AHC: Jumbo Jets Remain Common

kernals12

Banned
Another advantage of bigger planes, and the reason why Juan Trippe of PanAm wanted a jumbo jet in the first place; reduced airport congestion.
 
Have the world's biggest hubs (eg Heathrow, Schipol, JFK, LAX, Qatar, Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong) suffer from even more congestion, and raise the per plane landing fee in response. So, only bigger planes are economic.
Take a high speed train from anywhere in Western Europe to Schipol/CdG/Frankfurt, fly a 380 to Narita/Beijing/Hong Kong, take high speed rail to your destination.
 

DougM

Donor
Really I contend that a 777 IS a jumbo jet. If I am not mistaken only the 747 and A380 hold more passengers. You don’t realize it because the 777s engines are so HUGE the aircraft looks small in relation but if you see it sitting next to a 747 you realize the size of that thing.

So basically the 777 IS a jumbo jet but with only two engines.
And that is a lot more efficient then the few extra passengers that a 747 can hold. And frankly on almost all routes the A380 had more capacity then is needed.

Add in the modern ability that computers and the internet adds in and it is easy to find various routes and easy to sell them so we can make point to point easier. So these factors, the size of the big twins and the ability to sell point to point and of course the efficiency and power and dependability of modern engines just means the super twins are better then 3 or 4 engine jumbos.

Short of laws I don’t see this changing. Perhaps if an early super twin has a double engine failure and c ashes and takes everyone with it? If you have a miracle on the Hudson type thing with out the skill level of Sully and the plane goes down all hands on board?

Other then that as soon as you can build as large twin engine aircraft as we have now you really don’t need the extra size of a third or forth engine
 

kernals12

Banned
Boeing considered a trijet 747 in the 70s. It was to be shorter than the normal 747 and offer an oversized competitor to the DC-10 and L-1011.
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But they decided against it because reengineering the wings would've been costly and their goal of keeping the handling characteristics of the normal 747 proved impossible. Instead they went with a shortened 4 engine version called the SP.
But if they had done it, they could've, at a future date, easily put on larger engines, and lengthen it. Or maybe even get rid of the 3rd engine for just 2.
 

DougM

Donor
Yes you can raise the fee at a HANDFUL of airports, but only a handful. And you still are not getting around the issue that a 777 is basically a jumbo jet in all but name. You can put 450 to 550 people on a 777 and the new version will be even bigger.
A 747 does 420 to 600 depending on layout,
So a 777 is about 80% of a 747 for half the engines and is pretty much the same as moat configurations of DC-10s (399 as designed) for 2/3 as many engines. And the 777 is much less likely to blow off the rear of the fuselage and or take out the rear controls if one of its engines blow up.

So by the original definition of a jumbo jet (a 747 or DC-10) the 777 IS a jumbo jet. So congratulations the OP has reached his goal. All we need to do is get people to realize the size if a 777 and call it the jumbo jet that it actually is.
 
There are a multitude of reasons that the Jumbos are going out of style:
-efficiency:
*the more engines you have the more costly and less fuel efficient the plane is (assuming all else is the same). Plenty of planes beat both the A380 and 747 on cost per passenger per mile because of this (to correct your statement about the A340 being preferred, it didn't have great sales and ended production in 2011. I assume you meant A330 or A350)
*lack of composite materials, both designs are dated (A380 is at least a 20 year old design) so they are relatively heavy and don't have enough sales to get Airbus/Boeing to invest in significant upgrades
-Passengers prefer having multiple flights a day, so smaller airplanes with higher frequencies; this basically forces airlines to either stick Jumbos only on high demand routes or fly less which customers don't like (I know I would hate if I didn't have choice of flight time)
-no transoceanic restrictions on twin jets. That was a huge benefit to quads back in the day and one of the reasons the A340 was built with four engines. By that time, twinjet technology was good enough to fly a plane that size but it came with 4 engines since twinjets still had restrictions when it was being designed. That was removed almost right away and A340 sales immediately plummeted.

There are no market reasons to keep quadjets in service. The only way to keep them coming is to artificially force airlines to use quadjets by forcing ETOPS restrictions for long flights, but there is no practical reason to do that. Be happy that the 747 will be flying for a long time as a freighter. The closest we will likely get to an airplane that size is the 777X and that is still a decent bit smaller.
 
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I wonder how long before we see a single engined jetliner.
Never for safety reasons. Twinjets are allowed because all of them can stay airborne on one engine and reliability is good enough to assume both won't go out at once. There is no technical reason that one engine cannot make most small and some medium sized airliners take off by itself (obviously in a different position, maybe in the tail?) from a thrust perspective. The 777X engines have 105,000 lbf of thrust EACH. Each 737 engine, for example, has less than 30,000 lbf of thrust.
 
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Have the world's biggest hubs (eg Heathrow, Schipol, JFK, LAX, Qatar, Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong) suffer from even more congestion, and raise the per plane landing fee in response. So, only bigger planes are economic.
But one of the benefits of the smaller two engine planes is that they're cheap enough and low-risk enough that they can service secondary and tertiary hubs. If anything, knee-capping the primary hubs will just strengthen the position of the smaller planes.
 
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