The Aircraft-Size PARADOX!

why does it seem like single aisle aircraft are getting bigger and bigger for every new generation and why are long-haul aircraft going in the other direction in some of my previous videos I've talked about the Advent of revolutionary new technologies like hydrogen new airframe designs and new awesome engines like the CFM rise as these new technologies are on their way in they are forcing Aviation to adapt to a new reality and we're already seeing some of that playing out the question is what comes next stay tuned I'm sure you have already noticed that some of the more popular aircraft designs out there particularly the single aisle ones seems to be getting longer and longer every time that they're updated and the Boeing 737 family is probably the most obvious example of that in the original 727 generation the one we pilot software referred to as the jurassics the 737 could typically fit around 130 people inside the cabin then came the 737-400 which was the most popular variant of the classic generation and it could squeeze in around 170 people after the classics came the Next Generation family which I normally fly and in the most popular sub-variant of that generation the 737-800 Boeing managed to squeeze in 189 passengers the latest iteration of the 737 family is of course the Maxis which mostly mirrors the 737 NG in capacity except that it also includes the max 10 which can fit as many as 230 passengers inside of it this means that the latest biggest version of the 737 can fit 100 more passengers than the first one could but the 737 isn't the only example of this type of growth happening within the single aisle aircraft the Airbus A320 family hasn't grown beyond the originally planned a321 well well at least not yet but the first generation of the A320 which supported 186 or even fewer seats used to be the most popular model among the airlines selling around twice as well as larger Legacy a321 did but now something has definitely changed because the a321 Neo is now easily outselling both the a319 and the A320 Neo combined and by the way even though it has the same cabin length as the old model Airbus has recently reconfigured the a321 Neo to fit as many as 240 seats instead of the original 230. this Market shift away from the A320 and towards the a321 Neo shows a substantial capacitor growth appetite among the Airlines and if you look at the smaller Airbus a319 well it's hardly getting any sales at all and Airbus didn't even bother to make a Neo version of the smallest variant the A318 baby boss now it should be mentioned that this gradual aircraft growth tendency isn't really a new thing we also saw that happening in older designs like the dc-9 which evolved into the md-80 family and then finally into the Boeing 717 and at the bigger end of the single Island scale Boeing introduced the 757-200 in the early 1980s and then they followed it up with the much longer flying pencil 757-300 around two decades later now you'll be excused for thinking that whatever is causing this gradual enlargement of the single Isle aircraft would also start to affect the larger three Nile Jets but no it hasn't if anything for the past two or three decades at least it seems to actually go in the opposite way I have done a lot of videos about why the 747 Queen of the skies and the giant Airbus A380 have been both discontinued and this flight away from the super jumbos seems to be at least for now continuing the 747s haven't been used by any main US carriers for many years by now and no U.S airline ever have ordered a single Airbus A380 but it should be mentioned here that Boeing did enlarge the triple seven into the triple 7x but they did that primarily to replace the even bigger 747 so that's actually a move away from Big to small and not the other way around now one huge reason for this shift away from the larger to the smaller white but this involves the airlines shift from The Hub and spoke to the point-to-point operating model that's also something that I've discussed in some previous videos but as the name implies an airline using the Hub and spoke model relies on one or possibly a few big Hub airports which they then can connect with smaller satellite airports to move their passengers around Qatar Airways and Emirates are great examples of Airlines who are still using this model but they are getting fewer and fewer in numbers with the Hub and spoke model since the big hubs will only have a limited number of runways they can also only allow a limited number of takeoffs and landings every day so big aircraft is a must in order to increase passenger capacity on the other hand the point-to-point model is a bit more well Dynamic again as the name suggests this is a model where smaller airports even geographically far from each other are connected directly by the airlines without having to move through any hub this means that the aircraft movements can be spread out and therefore smaller more economical twin engine aircraft can be used at higher frequencies there are obviously more variations and factors to consider in these models depending on the kind of network that each airline has but generally speaking over time the airlines who haven't got a geographically excellent Hub as their home base have been shifting more and more towards the point-to-point model so why is that then and what has that got to do with the single aisles getting bigger well one big reason is that passengers actually prefer this model It generally means fewer or even no connecting flights and for the airline this model can have some Financial benefits in terms of aircraft efficiency and also by avoiding the often humongous landing and handling fees at the big hubs but to make the point-to-point model work properly the industry needed to make a few changes particularly in the aircraft design basically instead of flying long distances with huge Jets like the A380 or the 747 they now needed smaller wide bodies like the Boeing 787 and the Airbus a350 to do basically the same thing with Airbus introducing the a321 XLR we can now also expect to see some single aisle yets operating these extreme long-haul routes and everyone can have their own opinion about whether or not that is a good thing or not I'll leave that up to you guys so that explains why bigger long-haul aircraft are getting smaller but why are short and medium-hole aircraft getting bigger and bigger than and how much bigger can these single aircraft actually get well I'll tell you the answer to both of those questions after this as I'm sure you know it can be really hard to find the best deals on flights car rental and hotels nowadays but there are actually some hacks out there and to show you one let me introduce you to today's sponsor nordvpn know what is a travel companion that not only helps you to keep your data safe and secure but can also help to save real money on your bookings and how do they do that well Airlines use something called Dynamic 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money-back guarantee now let's continue it turns out that there are actually a number of reasons why aircraft used in short and medium Hall flights have been growing over time perhaps the most obvious reason is the ever-growing demand for this type of travel and that's also what's driving the now looming pilot shortage in fact they are kind of connected which I'll explain soon but there is also a practical and perhaps a little bit less obvious reason why manufacturers are now making our planes longer and longer and that's just pure technological progress as time goes by technological advances have meant that increasing aircraft size and weight have gone from being impossible to actually becoming possible for already existing designs like the 737 on the Airbus A320 the first and probably the biggest reason for this becoming possible is the progress in engine technology the two pratham Whitney jt8 Deltas fitted to the early versions of the 727-200 had literally half of the trust outputs that the CFM leap one Bravos have which the 77 Max uses and obviously if you can now hang engines with much more trust available under the wings it would be really wasteful to not try to also squeeze in more passengers inside of the cabin the existing engine designs out there are actually also getting incrementally better as time goes by because of more data that the engineers can Harvest from the engines as they're being used on Route and they can use that data to optimize and tweak them to become better other technological advancements that has made this aircraft growth possible involve improvements in aerodynamic knowledge which has created better wings and better high lift devices like flaps and who can help existing Wings to cope with lifting more weight and from an airline's perspective carrying more passengers in an aircraft of the same footprint is obviously a great thing from a cost perspective if you think about it for a given number of passengers using bigger Jets will mean that an airline would need to pay or even to find fewer Crews and since the engines are getting more efficient they would also have to pay less Fuel per passenger on top of that it also means that the airline would need fewer airport slots which can become pretty important especially if they're operating into really busy airports so if the airlines wanted this growth to continue then the next question obviously becomes is there an upper limit to this how big can these single Island aircraft actually get well other than some variants of the old Douglas dc-8 the longest single aisle aircraft ever made is the 757-300 which is 54.4 meters or just over 178 feet long now to be honest that's already a bit too long for a number of reasons first of all with that length and size the wingspan needs to be so wide that the 757 can't operate from the smaller and cheaper gate that the 737 and A320 can you typically can't be wider than 36 meters for that this also means that the airlines operating the 757 will have to pay higher handling fees when they're doing so and the second thing have you ever been on a flight where everyone seems to wait until they reach their own row before they start removing their backpacks and jackets while everyone else behind them is waiting well that's kind of the curse of a single Island aircraft and it's bad enough on the 737-800 with 189 seats but remember the 757-300 had 275 or even as many as 280 seats so you can do the maths there boarding and D boarding times with these type of large single aisle aircraft can actually be a bit of a nightmare and quick turnaround times is really important for keeping the efficiency high in short and medium Hall operations remember the aircraft is only making money whilst it's in the air keeping this in mind it's maybe not surprising that Boeing only made 55 of these super long 757-300s that's opposed over 900 of the shorter 757 200 not including the Freighters so this means that if Airbus are Boeing wants to introduce a new aircraft for short medium Hall and that aircraft needs to be bigger than the 77 Max 10 or the a321 Neo well then they'll have to make its cabin wider not longer now the idea of using twin Isle aircraft for short all is not exactly new in the 1980s Boeing was working on a project called the 7j7 which was going to be the replacement for the 727 and possibly even the 737 the most notable thing of that aircraft design was probably the use of open fan engines whose history and possible future I've talked about before here on the channel but another really interesting feature of the 7j7 was that it was actually a wide body cabin it went through a few different design iterations but in the end it had a fuse a lot of width of 188 inches or 4.78 meters as John ostrowor explains in the excellent air current this width would have made the 7j7 only about 10 inches or 25 centimeters narrower than a 767 but with the same 232 economy seat layout the Boeing started different layouts extensively looking at how width and the number of aisles affected the boarding and the boarding times but ultimately the 7j7 was shelled for a couple of different reasons which likely deserves its own video but if Boeing wants to launch an aircraft today using a similar cross-section as the 7j7 had well then they would quickly run into some really serious problems remember what I'm talking about here is the prospect of a new twin Nile aircraft which would be made to replace the single aisle 737 family that would mean that this hypothetical twin Nile aircraft would need to be as efficient or probably even more efficient than the current 737 Maxes are because otherwise what's really the point the problem with that when it comes to design with a large enough diameter to be a twin isle is that it will likely produce just too much drag for that to happen or would it what if such an aircraft was designed with a fuselage that had an elliptical cross section instead of a round one so that it would be much wider than it would be tall now many aircraft fuselages aren't completely round but the problem with having a fuselage with the pronounced elliptical cross section is the potential for excess metal fatigue due to the bending moments of the structure that occurs when it goes through the pressurization and depressurization Cycles the 7j7 would have had a round cylindrical fuselage and it would have made use of a clever new aluminum lithium alloy the plans also included cool features like a modern cockpit possibly with fly by wire and side sticks but that's a different story now all of this was very impressive especially considering that the 7j7 was being designed already back in the 1980s now that type of aluminum lithium alloy that they were planning to use are actually used today in the fuselage of the Airbus a220 and Boeing is also finally introducing them for the first time at least At Large Scale with the Boeing triple 7x but while it has some great properties aluminum lithium is still a metal alloy prone to fatigue so they couldn't really use that if they wanted to make a true elliptical fuselage but if someone like Boeing was actually really looking at the prospect of building a three Nile short and medium Hall Airline today well then they would probably be looking at making it out of Composites which is much less prone to fatigue and could definitely be used for a more creative fuselage shape this is a topic that Scott Hamilton and Bjorn Pham have explored extensively inside of liham news which by the way I wholeheartedly recommend that you check out if you're into very detailed Aviation topics they are truly awesome the recent liham news I've been looking at these ideas is because for some time now it seems like Boeing has actually been studying alternative concepts for their future aircraft and that's not just for their new mid-sized airplane or anime which was expected to replace the 757-767 and if they are looking at that they might actually be looking at something as unconventional as this Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun has actually said that the company isn't really interested in simply developing a niche aircraft to compete solely with the Airbus a321 XLR no when Boeing finally launches a new aircraft he says that it will be far wider reaching than that but remember there are plans for the new mid-sized airplane was also a twin Isle aircraft so there is some opportunity here to come up with a new multi-role design that could possibly be used for both short medium and long-haul flights now Bjorn firm is currently running through a really detailed series of articles about the way different fuselage shapes and other design factors affect different kinds of drag in this series he also explains other considerations for the fuselage shape and the cross section like for example the amount of cargo and the size of cargo containers that elliptical or round fuselages will allow which is obviously very important economical aspects for any future design and when we're on the subject of containers another future development that could possibly also favor larger diameter fusel Orchards even for short and medium-hull aircraft is hydrogen propulsion as most of you know hydrogen contains a lot of energy by weight but it only has a fraction of the density of other fuels that means that an aircraft using hydrogen either as a fuel cell or as fuel for the jet engines would need a lot of volume to store it there are also a lot more factors to consider here for example the possible need for folding wings for a three null aircraft to fit into the same Gates as the 737s and the Airbus a320s do Boeing certainly have a lot of possible design choices to make if they choose to go down the wide body route now I've talked a lot about Boeing so far and that's obviously because everyone is trying to guess what their combing plans are but what about Airbus well as I've explained before their Superior Financial position means that they should be able to follow or even Leap Frog Boeing in developing an all-new aircraft design if they choose to do so but interestingly here Airbus might already have something up their sleeve as an intermediate solution to counter a wide-body Boeing contender and that's the Airbus A330 Neo you see when Airbus still believe that four engine jets would rule Supreme for long-haul they first made the A340 to fit that role and then they created the A330 for shorter distances the A340 never did very well commercially but in some parts of Asia the A330 has actually been in use for many years of medium Hall flights lasting around three to four hours and now Airbus is actively pursuing this role for the new A330 Neo by reinforcing its landing gear and generally adapting it to better handle the demands of frequent Cycles of course the A330 can still fly Long Haul if needed but in most cases the newer a350 is now a much better fit for that role however for medium Hall the A330 Neo would only be a temporary solution and it would only suit some Airline since it's just too big to fit in the kind of gates Airlines normally use for short and medium Hall but in some really busy airports with few available slots it certainly might be a great interim solution finally if we're looking into the future there's also a possibility that the complexity of the infrastructure needed for future hydrogen fuel will again concentrate the flights around a smaller number of airports if this is the case this movement towards wide body feeder aircraft might have to be accelerated as hydrogen is only likely to be able to be used for short and medium Hall operations at least in the beginning long-haul aircraft will continue to use fossil fuel or saf for the foreseeable future but this new one hopefully Greener Aviation future might well be the Catalyst for these short medium-hole wide bodies to finally become a viable reality what do you think I would love to hear your opinions in the comment section below now check out any of these videos next and consider buying a t-shirt if you want to support the channel if you want to do live Hangouts with me and become part of my real Inner Circle well then join my fabulous patreon crew if you join above the ten dollars per month tier you will also get premium access to both my apps have an absolutely fantastic day and I'll see you next time bye

Channel: Mentour Now!

Views: 291,670

Keywords: Boeing, Airbus, Mentour PIlot, Mentour Now, Aviatiojn Industry, Boeing 757, Boeing 737 MAX, Mentour Pilot crash, Pilot life, Btreaking news, Aviation Industry, Boeing 747, Airbus A380, Airbus A350, Airbus A321, Airbus A321XLR, Fear Of Flying, Fear of flying help, Mentour Aviation, Nervous flyer, Nervous flyer help, Mentour App, Wide Body aircraft, Single isle aircraft, Narrow Body Airliner, Leeham News, The AirCurrent

Id: sr1Yr9V6zhQ

Length: 22min 2sec (1322 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 10 2023