41–50 of 64 posts
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I'd love to visit Australia and SE Asia but am hesitant with those long flights. I'd probably be fine with layflat seats but those are well beyond what I'd ever consider paying for an airline ticket.
Many of colleagues do this all the time, usually via the Middle East. I did it before; it sucks but with enough gin tonic and melatonin it goes by in with too much pain.
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I'd love to visit Australia and SE Asia but am hesitant with those long flights. I'd probably be fine with layflat seats but those are well beyond what I'd ever consider paying for an airline ticket.
I've traveled UK to Australia a few times. Not nonstop, but with stops in SE Asia, basically 2x13 hours plus a few hours airport time. It sucks, but you get over it because how else are you going to get there? If you don't suffer blood clots or something, it isn't really actively dangerous.
That sounds like pure torture
> flight times of up to 22 hours Making flight connections is never fun, but this sounds absolutely brutal.
What are the economics of connecting flights? I'd imagine that max flight time isn't the only factor; hubs allow people to move around via connecting flights in a way that might not be economically acceptable if all flights were direct.
Although they could also run intermittently to different places. Like London/Sydney on Monday, London/Melbourne on Tuesday... Which one brings in more money? I really have no idea. If you do it like this you can serve more people with direct flights, but they can't pick any day they want. I was once on a scenic long-distance train for some reason that didn't run every day due to low usage — Wellington to Auckland, I think? Normally you'd fly.
> In addition, a new galley air cooling system will also be certified, which features lighter and more efficient refrigeration units for very long flights. I wonder how they work.. considering outside air is way below freezing ar cruising altitude, I guess radiators? Could the refrigerant be brought close to the plane's skin to cool it?
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You're still cutting a take off and landing so I can't imagine it'd be too hard to break even for flights where this increased capacity is helpful.
Not only do take-offs spend large amounts of fuel; the fact of a landing and the servicing and refueling in the airport also cost the airlines. Not having to land but instead having to carry some extra fuel while the engines work in their most efficient mode, and the air drag is low at a high altitude, should make airlines money. Else they won't try that :)
So even if you only care about carbon emissions, it can still make sense to skip the stop even if it causes slightly more total fuel burn.
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may not be worth the aero hit. Kinda like running a/c in a car at high speeds instead of opening the windows. Not sure where the crossover point is. In my dreams, my ultra-advanced car would open the windows when braking to get two benefits in one.
>In my dreams, my ultra-advanced car would open the windows when braking to get two benefits in one. Or use those triangular vent windows / wing windows, as seen on old trucks and classic cars. https://www.fastlanecars.com/blog/wing-windows-history-and-c... https://www.ccjdigital.com/trucks/article/15749837/the-story... You could quickly flip it open with a servo when braking, controlled by a differential thermostat…
When cruising (most of the flight), smooth aerodynamics are extremely important, and you wouldn't mess them up just to keep the galley fridge cold. Example: whenever a plane has the landing gear out it burns 2-3 times as much fuel, because that's just how much it costs to not be smooth. That's why they retract the landing gear almost the moment the plane leaves the ground, and why a plane with its landing gear stuck has to return home (despite not being a serious emergency).
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At altitude you can reject heat straight to the aircraft skin. Some designs run an internal heat sink on the ground and during climb, watch altitude, and only switch on the skin-exchanger coolant pump once outside is cold enough to cool the loop for free. The reason it stays a refrigeration unit and not just vents is the ground case. Gate on a hot day, doors open, no ram air, warm soak: that's the worst case, and whe…
Presenting raw LLM output as your own writing in a human-to-human context is rude and antisocial, not to mention incredibly transparent.
There are a lot of commas.
> In addition, a new galley air cooling system will also be certified, which features lighter and more efficient refrigeration units for very long flights. I wonder how they work.. considering outside air is way below freezing ar cruising altitude, I guess radiators? Could the refrigerant be brought close to the plane's skin to cool it?
At altitude you can reject heat straight to the aircraft skin. Some designs run an internal heat sink on the ground and during climb, watch altitude, and only switch on the skin-exchanger coolant pump once outside is cold enough to cool the loop for free. The reason it stays a refrigeration unit and not just vents is the ground case. Gate on a hot day, doors open, no ram air, warm soak: that's the worst case, and whe…