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  #41  
Old Posted Dec 23, 2016, 5:56 AM
ssiguy ssiguy is offline
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One thing is for sure, air travel is a terribly painful and uncomfortable experience compared to what it was a generation ago and far more time consuming due to endless security checks, pay extra for absolutely everything, too few staff, no meals, having to arrive at your flight 3 hours early as opposed to 40 minutes like it use to be, and being crammed in like a bloody sardine.

Air travel use to be so pleasant and now it's a painful and exhausting experience that only Chinese Water Torture could match.
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  #42  
Old Posted Dec 25, 2016, 3:33 AM
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Originally Posted by ssiguy View Post
One thing is for sure, air travel is a terribly painful and uncomfortable experience compared to what it was a generation ago and far more time consuming due to endless security checks, pay extra for absolutely everything, too few staff, no meals, having to arrive at your flight 3 hours early as opposed to 40 minutes like it use to be, and being crammed in like a bloody sardine.

Air travel use to be so pleasant and now it's a painful and exhausting experience that only Chinese Water Torture could match.
Maybe true in North America, but in Asia it's still pretty tolerable. They even still give meals in coach on short haul flights on Chinese airlines!
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  #43  
Old Posted Dec 25, 2016, 3:36 AM
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
that's cool, it's got a SR-71 blackbird kind of vibe to it.

it seems like fuel economy is going to trump speed for the foreseeable future, at least until there is some breakthrough in propulsion.
Well, as long as the majority of passengers prioritize ticket cost over everything else, there's not much that can be done about this.
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  #44  
Old Posted Dec 29, 2016, 1:45 AM
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The airlines were deregulated by Carter in 1979. People who worship Ronald Reagan claim that Reagan deregulated the airlines but it was Carter. Look it up, flyboy.

Before that, the major airlines were required to provide direct domestic flights to all cities of a particular size. This meant there would always be at least one daily non-stop between, say, San Antonio and Columbus, OH and between Portland, OR and Memphis. After deregulation, the various airlines all reconfigured their service around hub and spoke systems. The airlines that could not establish a midwest hub in Chicago or Atlanta gave birth to the brief hubs that once lorded over various second-tier airports. The most notorious was Delta's Cincinnati hub, which saw everything that would have come through Chicago instead routed through CVG. This made no difference for connecting travelers but it enabled Delta to price gouge Cincinnati's customers since there was practically no competing airline at the airport. Then when Delta suddenly pulled out in 2005 all of the businesses (especially the Japanese businesses like Toyota) that had established major offices in Cincinnati in the 80s and 90s started to leave.

St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, etc. all went through this routine with various airlines, many of them now defunct. The airports were expanded for these hubs then the airlines skipped town and left those cities holding the bag. Cincinnati is down from 500+ daily flights including about 10 internationals to maybe 150 daily flights and just one Air France flight to Paris which remains so that GE Aviation can trade spare parts and specialized personnel with Airbus. Luckily, the huge excess capacity at CVG lured DHL to the airport and they operate a 1,000+ man operation there that sees several dozen domestic flights converge at nightfall. Everything is sorted and then shipped either to Frankfurt or Hong Kong.
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  #45  
Old Posted Dec 29, 2016, 4:37 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ssiguy View Post
Air travel use to be so pleasant and now it's a painful and exhausting experience that only Chinese Water Torture could match.
Air travel also used to be a luxury. Now pretty much anyone can do it.
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  #46  
Old Posted Dec 29, 2016, 5:29 AM
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Air travel can be dirt cheap if you know how to do it properly. When it was a luxury good it was known to have luxurious qualities. It's like complaining that a base model Nissan doesn't feel like the top level cadillacs of yesteryear. They aren't the same thing. If you want those qualities, you can still get them, you just gotta pay the premium. (First / business class)
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  #47  
Old Posted Dec 29, 2016, 4:44 PM
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Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere View Post
Air travel can be dirt cheap if you know how to do it properly. When it was a luxury good it was known to have luxurious qualities. It's like complaining that a base model Nissan doesn't feel like the top level cadillacs of yesteryear. They aren't the same thing. If you want those qualities, you can still get them, you just gotta pay the premium. (First / business class)
I was going to say pretty much this. Those luxuries from yesteryear are still available in domestic first or international business and, adjusted for inflation the cost of that level of service hasn't really changed.
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  #48  
Old Posted Dec 31, 2016, 12:46 AM
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And that's what I think is great. There's no way I could go on 3 leisure trips a year if |I had to pay even premium economy.
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  #49  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2017, 12:06 AM
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  #50  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2017, 2:06 PM
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It's interesting to look at the big picture of how air travel is changing, with the decline of the 747 and A380 in favor of smaller yet much more fuel efficient planes with long range.

The old model was the funnel people into hub airports where they would change planes to a jumbo for the long haul flight. Now they are moving to smaller flights and flying longer flights from smaller airports. For example, my home airport of Raleigh-Durham has direct flights to London and Paris.

I think design-wise we will see a focus on future designs to maximize range and fuel efficiency and we will see a lot more flights between smaller markets such as something like Nashville-Stuttgart or Birmingham-Birmingham haha.

Also, probably designs with more modular interiors that can quickly be changed seating arrangements based on AI analyzed trends. If a flight starts selling more first class seats, a quick change will allow them to add in more first class seating during a turn around. (just spit-balling an idea).
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  #51  
Old Posted Jan 25, 2017, 4:33 AM
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^^^ The Chicago-Asia flights that used to be 747s are all 777s now. Still a very big comfortable plane, twin isles. It's just that the 777 is a much more efficient airframe.

For the form factor, it's just that we're constrained by physics. Airliners are very conservative vehicles. They are passively stable. They can glide without power. They are simple and strong.

Yes there are innovative solutions to the aerodynamic problems. But they weigh more per passenger, and/or they are dynamically stable. Meaning they drop like a rock if the computer crashes. Personally I think that's what's holding back the flying wing designs, which is the option most likely to replace the 707 form. But no one wants to roll the dice.
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  #52  
Old Posted Jan 25, 2017, 4:37 AM
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Originally Posted by mthd View Post
obviously i agree about the sonic boom thing... but aren't a huge number of the world's most lucrative routes over water? basically the entire east coast of north america to nearly all of europe, and the entire west coast of north america to most of asia...

the real issue is the cost of fuel and the inefficiency of flight at such high speeds, i think.
Actually no, because of great circle routes. Chicago to Hong Kong routes are over WI, Canada, Russia and China. Coming back, fly over Taiwan, Japan, Alaska.

The amount of time where the plane could go supersonic isn't worth the cost.
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  #53  
Old Posted Jan 25, 2017, 3:25 PM
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Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere View Post
Air travel can be dirt cheap if you know how to do it properly. When it was a luxury good it was known to have luxurious qualities. It's like complaining that a base model Nissan doesn't feel like the top level cadillacs of yesteryear. They aren't the same thing. If you want those qualities, you can still get them, you just gotta pay the premium. (First / business class)

yep including frequent flyer/preferred passenger options to shorter lines.
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  #54  
Old Posted Jan 26, 2017, 1:50 AM
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Originally Posted by aaron38 View Post
Actually no, because of great circle routes. Chicago to Hong Kong routes are over WI, Canada, Russia and China. Coming back, fly over Taiwan, Japan, Alaska.

The amount of time where the plane could go supersonic isn't worth the cost.
A lot of the land that these great circle routes fly over is very sparsely populated (Northern Canada, Alaska, and Siberia) and there wouldn't really be any issues with sonic booms either.
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  #55  
Old Posted Jan 26, 2017, 3:05 AM
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A lot of the land that these great circle routes fly over is very sparsely populated (Northern Canada, Alaska, and Siberia) and there wouldn't really be any issues with sonic booms either.
The law of the land doesn't vary by population density.

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CFR › Title 14 › Chapter I › Subchapter F › Part 91 › Subpart I › Section 91.817
14 CFR 91.817 - Civil aircraft sonic boom.
§ 91.817 Civil aircraft sonic boom.
(a) No person may operate a civil aircraft in the United States at a true flight Mach number greater than 1 except in compliance with conditions and limitations in an authorization to exceed Mach 1 issued to the operator under appendix B of this part.

(b) In addition, no person may operate a civil aircraft for which the maximum operating limit speed MM0 exceeds a Mach number of 1, to or from an airport in the United States, unless -

(1) Information available to the flight crew includes flight limitations that ensure that flights entering or leaving the United States will not cause a sonic boom to reach the surface within the United States; and

(2) The operator complies with the flight limitations prescribed in paragraph (b)(1) of this section or complies with conditions and limitations in an authorization to exceed Mach 1 issued under appendix B of this part.

(Approved by the Office of Management and Budget under control number 2120-0005)
Source https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.817
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  #56  
Old Posted Jan 26, 2017, 3:06 AM
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Originally Posted by initiald View Post
It's interesting to look at the big picture of how air travel is changing, with the decline of the 747 and A380 in favor of smaller yet much more fuel efficient planes with long range.

The old model was the funnel people into hub airports where they would change planes to a jumbo for the long haul flight. Now they are moving to smaller flights and flying longer flights from smaller airports. For example, my home airport of Raleigh-Durham has direct flights to London and Paris.

I think design-wise we will see a focus on future designs to maximize range and fuel efficiency and we will see a lot more flights between smaller markets such as something like Nashville-Stuttgart or Birmingham-Birmingham haha.

Also, probably designs with more modular interiors that can quickly be changed seating arrangements based on AI analyzed trends. If a flight starts selling more first class seats, a quick change will allow them to add in more first class seating during a turn around. (just spit-balling an idea).
This needs to happen.
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  #57  
Old Posted Apr 7, 2017, 7:01 PM
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This just about sums it up, including why planes don't fly just under the speed of sound.


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  #58  
Old Posted Oct 29, 2017, 12:47 PM
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Supersonic Concorde could fly again thanks to quieter low-boom technology

https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/...om-technology/

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.....

- Tim Robinson, editor of Aerospace magazine, said we are now seeing the “most serious push since the 1990s” to develop supersonic passenger flight. However, one of the problems that eventually grounded Concorde was the sonic boom – the loud noise, like an explosion, generated by the audio shock waves as the plane flew faster than the speed of sound. The noise made it untenable for Concorde to fly regularly over populated areas – it was banned by Congress from overland routes in the US in the 1970s – dramatically limiting the aircraft’s potential routes and therefore its profitability.

- Enter Nasa, which is not just about the moon and Mars. The famous acronym stands for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and its aeronautical arm has been working to develop a low-boom – or quieter – supersonic aircraft. A team of engineers at the Armstrong Flight Research Center in California have designed an experimental plane called a Low Boom Flight Demonstrator – more catchily, the X-plane – that they hope to have in the air within four years. By modifying the design, particularly of the front of the aircraft so that shock waves are more dispersed when they hit the ground.

.....



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  #59  
Old Posted Mar 25, 2018, 6:02 PM
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Australia-UK: First non-stop flight arrives in London from Perth

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-43530332

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.....

- The first scheduled non-stop flight between Australia and the UK has touched down in London's Heathrow Airport. Qantas Flight QF9 completed its 14,498km (9,009-mile) journey from Perth in just over 17 hours. The airline is using the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, which is twice as fuel-efficient as the Boeing 747. It is part of ambitious plans by Qantas to add ultra long-haul flights to its schedules. The Australian flag carrier's Chief Executive, Alan Joyce, has called the new Perth-London service a "game-changing route".

.....
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  #60  
Old Posted Apr 27, 2018, 9:29 PM
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Zunum Aero’s Hybrid Electric Airplane Aims To Rejuvenate Regional Travel

https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/...egional-travel

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.....

- Aircraft development typically takes five years or longer, which is why our company, Zunum Aero, embarked on its mission right away rather than waiting for the technology to mature. This decision has paid off, and we have brought these technologies together in Zunum Aero’s recently unveiled design for a 12-passenger hybrid-electric airplane, which we’re building now. We plan to conduct our first flight tests in 2019. Beginning in 2022, we plan to sell these planes to airlines, perhaps including JetBlue, which together with Boeing is backing our efforts. Other players have more recently entered the fray, and we welcome them: Their decision validates our concept.

- We expect our plane to offer 40 to 80 percent lower operating costs than those of regional aircraft today, which would save passengers money and greatly reduce the noise heard in the cabin and down below on the ground. As hybrid-electric short-haul flight spreads, it will reinvigorate thousands of underused regional airports, slashing door-to-door times for travelers. What’s more, the new propulsion system will lower carbon emissions from aircraft by up to 80 percent, rising to 100 percent when short-haul planes become fully electric in the 2030s. Sure, there’s a lot of work to be done to get there. But we’re not starting from square one.

.....
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