chornedsnorkackYep its not viable becouse of the various reasons, though it would have been awsome to see and travel on but sadly not to be, i reckon speed to be the key in the future, maybe Boeing or Airbus are working on a scramjet propulsion system so we can traval New York to Tokyo in 2-hour, not bad :p
Seriously though i think this could happen, it may need drastic redesign of the a/c and development of an operational scramjet propulsion system, something NASA is already testing this tech on its X-43A program and has so far achieved speeds of MACH7 😮
Scramjet is in any case of lomited usefulness, because dealing with fuselage heating is an issue.
Just how hot do the cabin windows of Boeing 2707 get in cruise?
chornedsnorkackWouldnt it depend on where the fire is? As for example ETOPS aircraft have 90 minutes of fire surpression for Cargo and Baggage holds dont they? Also i thinK WYS mentioned that 2 engine aircraft have longer fire supression or something?
Well, has the fire suppression ever actually worked? I mean, no one hears of fires which did not break out at all, but is there any known incident where a plane actually caught fire and the fire suppression worked for more than 90 minutes before the plane landed safely?
chornedsnorkackOnce upon a time, there was a DC-8 which ditched in San Francisco Bay for reasons other than fuel starvation. It ditched with gear out, too – which is supposedly the wrong way to ditch.
No one was hurt, and the aircraft flew again – though it did not fly out of the bay. The plane sank to touch bottom in shallow water so that the water was about level with the passenger floor and door thresholds.
The reason? The plane got lost in the San Francisco fog and thought they were landing on the runway. Except oops! they were not, and the plane naturally sank into the surface.
I do wonder how the landing gear and engines reacted to being pressed into water moving at landing speed…
chornedsnorkackThe last example of a modern airliner ditching was the ATR in August in Sicily. It broke up and sank – it was something like 19 killed 16 survived. Mind you, it was Mediterranean in August, and ATR. A jet might have higher ditching speed…
chornedsnorkackYou are right about that. FBI took him off the plane at SFB and charged him for ‘interrfering with the duties of the cabin crew’. He could face jail sentance of up to 20 years…!
…and all that just for having too much to drink and getting on your high horse! 😀
Harsh but fair in my opinion… :diablo:
Does United States taxpayer pay the bill to feed and guard him for 20 years and sail him out of the country 20 years later?
chornedsnorkackIm lead to Believe that the airline companies pass the details of banned Individuals to each other,I think this guy will find it very difficult to get a flight home , good chance that he will be charged and prosecuted in the States and might serve a jail sentence there,
OK, then what after he has served his term and the time comes to release him? Does he stay in US for the rest of his life because no one wants to fly him out?
chornedsnorkackLooks to me as the A380 could be the roomy and more comfortable of the two, but I don’t really like the seats on it. If they combined the roominess or the A380 with the seats from the pic of the A340, then I think they (whoever ‘they’ are?) would be onto a winner…
It shouldn´t be a problem. This is probably exactly what the customer airlines do.
chornedsnorkackAnother Chornedsnorkack question/statement. I think I get the question, but I can’t help feeling the rest has come from a written piece, probably in some flight review…if this is the case make sure you’re referencing 😉
No. It was thought up just for the compose box. If you think with this style it should be in a written flight review, be welcome to print it there for the first time – and reference 😉
There are a wide variety of formats for premium seating, and in actual fact, many of the premium business products, which are lie flat (as opposed to fully flat) only take up a small amount under the seat infront so that the lie flat can be 170degrees.
Order of magnitude check – over 6 feet, sin 10degrees amounts to about 1 foot. Which means that the space beneath your head is just enough for one, well, foot – but it also has to acommodate the thickness of headrest under your head.
Furthemore the casements tend to be very large for these seat types, and so in many cases it may appear that your feet are just about to go under the seat in front of you, but in actual fact they are not under much more than seat moulding.
Well, the seat moulding over your head is an extra space which comes from the next legroom – but is useless for you to actually put your head in.
Most airlines alreayd have foot rests on these seats because they do not have to be fully reclined, they have a variety of positions between upright and flat (or as flat as they go). There is no doubt that flying in any premium seat costs more, and the extra space required for this is one of the main reasons. But in many cases it is price that produces the selection of the seat, not the other way round, so I’m not sure that your questin has much value, because to answer it….. I’d much rather fly first class anytime, with fully flat seats and 78inch+ of personal space, but unfortunately cost tends to prohibit this. If cost were no issue I’d only ever fly first, with fully flat beds everytime. I think the same would be true of most people, and therefore I’m not sure you could expect too manyanswers from people saying they’d happily fly lie flat rather than fully flat if the airlines got rid of them.
Sure. Flying fully flat, with your feet level with your head, and the head of the passenger in front of you, and separated by additional wiggle room and thickness of separation wall, in the first class, is the most comfortable. Expensive, too. Pitch over 80 inches.
There are, however, very many airlines who
a) have a first class with flat beds and a business class of high comfort level, with 50 to 70 inches pitch strongly reclined seats – and ordinarily have a great difference in price between their Business Class and First Class
or b) do not offer flat beds or First Class at all, and instead have a single premium class, with the 50-70 inches pitch strongly reclined seats
or c) have Business and First Class, but the First Class does not have flat beds – the Business Class has only seats with extra legroom and recline in 40-50 inches range, and the best they have in the First Class in under 70 inches.
In those cases, ther could well be the question of how comfortable are all the various types of premium seats. Which of them really offer value for money, with good comfort and good sleep, and which, despite taking up much space and costing a lot, are uncomfortable?
Now, if a seat goes as reclined as it will go, the seatback reclined, the footrest stretced out – is it better, for the same pitch and height difference, to sleep in a seat where the seatpan inclines to be flat with your seatback and footrest, so that it is your feet which are supporting you against sliding off the flatbed? Or is it better if the seat does NOT go flat, so the seat pan is not a slide and offers support against sliding down?
chornedsnorkackHowever, if I was asked to nominate another criteria by which I might chose between types, I’d say that I generally don’t like 747s, simply because they typically carry too many passengers and I don’t like the scrummage and delays/queues that are often involved with checking in, boarding, deplaning etc of higher capacity aircraft. On this basis alone, I have NO desire whatsoever to travel on the forthcoming A380.
Andy
Indeed. And generally the airport check-ins et cetera are built around handling a certain number of passengers coming from a single plane. So, if the airport has so and so many check in decks enough for a 747, then usually when a 767 is leaving, the same number of desks are in use, and fewer passengers use each, so the delays generally are worse with 747.
Of course, airports are also in trouble when several smaller planes use them simultaneously. But if you fly a 767, the passengers there may have the airport to themselves or share it with the passengers of other planes – with a big plane, it is certain that there are many passengers around at the time.
And naturally, an exception with the 747 is the 747SP. Do you prefer to fly a 747SP or a 777-300?
chornedsnorkackBut again, the interior is completely up to the customer, IE the airline.
Boeing or Airbus don’t force seating arrangements on the airlines 😉
No. The interior is only partly up to customers. Boeing and Airbus provide fuselages of a rather finite number of size and shape. Some arrangements are not allowed by manufacturer. And some are perfectly feasible, but the size and economy determines what the customer will sell it for.
I kind of suspect that if an airline told Boeing they want 7 abreast with 1 aisle, 4 on one side 3 on the other side, Boeing would refuse. It can be done, though: Hawker-Siddeley obliged, and there are Tridents with 7 abreast.
You can build an airliner which is almost twice the width of a 757, as Boeing did with 747. But obviously the manufacturer cannot build a plane with 4 sidewalls on the same deck.
Boeing 767 does allow a few airlines to seat 8 abreast. Very few use that possibility. And 9 abreast is not possible at all. Given 7 abreast economy, it would be pointless to move the aisles closer in, for 3-1-3 seating, or further aside, for 1-5-1, or to one side, for, say, 3-2-2.
Therefore, once an airline chooses Boeing 767, and gives up trying to pack in 2-4-2, you are assured of decent elbowroom and window seats being 1 away from aisle.
chornedsnorkackBut it’s still not guaranteed. Twice in 2005, Continental changed the equipment, once from a 767 to a 757, the other time from a 757 to a 767 and
caused confusion and complaints all round as familied found themselves separated. As we always check in early, we managed to get our choice of rearranged seats.
As to the original thread, I am a 767 fan but, in the end, it’s all about convenience, price and service.
If the price and service are assumed equal, then that leaves concenience – which depends on the airframe.
Seat rearrangement indeed tends to separate groups. But travelling alone – do you think you are lucky when 767 is changed to 757, or do you feel lucky when 757 is changed to 767?
757 has 6 abreast, 767 has 7 abreast. Obviously, to have an equal seat count, a 757 must have more rows, and more window seats, than 767.
But a 767 has two aisles. Much better aisle access.
chornedsnorkackAirframe
Look at it this way: the question was about airframe. Yes, for comfort, the airline, seats and crew matter. Airline decides price, too, which is explicitly equal.
As for getting middle seats: it is not helpful to just suggest to prebook seats or turn up early. If it helped, everyone else would do it first, so chances are the only seats left are the middle ones.
The airline can be unfriendly or friendly. But it is hard for them to change the advantages of B767 narrowness.
A few airlines actually cram 8 abreast in 767. This must be horrible. But it is rare.
And very few airlines fly anything bigger that a 767 7 abreast in Economy. If they have 7 abreast, they call it, at a minimum, Premium or Executive Economy.
So, yes, pitch varies, seat comfort varies, crew service varies. But, for other things equal, a 767 is better than anything else.
chornedsnorkackWidth
In Economy? Logically 767.
The reasoning is simple: in all widebodies, no matter how big, there are 2 sidewalls with windows. In all widebodies, there are 2 aisles to access.
It follows that in a 767, you have 2/7 chance of having a window seat – always only 1 seat from aisle – and only 1/7 chance of a middle seat.
Other widebodies may have more total width, but rarely are they 7 abreast – even A340. You might have more elbowroom in a wider plane – but 7-abreast 767 has enough, and you would have much more chances of a middle seat in any wider planes.
Any objections?
chornedsnorkackand origin/destination of passsengers doesn’t get mentioned at all (how could that be regulated?)
For example, does anyone know the actual language of regulations and terms of Canada/USA air services agreements designed to stop passengers from travelling from USA to USA with a stop in Canada on Canadian airlines?
chornedsnorkackHistoric examples would be in the days when HKG-UK services needed to stop en-route as traffic between HKG and the UK was classified as UK domestic traffic. I presume that a similar situation may exist with some services to
French overseas possesions.
And while I am rather positive Pitcairn lacks airfield fit for large planes and is only accessible by sea, what is the situation about the Malvinas and the British Indian Ocean Territory? Are they served nonstop from Great Britain metropolis, with refueling in other colonies or with refueling abroad?
I used to have a copy of the air service agreement between the UK and Nepal but I can’t lay my hands on it. I remember that it was pretty specific in which airlines could fly, the number of frequencies they could operate, the countries in which en-roue stops could be made but I really wanted to check the particular language used in describing the type of services to be operated. However, these might have been included in the confidential MoU attached to the ASA which I didn’t have access to.
It would be interesting to see what the actual text contained in Open Skies agreements is.
Hm, interesting…
Does the air services agreement specify, e. g. that all passengers who fly from GB metropolis to Nepal on Nepal airlines have to return to GB metropolis and all passengers who fly from Hong Kong to Nepal must return to Hong Kong, so that no one is allowed to fly between GB metropolis and Hong Kong through Nepal on a Nepal airline?
Also, does the air services agreement define 6th freedom and contain restrictions on services which Nepal can allow in Air Services Agreements with third countries?
I could figure out an example which might actually might sense…
Lhasa-London with a stopover in Nepal
Indeed, surely it is a headache to load a plane with fuel for transcontinental nonstop flight, then try to get it off a runway in thin air, and then, facing a terrain barely below the ceiling of the intact plane when at MTOW, lose an engine!
Especially when you do not have the passenger load to fill a Boeing 747-400 or access to a 747SP so you´d rather get along with something smaller like Boeing 757 or Boeing 767 – and therefore have only one engine left when one has failed.
It could make sense to take only a limited fuel load in Lhasa, take off safely for a short hop over the worst terrain, and then after descending to an airport somewhere lower, fuel the plane to the full and continue with intercontinental flight free of further terrain.
But who should be allowed to operate such routes? UK registered airlines, Chinese registered airlines or Nepal registered airlines?
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