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Reinventing the Airline Industry

judegomila.com

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Re: Reinventing the Airline Industry

#21

Post by sliverstorm »

jostmey wrote: post #15
starpilot wrote: post #14

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 c…

Agreed. It is annoying when people come up with "radical" solutions to re-vamp an industry simply by ignoring any and all technical constraints. The situation is akin to the stereotypical boss who knows nothing about computers throwing out silly ideas to his or her hired programmers.

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."

Re: Reinventing the Airline Industry

#23

Post by epmatsw »

judegomila wrote: post #8
admford wrote: post #5

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…

So some good design problems to tackle. 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 enginee…

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.

Re: Reinventing the Airline Industry

#24

Post by mbell »

starpilot wrote: post #14

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 c…

'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.

Re: Reinventing the Airline Industry

#25

Post by tomjen3 »

jsnell wrote: post #18
clintonc wrote: post #4

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 flot…

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...

Re: Reinventing the Airline Industry

#26

Post by jwr »

Yet another article I won't read, because the site takes pains to break zooming on iOS devices. No zooming, no reading.

I really can't understand why people do that. Is it arrogance (this is how my site looks like, PERIOD!)?

Re: Reinventing the Airline Industry

#27

Post by kokey »

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.

Re: Reinventing the Airline Industry

#28

Post by prodigal_erik »

michaelochurch wrote: post #10

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 check…

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.

Re: Reinventing the Airline Industry

#29

Post by michael_miller »

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).

Re: Reinventing the Airline Industry

#30

Post by drewcrawford »

michael_miller wrote: post #29

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 air…

> 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.

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