Airplane design
Civil aircraft design seems to have remained pretty static since after the introduction of the comet. Basically you have a tube with a couple of wings. The luggage goes in the hold, and the passengers sit on top.
It seems to me that this model does not best suite modern air travel. Whenever I travel on short haul flights, the majority of people carry all their luggage in the overhead locker. This leads to people running out of storage straight away, and the cargo bay mostly empty. I heard Ryanair are going to charge people for baggage handling in the future. Add this to the fact that baggage often goes astray, requires extra time to check in and pick up, and generally causes disquiet leads me to think we need a new paradigm for aircraft
I propose designing a bigger body for future aircraft - this is already starting to happen, with proposed batwing designs, but actually nothing so radical is needed straight away. The fundamental change that is required is the refitting of existing aircraft to allow people to keep their luggage with them. Reducing the size of the cargo bay, having underseat compartments, increasing the size of the overhead locker all seem pretty obvious to me. Obviously some checkin items would be required, if you wish to carry cabin prohibited items for instance. However even those could be handled by making the passenger lock up their bag so it is unavailable to them for the flight. Alternatively such items could be seperated out by the passenger
The one problem I see with the plan is most budget airlines use handme down planes, so design changes may be do costly to implement. However, they must now be quite vocal lobbists to the aircraft manufacturers, and also many of the most lucrative routes would probably stand to gain the most.
Moving the burden of baggage handling into the passenger's hands would save millions in unnecessary administration and breakage, and probably please most passengers into the bargin.
Seems like a classic case of if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Well, if I were a budding Howard Hughes, I'd take the punt on the refitting business. Passengers now use planes much closer to buses than cruise liners. Its time the aviation industry woke up to that fact.
It seems to me that this model does not best suite modern air travel. Whenever I travel on short haul flights, the majority of people carry all their luggage in the overhead locker. This leads to people running out of storage straight away, and the cargo bay mostly empty. I heard Ryanair are going to charge people for baggage handling in the future. Add this to the fact that baggage often goes astray, requires extra time to check in and pick up, and generally causes disquiet leads me to think we need a new paradigm for aircraft
I propose designing a bigger body for future aircraft - this is already starting to happen, with proposed batwing designs, but actually nothing so radical is needed straight away. The fundamental change that is required is the refitting of existing aircraft to allow people to keep their luggage with them. Reducing the size of the cargo bay, having underseat compartments, increasing the size of the overhead locker all seem pretty obvious to me. Obviously some checkin items would be required, if you wish to carry cabin prohibited items for instance. However even those could be handled by making the passenger lock up their bag so it is unavailable to them for the flight. Alternatively such items could be seperated out by the passenger
The one problem I see with the plan is most budget airlines use handme down planes, so design changes may be do costly to implement. However, they must now be quite vocal lobbists to the aircraft manufacturers, and also many of the most lucrative routes would probably stand to gain the most.
Moving the burden of baggage handling into the passenger's hands would save millions in unnecessary administration and breakage, and probably please most passengers into the bargin.
Seems like a classic case of if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Well, if I were a budding Howard Hughes, I'd take the punt on the refitting business. Passengers now use planes much closer to buses than cruise liners. Its time the aviation industry woke up to that fact.
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