced in 2014 as an upgrade for 737NGs, adds a second small winglet below the main winglet — the distinctive "split-tip" design. The lower canted surface works with the upper surface to address vortex formation from both directions, effectively squeezing the vortex from above and below simultaneously.

Scimitar winglets deliver approximately 1.5–2% additional fuel savings over the standard blended winglet on the 737NG — which translates to roughly $200,000–$300,000 per aircraft annually for a high-utilization carrier. For an airline operating 200 737NGs, that is $40–60 million per year in fuel savings from a single retrofit. Southwest Airlines was the launch customer and has installed Scimitar winglets across most of its 737NG fleet.

The Boeing 737-800 profile details how this upgrade has become a standard element of the aircraft's operational configuration on most major carriers.

Sharklets: Airbus's Answer

Airbus developed the Sharklet for the A320neo family (and as a retrofit for some A320ceo aircraft). The design is a single upward-canted surface similar to the blended winglet but with a distinctly different planform — a more aggressive leading-edge sweep and a sharper tip, resembling a shark's fin in profile (hence the name).

Sharklets deliver approximately 3.5–4% fuel savings on the A320 family and up to 50 additional nautical miles of range — enough to enable routes that might otherwise require a technical stop. On the A320neo, Sharklets are standard equipment; they contribute to the neo's total efficiency improvement of approximately 15–20% over the ceo.

Airbus has since developed Wingtip Fences for the A380 and A330 — a different approach that uses angled fins above and below the wingtip rather than a single upward extension. These fences are tailored to the specific spanload distributions of larger aircraft where a single large winglet would create unacceptable bending moments.

Raked Wingtips: Boeing's Wide-Body Approach

Boeing's wide-body aircraft take a different approach entirely. The Boeing 777, 787, and 777X use "raked" wingtips — the outer section of the wing sweeps back at a greater angle than the rest of the wing, with no vertical extension at all. The tip terminates in a clean, gently curved surface.

This approach works differently from winglets: instead of redirecting vortex energy, raked wingtips modify the spanload distribution to reduce induced drag across the entire wing, not just at the tip. They are lighter than conventional winglets of equivalent effectiveness and introduce less bending moment at the wing root.

The 777-300ER raked wingtip saves approximately 0.3–0.5% in fuel burn versus a square-cut tip — modest by winglet standards, but the 777-300ER wing is already extremely efficient and the raked tip is a refinement of an already optimized design rather than a retrofit fix for an older aircraft.

The Boeing 777X takes wingtip innovation to its logical extreme: it has folding wingtips that extend to a 71.8-meter wingspan in flight for maximum efficiency but fold upward to 64.8 meters on the ground, fitting the same gates as the current 777 family. This is an entirely new category of wingtip management.

Fuel Savings Comparison

Dollar figures assume 3,000 annual flight hours and $2.50/liter fuel cost for a typical medium-haul operation. Wide-body figures scale with utilization.

The evolution of winglet design reflects the aviation industry's relentless focus on fuel efficiency. With fuel typically accounting for 20–30% of an airline's operating costs, a 4% improvement pays back a $500,000 installation within a single year. For more on how aircraft efficiency is calculated, see our guide on understanding aviation fuel efficiency.