Hello,

To me it is just makes flying that little bit more mundane and troublesome. It really take the fun out of flying.

How nice it is to remember the days when flying was a significant evident, something to look forward to and savor.

Nowadays you enter a big building, wait in queues, fumble with the electronic check-in lady, wait in more queues. You might get a glimpse out of the window at a plane, in an area that you must share with many other people – crammed in and feeling just an uncomfortable. To further remove you from the event, you get to walk down a windowless tube into a tube with seats and a small window. The romance of flying…

Does the overly-large tailfin of the IL96 give lie to stability problems?

Steve

Hello,

I think it is more to do with the yaw moment arm of the relatively short fuselage.

Hello,

Google is a good friend: http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2009/09/09/331991/aa09-pilot-handling-skills-under-threat-says-airbus.html

Another interesting type dwindling in European skies, shame. I believe Iberia have all their MD-80s ready to be withdrawn. It will leave Spanair with the only sizable fleet in Europe.

…and the rest of the passengers were just…

Delightful? 😀

Hello,

I am actually for the idea in general. The key to the whole idea is the land-side links to the airport, there really needs to be a focus on public transportation and in particular the high-speed rail with links all across the south/southwest England. If you could pair this to the proposed high-speed link to the north of England and Scotland then you have the potential to remove a lot of domestic flights and make an international-class hub that the UK needs and requires.

At some-point in the future Heathrow and Gatwick will have outgrown itself, and are already quite landlocked. You would be gaining prime development ground, reduce low-flying aircraft and the noise associated with aircraft in general. Needless to say, remove traffic from the already heavily congested M25.

I should point clarify something I said incorrectly earlier. The B767 opened more non-traditional hub to point service than it did point to point. I am sorry that I said otherwise. A more accurate way to describe the fragmentation brought about by ETOPS and the success of the B767 (which paved the way for the 777 and 330 btw) was that traditional hubs have been bypassed increasingly. This has made the Very Large Airplane less and less desirable since the hub to hub flying is less.

Boeing believes that the 787 is going to fragment the Pacific market like the 767 did in the Atlantic. In other words, bypassing Narita for example for flights from the U.S. and going directly to smaller Japanese cities or further into Asia without stopping at the gateway hub.

I agree with you, but there is an argument for both B787 and the A380-type aircraft. I consider the A350 to be more of a competitor to the B777, and more aimed at Emirates. I cannot see the established hub-to-hub flying disappearing, and thus the A380 will be needed to reduce congestion in the skies around these areas.

Hello,

Ship 741, that is one way to look at it, but another is that these smaller aircraft are getting more and more capable. The prime example at the moment is the ongoing success of the A330-300 – which with recent structural upgrades – has made the 777-200 obsolete. The 777-200ER has moved onto thin routes that a 747-400 was on only for cargo and the 777-300ER is being used on more and more 747-400 routes. The 777-300 was limited in its production, and only useful to a niche market.

747-400 – 442 Ordered, 442 Delivered
747-400D – 19 Ordered, 19 Delivered
747-400ER – 6 Ordered, 6 Delivered
747-400M – 61 Ordered, 61 Delivered

777-200 – 88 Ordered, 88 Delivered
777-200ER – 431 Ordered, 412 Delivered
777-200LR – 56 Ordered, 37 Delivered
777-300 – 60 Ordered, 60 Delivered
777-300ER – 410 Ordered, 214 Delivered

A330-200 – 553 Ordered, 370 Delivered
A330-300 – 414 Ordered, 241 Delivered

A340-200 – 28 Ordered, 28 Delivered
A340-300 – 218 Ordered, 218 Delivered
A340-500 – 35 Ordered, 30 Delivered
A340-600 – 103 Ordered, 95 Delivered