Seems to me that an internal combustion engine and a prop is the same thing as what you describe, at least in results. Hydrocarbons and air in, spinning prop, water and CO2 out. Why bother with all the fuel cell mess and complexity, just use what already works, 110 Octane Low Lead Aviation Gasoline....
It's not like you could just replace a ton of batteries with your standard ramp worker, baggage thrower. It's hard enough to get them to close the doors properly, now you want them replacing batteries? Yea, you might do this, but I'm thinking the logistics of what you suggest might be a problem for a "for profit" airline.
Are airports more efficient than interstates in terms of infrastructure costs? And I read somewhere (Freakonomics?) that there are seven parking spaces per car in the U.S. Is that the same for airplanes?
Actually, there are about 5 airplanes per parking space, especially for commercial aircraft.
On 9/11 I lived near Wichita KS's airport. They have about 4 gates, but we had over 20 large aircraft parked all over the place. The parking logistics where quite something to see, but it shows that we have a lot more commercial aircraft than gates to park them at.
For light aircraft, they stay parked more than not, so the parking space to aircraft ratio is nearly 1 to 1, with there being more parking than aircraft.
Either compare flying a small plane to driving a car, or compare a huge bus to a plane.
Cessna 150's burn about 6-8 gal/hour depending on what you are doing. If you cruse at your most efficient RPM and lean the mixture, you can get about 80 MPH ground speed @ 7 gal/hour and carry 2 adults. This gets you about 11 MPG for the aircraft, or 22 Passenger miles/gal. (I may be wrong on my numbers but I'd be on the high side on fuel burn) Larger planes do better in the passenger mile and low wing aircraft with retractable gear which are more streamlined go faster on the same fuel burn and adding a constant speed prop and fuel injection gets you quite a bit more.
My point here is that aircraft are not that bad compared to say an SUV, mini-van or pickup truck in terms of fuel efficiency.
Aircraft are more efficient when the energy storage is lighter and smaller. Batteries are not lighter and smaller than liquid hydrocarbons that contains the same amount of energy. Not to mention that as you burn off liquid fuel, the aircraft weighs less and gets more efficient as a result.
So, until batteries get small enough and light enough to have the same range with the same payload, liquid hydrocarbons will be the fuel of choice. I don't think we will be at that point for a LONG time yet as we are currently pushing the limits of battery technology to do a car, where weight isn't a big deal, at least as big a deal as it is in airplanes.
Look, I'm not saying it's not *possible* only that it's not practical to do this. Sometimes it really just takes a human to actually be on site.
Effective tower controlling may be possible to do remotely in most situations, but the benefits of having a tower over just a radio is for the safety afforded by having a human verify that some pilot didn't make a mistake and taxi onto the active runway in IMC, or that pesky flock of migrating birds which are using that set of trees off to the right and left of the threshold of 23 are something to be watching out for. Then there is the deer that jumped the fence and is grazing between the taxiway and runway. Most of this is stuff that nobody can see remotely, but a guy in the tower cab could easily.
But the *real* question is if this being remote leads to better safety and is worth the major costs. A simple Unicom frequency works well for traffic avoidance, especially if you make it mandatory for pilots to announce their position and intentions. You could easily and cheaply add to that somebody on the other end who is keeping track of weather conditions and previously reported traffic but doesn't grant clearances or give out orders and add greatly to that safety. Beyond that you go to full blown tower, but I don't see all that much improvement in safety when you make that jump. I just don't think it's worth it.
I'm not sure I'd count Apollo 1 as a flight incident, there wasn't even fuel in the rest of the rocket. It was a training/simulation accident, more of a systems integration failure than a flight accident. So in my view Apollo only suffered ONE serious in flight failure and even though we nearly lost the crew, this failure only really cost the mission. As a system it's record is pretty darned good, considering how far out on the bleeding edge of technology it was in it's day.
I like this idea actually. Personally I learned to fly at an airport that had a flight service station on the field so although we didn't have a manned tower, we had almost exactly what you describe. Pilots would use the FSS advisory frequency and although they where not issuing clearances, they did provide traffic advisories and local conditions if you contacted them. They stopped short of requiring radio contact in VMC though that makes sense to me.
This "remote tower" thing sounds a bit dodgy to me anyway. There just are things that you can only do from the tower cab on location. I'd hate to see what it took to use the signal lights or dig out the binoculars to see if there's some trash on the runway if you are 70 miles away. And unless you have a LOT of traffic a tower isn't necessary or helpful.
Seems like a remote tower system might also be useful at a real airport in an emergency when the local tower is out of commission.
I don't know if this is worth it even then. You've got to be at some minimum traffic level or it doesn't matter. I've flown into and out of "uncontrolled" and "controlled" airports and unless we are talking about IMC situations and multiple parallel runways, I don't see the need for more than a Unicom frequency. About all a tower gets you is improved though put and that's only really when the airport is under IFR, well that and enforced separation between us slow guys and the jets.
I'm guessing the necessary traffic rate that makes this kind of VR system worthwhile, is darn close to the traffic rates that makes manning the tower locally a viable solution. Yea, it might be a bit cheaper on the labor side, but it's not like you have to man a tower 24/7 anyway.
So triple redundancy isn't good enough? The aircraft system that fails, then two separate electronic copies of the "how to" manual? (And lets not forget the systems knowledge of the two pilots which they are required to know to be type rated.)
I'll bet that a hard copy of the aircraft flight manual is in the cockpit anyway. It's not that heavy (compared to the bookshelf full of maps) and not that big.
Well... There are ALWAYS brain dead hypotheticals we can come up with.
Remember, we are talking about MAPS here. The loss or misplacement of a map in flight is not a life threatening event in its own right. Where it might be advisable to have separate backups for everything in an aircraft, there are just some things which are not worth the effort to worry too much about and in this case, your final line of defense is to fall back on ATC to assist you with the procedures.
I think two separate, albeit identical, sources of this information is sufficient. The chances of a dual in-flight failure is going to be quite rare, and in those cases there is a viable backup sitting at the other end of the radio. A backup path that is actually trained in how to get lost pilots and their passengers on the ground safely.
The emergency handbook for the aircraft isn't the issue here, it's the maps and approach plates which are constantly changing and must be kept current. The maps are legally required to fly IFR so it's part of the checklist before you kick the tires and light the fires you make sure you have the necessary maps and approach plates for your destination and alternates.
Yea, but the problem was discovered before the aircraft left the ground so this is not a safety issue.
I'm guessing that their solution will be to put Pilots and Copilots on different update schedules and also allow for the immediate roll back of any software updates by the user. Where I don't think having one application on one OS is necessarily all that risky, what cost them in this case was the inability for the pilots to roll back to the last version that worked right after an upgrade or grab a 'backup device" from the pilot's lounge if theirs is somehow messed up. Given that the issue is not safety but more about keeping the schedule here, I imagine that the logistical costs of their solution will be a primary consideration.
Just read and memorize the manuals so that it's not an issue.
Actually, for IFR flight the FAA regulations require that you have current approach plates in the cockpit for reference when flying IFR approaches. It's part of the "minimum equipment" required. So if you don't have them in hard or soft copy, you legally cannot fly the approach, even if you think you memorized the whole thing.
In an emergency, ATC can assist you by providing the necessary information and then authorize you to fly the approach even if you don't have the maps, but you are going to have to answer some embarrassing questions once you get on the ground. What type of questions? Well, ones that will end an ATP's career if they don't have really good answers for, and "my dog ate my maps" or "I forgot to bring them" are NOT good answers but "Both I-Pads crashed in flight!" might just be enough to keep you out of trouble.
A "no radio" device that has reasonably current copies of everything plus paper (yes, paper) copies of updated pages would weigh less than a pound and would be usage as a backup.
For further redundancy the backup should use a completely different OS.
Why all this trouble? Just test to make sure you have the maps in each of the two I-Pads, that they are current and you can access them before you kick the tires and light the fires...
This check is performed AFTER the update process is completed and the IPad is disconnected from EVERYTHING and BEFORE you push back from the gate. What happened was one or both of the redundant IPads was messed up and they couldn't get the application to run, so they stayed on the ground. Seems pretty much the safe way to do it.
Your idea, where it has merit, is pointless. Just verify that both map sources are working before flight and you are good to go. Seems perfectly safe to me to use just one operating system/application for this if you disconnect them and test to make sure you have access to what you need for the flight in question.
What I'm wondering is what would have happened had this iPad crash occurred during the flight post-takeoff. Why do they not carry the paper manuals as a backup in case this sort of thing happens?
Then.... The ground based controllers will be forced to assist the pilots in navigation to the destination and unless the weather is below VFR minimums, nothing changes for the flight. IF the destination is under IFR rules, then the flight might be forced to divert because they don't have the minimum necessary equipment to do an IFR approach (i.e. a copy of the approach plate) available.
Actually, for most of these pilots, they've flown the same route multiple times in the last few weeks anyway. Likely they know all the frequencies, airways and procedures by heart already. So the only real way anything changes is if the destination is IFR, not that they couldn't fly the approach, but that they don't legally meet the requirements to do so without the maps in hand.
Oh, yea, that junk I could only really sit though once... The best of the bunch was #2 and how that was made after the dreadfully made #1 is a testament to the draw of the franchise. After #2 it was down hill, no matter what the director. The stories where junk, the premise of each worse. About the only thing that advanced was the special effects.
BTW, my complaints about Nimoy are really "tongue in cheek" as is my critique of #4. Where it's not the best effort in the franchise, I actually liked it as a movie. And that's saying something because I was a projectionist at the time and I saw that movie multiple times a week for the bulk of it's time in theaters.
Shatner can't act OR direct though... But it happened that his single character fit his personality pretty well for the most of his career so he got by.
I don't think you fully understand this price increase thing...
It's not that I don't expect my rates to go up over time for the same service, especially if I'm not under a fixed price contract with them, I do. It's that the sales people say "We don't raise your rates like the other guys do!" when they are trying to sell you a fixed rate contract. From my experience, THAT'S NOT TRUE. They clearly raised my rates over the 6 years I wasn't under a fixed price contract, and not by just a little. We nearly tripled what we where paying for the SAME internet service over the last 3 years. So they DO raise rates when they can and what the sales force is saying is misleading at best and a boldfaced lie if you think about it from my experience.
Yea, they will happily sell you more bandwidth than you will likely ever use outside of running a speed test, but they will sell you *anything* to make more cash from you.
It's worse too if you are an established customer with them. All those advertised prices you see? GARBAGE... They DON'T apply to you as an established customer. The ad price for the services I get is $75/month and the actual price I pay is $130! How's that? Well, let's see, there is a bunch of things NOT in the advertised price. Equipment Rental $25 for a DVR set Top box, and I have two, $10 for the router, then there is the regional sports fee (because I pay for ESPN non the less) for $7, add in tax and FCC mandated fees and it's $130 or so. It's a racket, but I'm sure Verizon isn't the only provider that does this kind of thing. TWC does similar stuff too.
Then, you know what happens after your contract term is up, they do away with the service you used to pay for. I had just internet with them for years, starting at 10mbs, that plan went away eventually and I got automatically bumped up. Over time I went from $50/month to nearly double that with not nearly a double in speed. We where at $100/moth for 25/25 by the end of 6 years. However, you call them and they are all about "we don't raise your rates like the other guys!". I told one of their sales people that it as a boldfaced lie to say they don't raise rates, I'd been a customer for YEARS and they surely did raise my rates during that time, multiple times.
But what really frosted me was the "Oh the advertised rates are for NEW customers only!" line. Come on Verizon, I've been your customer for 6 years, never a late bill payment, no changes in my service, not even a technician visit to my home to fix something. You are going to give the guy up the street you don't know is really going to pay you a better deal then me? You people are NUTS..
I think they deliberately fill their storefronts with toxic twerps who score the highest on sociopathy tests.
No, they pick their sales people from the stock of minimum wage skilled who fancy themselves tech savvy and then bonus them on how much they manage to sell (up sell) customers. In the words of a famous manger, you get what you bonus. Of course they will suggest you buy MORE from them because they likely get a bonus for this. Verizon KNOWS that 75mbs is pointless, that nobody is going to flood that for very long, that you are likely only ever going to need maybe 25mbs, but that doesn't mean they won't be happy to take an extra $40/month from you so your speed testing shows 75mbps.
Verizon does seem to be well stocked with these types though. I recently spent a number of hours trying to fix my FIOS internet connection with a number of them on the phone... After beating around the "Yes, I've rebooted the router" and "No, I won't directly connect my laptop up to the internet for love or money" with multiple techs over multiple hours, it turns out that they switched my connection from PPPoE to DHCP and didn't bother to tell me to change. I don't figure the first level support guys had any clue, they just read from the cue cards and if you go off script, they are helpless.
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Seems to me that an internal combustion engine and a prop is the same thing as what you describe, at least in results. Hydrocarbons and air in, spinning prop, water and CO2 out. Why bother with all the fuel cell mess and complexity, just use what already works, 110 Octane Low Lead Aviation Gasoline....
Do you know any aircraft mechanics?
It's not like you could just replace a ton of batteries with your standard ramp worker, baggage thrower. It's hard enough to get them to close the doors properly, now you want them replacing batteries? Yea, you might do this, but I'm thinking the logistics of what you suggest might be a problem for a "for profit" airline.
Are airports more efficient than interstates in terms of infrastructure costs? And I read somewhere (Freakonomics?) that there are seven parking spaces per car in the U.S. Is that the same for airplanes?
Actually, there are about 5 airplanes per parking space, especially for commercial aircraft.
On 9/11 I lived near Wichita KS's airport. They have about 4 gates, but we had over 20 large aircraft parked all over the place. The parking logistics where quite something to see, but it shows that we have a lot more commercial aircraft than gates to park them at.
For light aircraft, they stay parked more than not, so the parking space to aircraft ratio is nearly 1 to 1, with there being more parking than aircraft.
That's mean to you buddy.... Or is that median.... (smile)
Either compare flying a small plane to driving a car, or compare a huge bus to a plane.
Cessna 150's burn about 6-8 gal/hour depending on what you are doing. If you cruse at your most efficient RPM and lean the mixture, you can get about 80 MPH ground speed @ 7 gal/hour and carry 2 adults. This gets you about 11 MPG for the aircraft, or 22 Passenger miles/gal. (I may be wrong on my numbers but I'd be on the high side on fuel burn) Larger planes do better in the passenger mile and low wing aircraft with retractable gear which are more streamlined go faster on the same fuel burn and adding a constant speed prop and fuel injection gets you quite a bit more.
My point here is that aircraft are not that bad compared to say an SUV, mini-van or pickup truck in terms of fuel efficiency.
Oh sure it is... The issue is ENERGY density.
Aircraft are more efficient when the energy storage is lighter and smaller. Batteries are not lighter and smaller than liquid hydrocarbons that contains the same amount of energy. Not to mention that as you burn off liquid fuel, the aircraft weighs less and gets more efficient as a result.
So, until batteries get small enough and light enough to have the same range with the same payload, liquid hydrocarbons will be the fuel of choice. I don't think we will be at that point for a LONG time yet as we are currently pushing the limits of battery technology to do a car, where weight isn't a big deal, at least as big a deal as it is in airplanes.
Look, I'm not saying it's not *possible* only that it's not practical to do this. Sometimes it really just takes a human to actually be on site.
Effective tower controlling may be possible to do remotely in most situations, but the benefits of having a tower over just a radio is for the safety afforded by having a human verify that some pilot didn't make a mistake and taxi onto the active runway in IMC, or that pesky flock of migrating birds which are using that set of trees off to the right and left of the threshold of 23 are something to be watching out for. Then there is the deer that jumped the fence and is grazing between the taxiway and runway. Most of this is stuff that nobody can see remotely, but a guy in the tower cab could easily.
But the *real* question is if this being remote leads to better safety and is worth the major costs. A simple Unicom frequency works well for traffic avoidance, especially if you make it mandatory for pilots to announce their position and intentions. You could easily and cheaply add to that somebody on the other end who is keeping track of weather conditions and previously reported traffic but doesn't grant clearances or give out orders and add greatly to that safety. Beyond that you go to full blown tower, but I don't see all that much improvement in safety when you make that jump. I just don't think it's worth it.
I'm not sure I'd count Apollo 1 as a flight incident, there wasn't even fuel in the rest of the rocket. It was a training/simulation accident, more of a systems integration failure than a flight accident. So in my view Apollo only suffered ONE serious in flight failure and even though we nearly lost the crew, this failure only really cost the mission. As a system it's record is pretty darned good, considering how far out on the bleeding edge of technology it was in it's day.
It was the EARNINGS numbers that tanked the share price...
The tweet was just premature because most companies release earnings AFTER the market closes.
The drop in the share price would have happened after the earnings miss anyway, so it wasn't the tweet.
I like this idea actually. Personally I learned to fly at an airport that had a flight service station on the field so although we didn't have a manned tower, we had almost exactly what you describe. Pilots would use the FSS advisory frequency and although they where not issuing clearances, they did provide traffic advisories and local conditions if you contacted them. They stopped short of requiring radio contact in VMC though that makes sense to me.
This "remote tower" thing sounds a bit dodgy to me anyway. There just are things that you can only do from the tower cab on location. I'd hate to see what it took to use the signal lights or dig out the binoculars to see if there's some trash on the runway if you are 70 miles away. And unless you have a LOT of traffic a tower isn't necessary or helpful.
Seems like a remote tower system might also be useful at a real airport in an emergency when the local tower is out of commission.
I don't know if this is worth it even then. You've got to be at some minimum traffic level or it doesn't matter. I've flown into and out of "uncontrolled" and "controlled" airports and unless we are talking about IMC situations and multiple parallel runways, I don't see the need for more than a Unicom frequency. About all a tower gets you is improved though put and that's only really when the airport is under IFR, well that and enforced separation between us slow guys and the jets.
I'm guessing the necessary traffic rate that makes this kind of VR system worthwhile, is darn close to the traffic rates that makes manning the tower locally a viable solution. Yea, it might be a bit cheaper on the labor side, but it's not like you have to man a tower 24/7 anyway.
So triple redundancy isn't good enough? The aircraft system that fails, then two separate electronic copies of the "how to" manual? (And lets not forget the systems knowledge of the two pilots which they are required to know to be type rated.)
I'll bet that a hard copy of the aircraft flight manual is in the cockpit anyway. It's not that heavy (compared to the bookshelf full of maps) and not that big.
Well... There are ALWAYS brain dead hypotheticals we can come up with.
Remember, we are talking about MAPS here. The loss or misplacement of a map in flight is not a life threatening event in its own right. Where it might be advisable to have separate backups for everything in an aircraft, there are just some things which are not worth the effort to worry too much about and in this case, your final line of defense is to fall back on ATC to assist you with the procedures.
I think two separate, albeit identical, sources of this information is sufficient. The chances of a dual in-flight failure is going to be quite rare, and in those cases there is a viable backup sitting at the other end of the radio. A backup path that is actually trained in how to get lost pilots and their passengers on the ground safely.
The emergency handbook for the aircraft isn't the issue here, it's the maps and approach plates which are constantly changing and must be kept current. The maps are legally required to fly IFR so it's part of the checklist before you kick the tires and light the fires you make sure you have the necessary maps and approach plates for your destination and alternates.
Yea, but the problem was discovered before the aircraft left the ground so this is not a safety issue.
I'm guessing that their solution will be to put Pilots and Copilots on different update schedules and also allow for the immediate roll back of any software updates by the user. Where I don't think having one application on one OS is necessarily all that risky, what cost them in this case was the inability for the pilots to roll back to the last version that worked right after an upgrade or grab a 'backup device" from the pilot's lounge if theirs is somehow messed up. Given that the issue is not safety but more about keeping the schedule here, I imagine that the logistical costs of their solution will be a primary consideration.
Just read and memorize the manuals so that it's not an issue.
Actually, for IFR flight the FAA regulations require that you have current approach plates in the cockpit for reference when flying IFR approaches. It's part of the "minimum equipment" required. So if you don't have them in hard or soft copy, you legally cannot fly the approach, even if you think you memorized the whole thing.
In an emergency, ATC can assist you by providing the necessary information and then authorize you to fly the approach even if you don't have the maps, but you are going to have to answer some embarrassing questions once you get on the ground. What type of questions? Well, ones that will end an ATP's career if they don't have really good answers for, and "my dog ate my maps" or "I forgot to bring them" are NOT good answers but "Both I-Pads crashed in flight!" might just be enough to keep you out of trouble.
A "no radio" device that has reasonably current copies of everything plus paper (yes, paper) copies of updated pages would weigh less than a pound and would be usage as a backup.
For further redundancy the backup should use a completely different OS.
Why all this trouble? Just test to make sure you have the maps in each of the two I-Pads, that they are current and you can access them before you kick the tires and light the fires...
This check is performed AFTER the update process is completed and the IPad is disconnected from EVERYTHING and BEFORE you push back from the gate. What happened was one or both of the redundant IPads was messed up and they couldn't get the application to run, so they stayed on the ground. Seems pretty much the safe way to do it.
Your idea, where it has merit, is pointless. Just verify that both map sources are working before flight and you are good to go. Seems perfectly safe to me to use just one operating system/application for this if you disconnect them and test to make sure you have access to what you need for the flight in question.
What I'm wondering is what would have happened had this iPad crash occurred during the flight post-takeoff. Why do they not carry the paper manuals as a backup in case this sort of thing happens?
Then.... The ground based controllers will be forced to assist the pilots in navigation to the destination and unless the weather is below VFR minimums, nothing changes for the flight. IF the destination is under IFR rules, then the flight might be forced to divert because they don't have the minimum necessary equipment to do an IFR approach (i.e. a copy of the approach plate) available.
Actually, for most of these pilots, they've flown the same route multiple times in the last few weeks anyway. Likely they know all the frequencies, airways and procedures by heart already. So the only real way anything changes is if the destination is IFR, not that they couldn't fly the approach, but that they don't legally meet the requirements to do so without the maps in hand.
They DO have a backup...
Both pilots carry IDENTICAL I-Pads.... What amazes me is that nobody thought of the single point of failure, the application the I-Pads run.. OOPS..
There were ST movies AFTER 4?
Oh, yea, that junk I could only really sit though once... The best of the bunch was #2 and how that was made after the dreadfully made #1 is a testament to the draw of the franchise. After #2 it was down hill, no matter what the director. The stories where junk, the premise of each worse. About the only thing that advanced was the special effects.
BTW, my complaints about Nimoy are really "tongue in cheek" as is my critique of #4. Where it's not the best effort in the franchise, I actually liked it as a movie. And that's saying something because I was a projectionist at the time and I saw that movie multiple times a week for the bulk of it's time in theaters.
Shatner can't act OR direct though... But it happened that his single character fit his personality pretty well for the most of his career so he got by.
Maybe after my current contract is up I'll give them the heave ho...
I hear that the "customer retention" people have a bit more authority, but they are also a whole lot more pushy by the sounds of the news reports..
I didn't like the first one, or the second, so we are not comparing apples to apples...
I don't think you fully understand this price increase thing...
It's not that I don't expect my rates to go up over time for the same service, especially if I'm not under a fixed price contract with them, I do. It's that the sales people say "We don't raise your rates like the other guys do!" when they are trying to sell you a fixed rate contract. From my experience, THAT'S NOT TRUE. They clearly raised my rates over the 6 years I wasn't under a fixed price contract, and not by just a little. We nearly tripled what we where paying for the SAME internet service over the last 3 years. So they DO raise rates when they can and what the sales force is saying is misleading at best and a boldfaced lie if you think about it from my experience.
Yea, they will happily sell you more bandwidth than you will likely ever use outside of running a speed test, but they will sell you *anything* to make more cash from you.
It's worse too if you are an established customer with them. All those advertised prices you see? GARBAGE... They DON'T apply to you as an established customer. The ad price for the services I get is $75/month and the actual price I pay is $130! How's that? Well, let's see, there is a bunch of things NOT in the advertised price. Equipment Rental $25 for a DVR set Top box, and I have two, $10 for the router, then there is the regional sports fee (because I pay for ESPN non the less) for $7, add in tax and FCC mandated fees and it's $130 or so. It's a racket, but I'm sure Verizon isn't the only provider that does this kind of thing. TWC does similar stuff too.
Then, you know what happens after your contract term is up, they do away with the service you used to pay for. I had just internet with them for years, starting at 10mbs, that plan went away eventually and I got automatically bumped up. Over time I went from $50/month to nearly double that with not nearly a double in speed. We where at $100/moth for 25/25 by the end of 6 years. However, you call them and they are all about "we don't raise your rates like the other guys!". I told one of their sales people that it as a boldfaced lie to say they don't raise rates, I'd been a customer for YEARS and they surely did raise my rates during that time, multiple times.
But what really frosted me was the "Oh the advertised rates are for NEW customers only!" line. Come on Verizon, I've been your customer for 6 years, never a late bill payment, no changes in my service, not even a technician visit to my home to fix something. You are going to give the guy up the street you don't know is really going to pay you a better deal then me? You people are NUTS..
I think they deliberately fill their storefronts with toxic twerps who score the highest on sociopathy tests.
No, they pick their sales people from the stock of minimum wage skilled who fancy themselves tech savvy and then bonus them on how much they manage to sell (up sell) customers. In the words of a famous manger, you get what you bonus. Of course they will suggest you buy MORE from them because they likely get a bonus for this. Verizon KNOWS that 75mbs is pointless, that nobody is going to flood that for very long, that you are likely only ever going to need maybe 25mbs, but that doesn't mean they won't be happy to take an extra $40/month from you so your speed testing shows 75mbps.
Verizon does seem to be well stocked with these types though. I recently spent a number of hours trying to fix my FIOS internet connection with a number of them on the phone... After beating around the "Yes, I've rebooted the router" and "No, I won't directly connect my laptop up to the internet for love or money" with multiple techs over multiple hours, it turns out that they switched my connection from PPPoE to DHCP and didn't bother to tell me to change. I don't figure the first level support guys had any clue, they just read from the cue cards and if you go off script, they are helpless.