[thot_experiment]

I'm not sure this tracks, I think turbulence powerful enough to cause passenger discomfort is usually so big that it affects the whole plane pretty uniformly. I think it's exceedingly unlikely that you'll spend enough time on a shear line to induce a large roll.

At least it's never happened to me, but I am only a passenger.

[hindsightbias]

I've been in turbulence with high roll rates and even as a pilot unbothered by moderate chop, it will cause me to sweat. I've been in the last rows of a 777 and watched the fuselage flex in chop. A blended body would be pretty rigid and have a very low wing loading because it's basically all a wing. So it would be pretty uniform.

It would work if all turns were managed via controls to be a 1/4g, otherwise riding the outside would be like a roller coaster.

I'd prefer to go back to the MD-80. Very high wing loading, fast and never broke down. Skated through turbulence.

[dublin]

The DC-9 and MD-[89]X were great airplanes. One of the great tragedies of unchecked American corporate consolidation/acquisition is that Boeing was allowed to borg McDonnell-Douglas. (Although some climed the opposite was closer to the truth...)

Anyway, the resulting company is too large to fail, and thus, too large to exist. We're at a point where we could really use the competition we had in aerospace companies back in the 80s, when there were enough competitors in both military and commercial aviation for competitive pressures to keep the players working to provide innovation and value. (Rather than milking the market with intentionally poor designs a la Boeing's 737MAX.) Modern airlines have only two vendors to choose from now that Boeing and Airbus have gobbled up even their second-tier competitors.

Personally, I'd love to see what the old Convair, LTV, pre-Martin Lockheed, or pre-McDonnell Douglas might come up with in this competition...

[bobthepanda]

The problem is that, what airlines want, and what regulators want, is now too expensive to independently develop and start a new competitor for, even if you are well resourced like China, Japan or Russia (which all have attempted and failed to break into international aviation sales).

A new aircraft development is a $15B+ R&D investment, for the price and fuel efficiency and safety required. McDonnell-Douglass and more recently Bombardier messed up their bets and it cost them their independent existence.

[flaviut]

Not a pilot, but I've flown in the MD-80 once, and I've found it much more unpleasant than most planes due to the engine noise in the cabin.

But on the other hand, I've never experienced turbulence that's made me more than barely uncomfortable in any plane.

[hindsightbias]

Secret was to not sit in the back

[nunez]

can't speak to aeronautics of it, but from a pax perspective, the md80 was a fantastic jet. probably the last vestige of what flying "used to be like" since they were too old to retrofit for "efficiency". also its planform looked AMAZING; retro-futuristic even

closest modern aircraft to it is the 717/MD90, which Delta is still flying, but not for much longer iirc

[kortilla]

md88 was shit as pax if you didn’t like cold and loud.

[thot_experiment]

Good to know, I'm aware that high roll-rate turbulence is possible but presumably quite rare?

[hindsightbias]

rareish but once was enough. After 5 minutes, people start puking and then it just gets worse.

[HPsquared]

In a typical plane in turbulence, you can see the wings bending up and down. Perhaps a blended wing would be stiffer, though.

[thot_experiment]

Yes a blended wing would be stiffer, but wing stiffness isn't really relevant here. The wing bending isn't evidence of differential pressure between the two wings, it's only showing that the wings are the part of the plane that's most affected by turbulence while not accounting for the majority of the inertia.

The point is that air currents powerful enough to appreciably affect a large plane are large scale and therefore you're unlikely to have enough differential pressure from one wing to the other to impart much torque.

I'm not certain about this and I'd love to be corrected if I'm wrong.

[HPsquared]

Ah, so in other words the whole plane bumps up and down but doesn't rotate. Therefore the location of passengers doesn't matter much, as all locations experience the same acceleration. (Provided the cabin is stiff)

[gcanyon]

When I was younger, watching the wings flex up and down in turbulence was one of my favorite things about flying, like an amusement park ride. Over the years my perspective has changed.