Well, well, well.
2021 is a disaster. We should be getting used to this by now.
I'm tired, not of writing, but tired of the doldrums.
I hate the A330.
There was a time when I actually liked it. that was many years ago.
It has turned from an angelic shape silhouetted in the filtered light, to an indescribable expletive over a centrefold. The sum of the inspiration I feel when I sit on one is best not described in these pages. Yet this is just an ordinary response to how much of a drab experience flying has become and then I turn around and realize that its actually a 777.
If pax can't tell what plane they are flying on, then there is a very good reason for that. They all have the same weakness. Look a lot a like, probably offering similar economics. Now that is a metric you can trust. Money.
Where is the imagination. I suppose when dealing with optimization, we always have to start from the best starting point. The entrenchment of the air travel market leaves nothing to the imagination, because there is nothing to imagine. Airlines design lousy planes. So lousy that the last great experiment in arrogant over extravagance has just humiliatingly closed its doors, doing a damage to the market that it will never recover from. The reputation of the large quad has been destroyed for good and good riddance.
Except its not true.
The numbers we see today reflecting efficiency are numbers that are for newer designs based on relatively recent ideas. The achievements of carbon fibre as applied to the twin is what is claimed as to be the ultimate 'game changer'. This is also a fat lie.
You see, the carbon fibre that were so touted about was never applied to the quads in the same way that it was applied to a twin. Lets now make a 787 out of aluminium shall we, and a 747 out of carbon fibre. Would the economics be reversed? Would the twin lag behind this time, but better yet would it equal the 787 made of the carbon fibre. And what about the Quad made of the same stuff. how much better (or worse) would it be as an airplane.
Could you take a 747's schematics and program an AI to replace as many aluminium parts as possible? What would the weight reduction be like? Would it open new doors? Has this question ever been explored? Curiously of course we know what the Answer is and its that we will never know.
Realistically of course one can see benefits for both. We can only advance carbon fibre technology by being daring enough to try new things with it, and obviously any airplane would greatly benefit from reduced empty weights. By claiming the technology to be the exclusive property of twin jets is simply saying that we have no more ideas with respect to carbon fibre is just incredible. All this body of work and not one iota of it used creatively.
Well, who would have thought that it figures.
