No ETOPS

What if the ETOPS regulations that paved the way for twin-jet airliners to fly long over-water routes, and thus dominate the air travel market, were never approved? What sort of PoD would achieve this?
 

Delta Force

Banned
Trijet aircraft would probably dominate on most medium range flights, and possibly long range flights as well. There were some proposals for continued trijet and quadjet use over the Arctic in the 1990s, as aviation infrastructure and flight control training in Russia wasn't well developed.
 
What if the ETOPS regulations that paved the way for twin-jet airliners to fly long over-water routes, and thus dominate the air travel market, were never approved?
You'd see most likely see similar routes flown, just with continued production of trijets, probably, like the 727, L-1011, DC-10, or MD-11. Trijets have more complex maintenance and, as I understand it, slightly worse fuel economy than a twin, though, so it'd make intercontinental flights a hair more expensive.
What sort of PoD would achieve this?
That's the challenge--ETOPS was originally caused by concerns over the reliability and power of engines, meaning than a twin might not be capable of flying on only one engine, or that there was some risk of losing both. By the time ETOPS was phased out, that was quite obviously not a concern, and airlines were eager to reap the benefits of lower operational costs associated with twins, so they advocated for it.
 
This means that Airbus is going to fail, right? Because the A300 was a twinjet plane, which really was able to get lots of sales because of ETOPS I think...
 
This means that Airbus is going to fail, right? Because the A300 was a twinjet plane, which really was able to get lots of sales because of ETOPS I think...

No, not really. ETOPS didn't come into existence until 1985, eleven years after the A300 was introduced, yet Airbus did fine until then. The A300 was designed more for short/medium-range routes with heavy traffic (it's there in the name: an air-bus), which weren't the ones ETOPS would apply to.

Besides, Airbus was more or less explicitly a vehicle to preserve European civilian aircraft development. They weren't going to let it fail.
 

Delta Force

Banned
When did having multiple engines go from being seen as a liability to an asset? At least for takeoff, World War II pilots viewed multiple engines as presenting multiple ways for something to lead to a crash. Rather than reducing risk through redundancy, they were thought to increase risk through complexity. At some point things obviously reversed, but historically there were at least some situations where fewer engines was considered safer.
 
When did having multiple engines go from being seen as a liability to an asset? At least for takeoff, World War II pilots viewed multiple engines as presenting multiple ways for something to lead to a crash. Rather than reducing risk through redundancy, they were thought to increase risk through complexity. At some point things obviously reversed, but historically there were at least some situations where fewer engines was considered safer.

The question wasn't takeoff, though, it was cruise, specifically cruise on long routes that went far away from diversion airports like over-ocean routes or over undeveloped areas like the Amazon rainforest. Piston engines weren't reliable enough for two engines to be safe on those routes, which was agreed on from an early date even if formal rules weren't promulgated until the 1950s.
 
I thought ETOPS existed prior to 85. The difference was that they operated no further than 60 mins from a diversion field on a single engine. What changed was that the time went up to 120min then 180, 240 and some modern aircraft such as the A350 up to 370 mins, this allowed airlines to operate over longer routes mainly trans-pacific using twins.

A number of aircraft such as DC10 and Tristar often shut down the tail mounted engine for fuel economy reasons.
 
I thought ETOPS existed prior to 85. The difference was that they operated no further than 60 mins from a diversion field on a single engine. What changed was that the time went up to 120min then 180, 240 and some modern aircraft such as the A350 up to 370 mins, this allowed airlines to operate over longer routes mainly trans-pacific using twins.

Trans-atlantic too (really the main market, especially early on). ETOPS, however, specifically refers to the greater-than-sixty-minutes rules (after all, it stands for Extended-range Twin-engine Operational Standards), not the older sixty-minute limit.
 
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