Interesting article, but there are some flaws in the author's reasoning.
1. Containerizing passenger space.
Not a good idea, it would require a massive re-engineering effort in the structure of the cabin, since a whole tube is a much more reliable pressure vessel rather than half of one with a 90 degree angle where the floor meets the wall. You generate a ton of stress at those joints with pressurization cycles. Hard angles were in part what doomed the first generation of De Havilland Comets. You can possibly add a smaller, whole tube in the cabin area, but then you get the space of a narrow body aircraft & increase weight.
Reinforcing the rest of the structure of the aircraft if you remove the cabin area would also add in a ton of weight. We all know how a cylinder of paper can support many times its weight in compression, cut a big hole in one side and it will collapse. The survivors of Aloha Airlines Flight 243 didn't know if the floor structure of the 737 alone would be strong enough to survive a landing without having the plane break in two.
2. Meshed chairs.
The FAA requires that all aircraft chairs withstand a 16G impact in order to keep passengers safe. There's a reason why the seating is so heavy and bulky, it's to keep us safe during an accident. The seat structure absorbs most of the impact, so our spines and legs don't. Mesh chairs may be cool (both figuratively and literally), but I doubt they'll hold up to 1.5 tons of impact force (16 times the average weight of an American male, 191 lbs) without tearing.
3. Noise
The 787 is heading in partially the right direction to reduce cabin noise. Other than the air rushing by the plane, most noise is from the air conditioning units, and general vibration of the structure. Most planes use bleed air from the turbofan to pressurize the cabin. Basically you take some of the hot air from the compressor stage of the engine and send it through different parts of the plane (to the wing leading edges for de-icing as an example). A good part of this superheated air is sent to the airconditioning units which work to cool it down and direct it into the cabin. The 787 eliminates bleed air completely, and uses other means (mainly electric alternatives) for most systems. Additional insulation & physical isolation of parts that can induce vibrations into the structure also help.
I was thinking the exact same thing. I was envisioning a "pod" system that you could have about 10 rows which could hold about 40 to 80 passengers each. Each pod would be a cylinder that could be delivered to the aircraft on the tarmac upon boarding. On disembarking they would be delivered to the jet bridge in a sort of star arrangement where you could have 3 to 4 pods attached at any given time.
This system would be interesting because you have effectively detached the aircraft from the passengers. The airline need only deliver pods to airport destinations. This would create an entirely new supply chain and offers more flexibility in scheduling. Plus the added bonus of decreased boarding and disembarking because all the aircraft needs to do is load pods.
I think there is a lot of merit to the containerization approach.
The problem with a pod system is weight and complexity. Generally speaking, you'd need to create at least two pressure vessels (main cabin, and cockpit), which would have to be joined by a hermetically sealed passage.
Between the inner pod, and the outer skin, you'd need to make sure that doors would work in almost any condition. Sure, you can blow the bolts holding the tail on and use parachutes to make the pod descend, though without the pilots since they're in a separate pressure vessel. But what if there's a fire when the plane is on the ground? Parachutes won't work in that situation, and neither would ejection rockets (unless you want to crush the passenger's spines by launching a multi-ton pod high enough for parachutes to deploy).
The main problem facing airlines is simple. How to pack in as many people as possible onto a flight in order to cover it's costs (airport fees, fuel, food, wages, etc.). More people who can cover the flight's costs means more profit for the airline, or lower costs for the passengers.
The real question with the Pod idea is this. Either way people have to board through a door and go to their seats, so that remains the same. But consider this, would people have to board a pod immediately at the gate, or would they wait in a lounge until the plane arrives? Because if they board the pod immediately, it may save time, but passengers will be sitting in cramped seats, with only airline food, and the limited toilet facilities available for possibly HOURS (if the plane is delayed or the flight cancelled in the end. Since these passengers are not physically ON the plane, the passengers' rights would be questionable in these situations.
Technically you could also fill out a pod and have it wait in a holding area on the airport tarmac while the plane arrives, freeing up gates for other airlines. But this impacts the airport retail system (restaurants & stores), which all pay rent to airports. If you eliminate passengers waiting in gates, you eliminate the need for retail. You eliminate retail, you make it that airports would increase fees for airline operations at the airport. And in the end, it would impact ticket prices negatively.
1. Can we make cylinders with lightweight materials with sockets to join to the main plane. It doesn't have to be container boxed shape to be containerized.
2. Can we make Aeron style chairs withstand 16G. A kelvar mesh might be able to hold this G force. I'm not suggesting strapping actual Aeron chairs in there.
3. Good data. Looking forward to testing out the acoustic engineering on the 787
1. You can probably design a cross structure that would hold cabin cylinders as so:
O|O
---
O|O
But it creates a problem. The surface area of an A380 is about 1009 mˆ2 (45 meters long, 7.14 wide). If we use four 727 (a narrow body airliner) as models for the cabin tubes. The surface area of one tube that size is 537.2 mˆ2 (45 meters long, 3.8 wide). Multiply the result by 4 tubes, you get 2149 mˆ2. That's an increase of 213% in surface area.
Given the structural reinforcements within the host aircraft, the need of aerodynamic surfaces to make sure four interlocking tubes don't create dangerous aerodynamic forces & stresses, and the fact that just for the outer covering, the weight of the tubes increases twofold over a standard A380. A minimum reduction in weight would have to be at least by 50%, if not more in order to be competitive. The 787, with a fully carbon fiber fuselage and other weight saving methods reduces weight by 20% at most over a comparative aluminum structure (http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/articles/qtr_4...).
At this point, the use of separate cylinders to hold people and cargo is more or less moot since the weight reductions needed aren't currently possible (physically, or economically), even with the newest materials.
Regarding 2, I'm not sure I'd want to see the results of pressing a human at 16g against a kevlar mesh, especially considering it's mainly our squishy bits that'd be up against it.
The best way to reinvent the airline industry is to fly private. Think about how terrible a bus is, and how most of us use cars because it's an immensely better experience. Going from commercial -> private is a similarly massive leap (I've never flown on a chartered private flight, but I am training for my pilot's license). You go to the FBO (the equivalent of the commercial terminal, but on the other side of the airport), sit down on a comfy couch, watch some TV on a nice flatscreen, grab some free snacks and drinks, then walk out onto the tarmac to your plane at your leisure. No backscatter machines, no metal detectors, and CSRs who give a crap and want to help you (since you're paying them!).
Of course, flying private is not viable for most people. I see the day approaching where owning a plane will be on the same order of magnitude of expense of owning a car. Two things make flying really expensive: fuel and maintenance (you can buy a flyable used plane for ~$50k). Fuel is a fairly intuitive expense: avgas runs about $6 / gallon in the northeast. Figure a small piston plane (4 people) burns ~12 gallons / hour, and you're talking ~$72/hr to operate a plane in fuel alone (note: you're traveling about 150mph in this piston plane, much slower than a jet). Maintenance is a huge issue as well. Every so-many thousand(~2k for a piston) hours of flying, you have to shell out a ton of money ($15k for a piston plane) to overhaul the engine(s). This is in addition to standard annual and 100-hour inspections.
One thing is going to change both of those factors: better battery technology is going to make electric planes viable. Energy cost goes down since energy from the grid is way cheaper than that generated from the ICE. Maintenance is hugely reduced as well. No oil changes. No engine overhauls (electric engines last for ~10x as long as their ICE counterparts and are way cheaper). Increased reliability (adding engines is a trivial cost and doesn't increase weight significantly). Recapturing potential energy during descent. Reduced drag (no nasty air inlets for that combustion reaction).
I don't think this change is going to happen overnight, but given the focus on battery technology for EVs, I think the requisite batteries will become available within 10 years (historically, battery density has doubled over 10y).
For many people, the bus/train is the better experience. It takes less time during rush hour, and you can read/nap/work during the ride. I imagine that private plane slots at an airport have a fairly limited availability, so if they become popular you'll have congestion issues too.
Indeed. In many parts of the world the normal intercity bus ride is a quite pleasurable experience, significantly better in many ways than flying a budget (or pretty much any) airline.
(1) Private cars will go away eventually even in the states as we transition to self-driving cars (at least in the cities) that will be used more like taxis to avoid parking problems.
(2) We probably aren't that far away from self-driving planes, heck, we already have drones. One could imagine a fleet of small planes that are also used like taxis (or better yet, for ride shares).
(3) Its almost 2015 and we all saw Back to the Future, so we know what's going to happen (VTOL garbage powered Delorean anyone?). (this point is a joke, the first two are more serious)
I've heard that almost the entire flight can be/is automated now, including the landing and that most commercial pilots have to land the planes by hand just so they can keep their skills up. But I doubt the salary of pilots is really such a significant cost for airlines compared to their other expenses, otherwise we'd probably be seeing a push for autonomous aircraft.
Also: think of how much the TSA would love autonomous aircraft, you never need to worry about them being hijacked because they'll only go where the computer tells them too.
Salaries are not significant for bus drivers, but would be significant for taxi cab drivers. Automated small planes could really revolutionize the sector, especially if we could figure out how to make them fuel efficient and even electric.
Salaries are in fact a dominant expense of bus and rail fleets. In my area, WMATA pays out 78% of operating budget for buses towards personnel, and 72% of operating budget for trains towards personnel. Operating budget does not include capital expenses like rolling stock or infrastructure.
> Think about how terrible a bus is, and how most of us use cars because it's an immensely better experience.
Yeah but most of America is basically stuck in one at least twice a day, so you have a massive demand to make them comfortable. Whereas with a plane, your middle-class American gets in one 2-3 times a year and is willing to suck it up.
In order to be comparable to cars, you not only have to hypothesize an order of magnitude shift in cost to match cars, but also an order of magnitude shift in demand to match cars. While I fully admit that there is that sort of demand in limited markets (for example, commuting programmers to the valley), these markets are not on the same chart as car demand. I do not really see what could possibly motivate ordinary people to travel 600 miles twice per day.
Meanwhile, as you've been trying to leapfrog the car market, it has not remained stagnant. If you are a knowledge worker, a self-driving car is an effective substitute for flight, since the impact of additional passive travel time is negligible. (Even non-knowledge workers need sleep, so it will be of benefit to them too.) At the distances I generally travel (regional US), an uninterrupted block of 8 hours in a vehicle is actually preferable to a 2-hour block flying, so I would actually pay less to travel by plane.
I would add that the lack of space is also an issue for a lot of people when it comes to owning a plane, and I'm not very optimistic about this for the future (urbanization...).
I wish there was some way for someone to make a kind of "cost sharing" business based on this model. I.e. I pay a bit more than a normal ticket but not hundreds of times more and TFA and all that other crap just goes away for me.
Interesting wishlist, but that's all it is. What he doesn't list is the bump in airfare he's willing to accept for all of the proposed changes. Active noise cancellation and better screens don't come cheap, and most of the compromises he cites were decided out of economy, not because aeronautical engineers are thoughtless. It seems like the most practical thing for him to do would be to pony up and pay for business class.
'Active Noise Canceling' in an open space isn't a reality. You can do it, in an anechoic chamber, with a massive array of microphones and an equally large number of speakers, and even then, you can often only target a particular area. It is completely irrational for a space like an airplane. His mention of a couple of speakers above your head, is particularly laughable. In an open space the best your going to do is sound masking, which is nothing more than shaped white noise to drown out the other sounds, aircraft engines already do a pretty good job of this with the exception that their frequency spectrum can be a bit annoying.
On the other hand, you can do structural vibration cancellation to reduce outside (engine, air) noise entering the cabin. This would be done using sensors/actuators on the inner structure of the cabin. A proposal was out to do this for the A380 but I don't know if it was actually included in the final design or not.
Additional points that caused a snicker:
> laser / ultrasonic zoning of noise, which I've seen some night clubs use.
I've read some research into creating noise barriers by using extremely focused sound, but in laboratories, certainly not in night clubs. Most notably the goal is to create a focused area of very high pressure using a phased array of sources. This pressure levels needed to create a 'barrier' would likely be damaging to a human ear entering the area. I have no idea where the ultrasonic nor laser idea is coming from.
> Noise suppression of the flush in the bathroom/restroom. I think the volume is too high to be safe.
The SPL level of an airplane toilet flush is a long ways away from being damaging. Annoying? sure. Damaging? not unless you have a condition that results in highly sensitive ear drums.
To frame it with something people are a little more familiar with-
"I'm going to revolutionize the automobile industry by offering a car that gets 4x the fuel economy, by doubling the efficiency of the engine and cutting chassis weight in half. The car will be zero emissions, get excellent safety ratings, and offer best-in-class comfort.
Really, I don't understand why no one has thought of this before."
The engine noise serves well as "white noise" to attenuate the cramped nature of the cabin. I think active cancellation would make it feel yet more crowded, as the non-periodic sounds would stand forth more.
We're better served by noise cancelling head phones or ear plugs (the $0.50 solution).
A more important noise factor, in my opinion, is keeping all the yammerheads off their phones. Give them text messaging, if you have to, but no half hour endurance contests listening to half a conversation.
Pointless article written by someone seemingly without even a wikipedia-level knowledge of the issues involved in what he's suggesting. Has no place on the HN front page.
"Remov[e] silly things like entertainment controls on your arm rest. These frequently activate the screen when your trying to sleep. Bring it all to the touch screen interface."
Nooooo! Good grief has he really never had someone repeatedly jabbing the touch screen on the back of his seat? Granted that could be partially mitigated with better touch screens, but some people still jab at iPads.
Sill, the embedded arm rest controls must be the most frustrating and antiquated "solution" to this problem. Put a touch pad on the armrest with a retractable cover, or something — anything but the idiotic circa 80s atari controller on the retractible vacuum cleaner cord!
Regarding a standardization process for electronics, that already exists. Right now the FAA allows an airline to certify any piece of electronic equipment (to my knowledge), provided that every single version of the device (think all iPhone models) is tested with every single plane they run. With no passengers. Thus a carrier has to fly every plane they have with a specific device on board just to certify it, which is cost prohibitive.
The bit about taking the safety demonstration out of the cabin is not quite so simple. The author suggests a sort of "driver's license" for planes, so that a person only has to learn about the safety features and procedures once. Unfortunately, there are many different planes out there, and the safety features might be substantially different from one plane to another. (Is there a slide? Is the seat cushion your flotation device, or is there something under the seat? Is there an exit in the back?) One would need more standardization among airplanes before one can do away with repeated safety demonstrations entirely.
I don't understand that complaint about the safety instructions being a "waste of time and energy for the passenger". If you know the content, just do something else. I pay even cursory attention to them maybe one flight out of 20.
I just get insulted that they think I don't know how to operate a belt buckle or that I care about what can be used to float when I am dead because the pilot smashed the plane into the atlantic.
Now if they told me how to operate the ejection seat or how to best overcome a muslim hijacker...
Another problem in the airline industry is pricing stability. current prices have been climbing over the last few years and pricing has always been confusing. I think there are several possible algorithm and economic models that could be leveraged to solve pricing on the fuel side, and on the consumer ticket side.
Stable prices means that consumers and airlines can both plan better.
For consumers, it means confidence in buying a ticket.
For airlines, it means predictable revenue, and costs, which should add to the market cap of the companies.
What looks confusing has a lot of science and math backing it up. The procedure is known as yield management (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yield_management#Airlines) and the idea behind it is selling as many seats on a plane as expensively as possible. Since nothing is going stale quicker then unsold airline seat when the doors close they rather sell you a seat for 200$ instead of asking 2K and having an unsold seat.
In a nutshell: An airplane cabin is segmented into a number of classes. There can be a dozen, or even more classes, even though you only see economy, business and maybe first.
Each class gets allocated a number of seats and the actual booking class can have more, or less restrictions attached to it (for example: refunding, or changing the ticket, mandatory Saturday night stay, minimum duration of stay, etc).
The more flexibility you require the more expensive the ticket becomes.
Even though it looks very confusing from a passenger perspective and prices can fluctuate on an hourly basis, depending on the number of seats available for a specific sub class, the concept makes a lot of sense from an airline's perspective.
This is kinda my point the pricing is based on old maximums. Today the pricing could have a consumer centric model priced around arrival performance vs. ticket refund-ability and other sub classes.
Algorithms are in fact used by airline revenue management departments for perfecting consumer ticket price discrimination. Which is a good thing for the leisure traveller, as their tickets are "subsidized" by people buying more flexible etc. business fares.
Many good ideas. They need to be hold against regulations, and maybe even regulations need to be hold against realities of today. Standardization is the principal idea, and I think definitely help cutting the cost for manufacturers and airlines and hopefully find its way into the ticket price.
A loaded cabin may also lead to better survival of passengers in case of a eminent fatal crash. It can be ejected, or like mars rover landing it could have inflated ballons and chute to reduce the impact.
I'm not sure he takes in to account the best thing about SLF (Self Loading Freight), which is the fact they are self loading. This leads to a great cost reduction in many cases, but as always, its a few arseholes that go and ruin it for the majority.
The other thing is he failed to take in to account SLFs are a bunch of whinging little things, most mil transports use backwards facing seating, as its much safer in certain disaster scenarios. Apparently, the airlines say, SLF don't like it.
I wonder how many more would hate been in a box, shifted sideways, up and down etc. Planes have a nice tendancy to only ever glide, in fact most airlines have strick limits on the number of degrees of pitch/bank that a pilot can use under normal circumstances.
Honestly, even with a more comfortable in-air experience and a streamlined check-in and check-out process, the fact is that air travel will always involve being crammed inside an airtight container with a few hundred other people coping with boredom, cramped muscles, and screaming babies.
For me the best thing solution is to avoid it all.
I'm not saying "stop flying" I'm saying: knock me unconscious until I reach my destination! Then I don't have to worry about the annoying passenger next to me, the crappy food, the primitive climate control, the foggy, greasy screen on the buggy entertainment system, the harassed and overworked flight attendants, that smell coming out of the washroom, whether my overhead luggage is getting crushed by the massive duty free bag someone jammed on top of it, etc. etc. etc.
This is a design concept submitted to for the 2012 James Dyson Awards. Unfortunately this design takes up more floorspace than the existing cabin layout, so they would need to iterate on the design before an airline will consider it.
The suggestion "Containerize the airline industry" is wrong on so many levels. First of all every air port in the world would have to install new equipment. That would take money and time. Secondly every airline would have to buy new planes. Thirdly it ignores the reality that container ships are bot like airplanes. Airplanes have ventilation, electronics and structural requirements that ships don't have.
What about the huge cost of keeping a fleet of planes modern? It must be difficult to run an airline, with petrol prices varying and customers expecting rock-bottom fares.
One thing that interests me is the idea that battery and capacitor technology will improve enough that kerosene powered planes will become obsolete.
Disrupting the airline industry takes a lot of cash. It's going to take more than some pie-in-the-sky cabin concept.
Let's get realistic about what the industry really needs in order to make flying an enjoyable experience. It's no coincidence that the new American Airlines logo looks like Greyhound's. =p
It would be very unwise to make flying more attractive as long as the planes are injecting fossil CO2 straight into the upper atmosphere. This makes the emissions 2-4x more potent greenhouse gases than CO2 emitted from the ground.
We should be in a hurry to implement disincentives for air travel.
I'm all for paying more in the interest of environmental protection, but again: is there a viable alternative?
Is reversing the democratization of international travel, which I would argue has been, proportionally, much more of a force for good economically and socially than it has been an instrument of environmental destruction, really the best answer we've got?
I did a similar redesign with 3 row height bunks taking inspiration from submarines allowing economy passangers to sleep comfortably during long haul flights. The top two beds were foldable and the bottom row was used for seating during landing and takeoff.
I think for some long haul flights it would be nice to have rows of, say, 3-4 seats that can fold down flat into the floor. Then you can lower 3-4 hammocks hanging above each other in the same space.
this all sounds nice and neat, but reality bites back.
As per writers thoughts on Virgin.
"Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd. is set to report an annual loss of $201 million for the 2013 fiscal year and, in response, has imposed a salary freeze for the entire fiscal year, which began March 1."
Yeah, right. Airline executives actually enjoy how much they suck at their jobs. This is an industry known for volatile, extremely high prices except on, perhaps, 3 routes and terrible service, and it still needs to be bailed out, like clockwork, every 5 years or so.
It's the worst in the U.S. We get the double joy of paying Virgin prices and getting RyanAir service.
As soon as they started charging for fucking checked baggage it was obvious that, yep, these assholes just like seeing how shitty a job they can get away with. Fuckers are trolling us, that's all. They're a real-world version of this, from Louis CK (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_XiA4U_XsE#t=1m7s).
The only thing that will "reinvent" this crap-ass industry is outright obsolescence. I'd rather see work on maglev trains and in-ocean tunnels than any faith put in these assholes.
I found http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines a pretty compelling explanation about why airlines have to go to such extremes in price discrimination as to be despised by customers, and yet continually go bankrupt.
1. Containerizing passenger space.
Not a good idea, it would require a massive re-engineering effort in the structure of the cabin, since a whole tube is a much more reliable pressure vessel rather than half of one with a 90 degree angle where the floor meets the wall. You generate a ton of stress at those joints with pressurization cycles. Hard angles were in part what doomed the first generation of De Havilland Comets. You can possibly add a smaller, whole tube in the cabin area, but then you get the space of a narrow body aircraft & increase weight.
Reinforcing the rest of the structure of the aircraft if you remove the cabin area would also add in a ton of weight. We all know how a cylinder of paper can support many times its weight in compression, cut a big hole in one side and it will collapse. The survivors of Aloha Airlines Flight 243 didn't know if the floor structure of the 737 alone would be strong enough to survive a landing without having the plane break in two.
2. Meshed chairs.
The FAA requires that all aircraft chairs withstand a 16G impact in order to keep passengers safe. There's a reason why the seating is so heavy and bulky, it's to keep us safe during an accident. The seat structure absorbs most of the impact, so our spines and legs don't. Mesh chairs may be cool (both figuratively and literally), but I doubt they'll hold up to 1.5 tons of impact force (16 times the average weight of an American male, 191 lbs) without tearing.
3. Noise
The 787 is heading in partially the right direction to reduce cabin noise. Other than the air rushing by the plane, most noise is from the air conditioning units, and general vibration of the structure. Most planes use bleed air from the turbofan to pressurize the cabin. Basically you take some of the hot air from the compressor stage of the engine and send it through different parts of the plane (to the wing leading edges for de-icing as an example). A good part of this superheated air is sent to the airconditioning units which work to cool it down and direct it into the cabin. The 787 eliminates bleed air completely, and uses other means (mainly electric alternatives) for most systems. Additional insulation & physical isolation of parts that can induce vibrations into the structure also help.