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Airbus Patent Shows Modular, Removable Aircraft Cabins (gizmag.com)
Zothecula writes: According to a recently-granted patent, Airbus is exploring the potential of creating a new breed of versatile, modular aircraft that would see detachable passenger cabins slot into a hole in an aeroplane's fuselage. The concept has the potential to revolutionize air travel, while providing significant savings for airlines by reducing the time that planes spend idle on the ground.
Well, that's one way to make there are no surviving witnesses: Drop a structural part of the airplane with the aerodynamics of a wall at a few hundred miles an hour.
The idea of detachable cabins is obvious: I've heard it discussed before.
What's distinctly not obvious is how to make it structurally sound and lightweight. The problem with detachable cabins is the attachment/detachment mechanisms introduce weight and both the plane without the cabin and the cabin itself (probably to a lesser extent) both need to be structurally sound, so one is more or less doubling up on the number of structural components.
One also has to get the detach-remove-slot-in-reattach new cabin turnaround significantly faster than what it takes to clean a plane in order to offset the inevitable extra costs. The turnaround time for cleaning short haul planes is already pretty fast.
Long haul planes have a substantially longer turnaround time, so it could help there. However, long haul flights are a bit variable in time, so if you squeeze the expected turnaround time too far, any delays will cascade as there's no buffer. Also, longer turn around times are still a small fraction of the total journey time, so even dropping it to zero wouldn't have a vast increase in the number of flights per day.
Oh and of course there's the extra ground crew needed to operate the attachment/detachment thing, versus extra crew to turnaround the plane faster.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
A rather smaller example was that Boeing tried to sell the idea of 777s with folding wing tips, so they could use then-current terminal gates (for which the 777 wingspan was too large.) Nobody took them up on it.
That idea has made a comeback with the 777X series, but with a much better design - the reason it failed before was because it added a lot of weight, as the fold was inboard of the ailerons, meaning that there had to be a complicated system for attaching and detaching the control mechanisms which was heavy. The new design is outboard of the ailerons, meaning its just dumb wing and thus the locking mechanism is a lot lighter.
Except any basic fiscal analysis of airbus's patent will reveal that it won't ever happen. They added 30% to the weight of the aircraft. That weight will lower the number of passengers which will in turn cost more to operate.
With planes going to carbon fiber as aluminum is to heavy adding weight to a plane is useless.
All patents should only be granted to actual products produced within the first 5 years of the patents life.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
So no, Airbus' patent does not try to monopolize the idea of a detachable freight compartment for planes. It tries to cover a certain method how to achieve the detachable freight compartment for planes.