The work presented in this paper examines the effect of a non-uniform airflow velocity distribution on the air pressure drop through the fin passages of a single row fin-tube heat exchanger. Water flow rate through the tubes and its temperature are taken as constant. Maldistribution of the airflow increases the average pressure drop with respect to that of a uniform flow. As a result of this, the pumping power required by the fan or blower will also increase. The increase of the pumping power is calculated by means of a discretization technique and it is analyzed with respect to the non-uniform distribution statistical moments of probability density function, i.e., the mean, standard deviation, skew and kurtosis. The analysis reveals that the increase of pumping power is dependent on the exchanger NTU, standard deviation and skew of the velocity distribution. Kurtosis has no effect on the pressure drop. Correlations have been developed to predict this increase of pumping power from known statistical moments and resulting air temperatures. These can then be used as design tools to optimize the sizing of the heat exchanger within the air-conditioning unit, hence giving the best energy efficiency performance. © Asian Network for Science Information.