6 ms·

I'm all in favour of more competition, and of course I get that designs are led by engineering/efficiency concerns, but it still makes me a little sad that the

I'm all in favour of more competition, and of course I get that designs are led by engineering/efficiency concerns, but it still makes me a little sad that the days of visually distinctive aircraft designs are long gone. Old-style machines like Concorde and 747 and all their predecessors can be recognized from a great distance; I'd be hard-pressed to tell this apart from an E190 even if I taxied right past it on the tarmac.

telesilla 7y ago
Maybe the other side of that right now is, higher safety given using known designs? I also was looking for something distinctive but there is also a comfort in familiarity, when it comes to air safety..
userbinator 7y ago
That's because Concorde and 747 were built with emphasis on a specific feature, in the former case speed and the latter capacity (the same reason an A380 also looks distinctive --- it's huge.)
- stan_rogers 7y ago
  The 747, in particular, was intended as a freighter - a big, empty tube into which large things could be loaded, with a crew compartment up and out of the way. The passenger configuration was meant to be a stopgap measure while the SST was in development. Then it all went horribly wrong for Boeing, and they were stuck with an enormous success that accidentally changed the face of air travel. Oh, well.
JohnWilcox 7y ago
If that makes you sad, don't look up, because all around us, even whole societies are being homogenized, ironically, by the ones who cry "moar diversity", while in reality creating nothing but muddled and polluted homogeneity. All the diverse cultures of Europe and America and all over the world really, are being erased and eradicated and stamped out through conformity at an ever increasing speed. It's a mass extinction event that people don't even have an understanding for, let alone the exponentially increased risk conformity introduces to a system that was fault tolerant and hedged against risk through localized, diverse homogeneity across the globe. It is the black swan that no one sees, in spite of it being right before our eyes ... not even only because this comment is censored by the fools on the ship heading for the cliffs.
yardie 7y ago
The current generation of passenger jets have been optimized to the point of looking similar across makers and models. High bypass turbofans, wing and body design are all similar. For me, the quickest way to distinguish a Boeing and Airbus is nose taper and cockpit windows. Everything beyond that point are not unique enough.
- a_bonobo 7y ago
  It's like convergent evolution in nature - there are only a few possible 'best' solutions, so at some point everyone uses that one. One example would be eyes in mammals and eyes in cephalopods: they are extremely similar safe for some details (the location of the blind spot is different, but it's there) even though both groups are hundreds of million of years apart!
- nine_k 7y ago
  Landing gear?
  - yardie 7y ago
    If it's deployed. Due to my partner flying for work I've seen most passenger planes from above while at the gate or in flight. Never paid attention to the landing gear except to note that it was down. But for most people when they look at a plane it's either from the front or the back. Boeing planes have a sharp tapered nose. Airbus have rounder nose with a steep incline at the cockpit window. To me, one looks like a shark and the other a dolphin. It get's complicated for the smaller, regional fleets. I know an ATR when I see it but I would have some difficulty differentiating an Embraer from a CRJ or 707.
    - zeusk 7y ago
      707 was a quadjet, you mean 717? You can tell it apart by how the engines are mounted at an angle from the body (pointing slightly upwards).
- rootusrootus 7y ago
  If you can hear them, sound differentiates them pretty effectively too. Most Airbuses haven't been fixed yet.
jillesvangurp 7y ago
This is about to get interesting again when hybrid/electric planes enable a complete rethink of how planes work and are designed. The first commercial electric planes are currently under development. Both Airbus and Boeing have some plans for about a decade from now on this front. Most of that (but not all) will be hybrid electric. Current economics are based on the notion that fuel is expensive and therefore you try to fly huge planes with lots of people because it delivers better fuel economy. This completely dominates everything in the aviation industry currently from design, logistics, to operations. The economies are such that you only fly routes where you can fill all the seats and still pay for the fuel. With electric your energy cost is a much less significant. Your main cost shift to infrastructure, cost, maintenance, etc. of the plane. If electric cars are an indication, you can expect some reduced cost there as well. So, suddenly, flying short hops with small air planes becomes cheap and feasible. So, why fly short hops with a few huge planes that cost tens of millions and burn tons of fuel when you can fly the same route with many smaller planes that you charge using solar/wind/etc. for a fraction of the cost? Changes the game completely. E.g. London-Amsterdam could be dozens/hundreds of 6-12 seater electrical planes instead of a handful of airbuses flying back and forth. Also, London City suddenly becomes more attractive because small electric planes are not so noisy. Basically on board staff becomes the limiting factor, not fuel cost. Now add autonomous flying to the mix and you solve that as well.
- rwmj 7y ago
  > E.g. London-Amsterdam could be dozens/hundreds of 6-12 seater electrical planes As long as they don't all need 2 pilots. I'd really like to see self-driving planes, must be easier than self-driving cars surely? (And, yes, I would fly in one)
  - marcinzm 7y ago
    >As long as they don't all need 2 pilots. I'd really like to see self-driving planes, must be easier than self-driving cars surely? (And, yes, I would fly in one) The issue I think is that airplane autopilots rely significantly on sensors which occasionally fail. That means self-flying planes must be able to cope with sensor failures which generally means falling back to visual cues. Self-driving cars that rely just on cameras (rather than LIDAR) are a point of debate regarding their feasibility. Planes that would have to rely on just cameras likely have the same issues.
maxxxxx 7y ago
the same is happening with cars and phones. Physics, ergonomics and supply chains lead manufacturers converge towards similar designs. There is almost no way around it once things mature. For example I was hoping that electric cars would lead to a reevaluation of the basic design of a car and we would see something new but instead electric cars look pretty much like cars with a gas engine.
- magduf 7y ago
  >For example I was hoping that electric cars would lead to a reevaluation of the basic design of a car and we would see something new but instead electric cars look pretty much like cars with a gas engine. What were you hoping for? There's only so much you can do with the basic design of a car. It needs to have crumple zones in the front and rear for safety (really old cars with radically different designs didn't have this, but they weren't safe in a crash), and a car that can't seat 4 generally won't sell, so you're not going to get anything that looks substantially different from today's cars.
twic 7y ago
The time has come for flying wings! https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/northrop-once-built-planes-that-were-just-giant-wings-1608574997 https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/northrop-once-built-planes-t... https://www.nasa.gov/topics/aeronautics/features/greener_aircraft.html https://www.nasa.gov/topics/aeronautics/features/greener_air... http://www.aeroflight.co.uk/civil/flying_wings1.htm http://www.aeroflight.co.uk/civil/flying_wings1.htm Or if you believe these nerds, a sort of flint axe with little weedy wings: http://oddjob.utias.utoronto.ca/~dwz/Miscellaneous/ReistZinggJofA2016.pdf http://oddjob.utias.utoronto.ca/~dwz/Miscellaneous/ReistZing...
- llukas 7y ago
  Unless you'd rebuild all airports for higher wingspan aircraft (ie. same process that had to be done for A380 to land but on bigger scale) - it's not happening.
mncharity 7y ago
> the days of visually distinctive aircraft designs are long gone SpaceX hopes to eventually provide business-class and other Earth2Earth service with its BFR/Starship/SuperHeavy, a two-stage (1st returns to launch site) stainless-steel rocket. The design is still in flux, and may or may not end up with enough wings to be somewhat "aircraft"-ish... rather than just a belly-flopping skydiving spacecraft with a bit of body lift and wing-like control surfaces. But it's certainly visually distinctive.

telesilla 7y ago

Maybe the other side of that right now is, higher safety given using known designs? I also was looking for something distinctive but there is also a comfort in familiarity, when it comes to air safety..

userbinator 7y ago

That's because Concorde and 747 were built with emphasis on a specific feature, in the former case speed and the latter capacity (the same reason an A380 also looks distinctive --- it's huge.)

stan_rogers 7y ago
The 747, in particular, was intended as a freighter - a big, empty tube into which large things could be loaded, with a crew compartment up and out of the way. The passenger configuration was meant to be a stopgap measure while the SST was in development. Then it all went horribly wrong for Boeing, and they were stuck with an enormous success that accidentally changed the face of air travel. Oh, well.

JohnWilcox 7y ago

If that makes you sad, don't look up, because all around us, even whole societies are being homogenized, ironically, by the ones who cry "moar diversity", while in reality creating nothing but muddled and polluted homogeneity. All the diverse cultures of Europe and America and all over the world really, are being erased and eradicated and stamped out through conformity at an ever increasing speed. It's a mass extinction event that people don't even have an understanding for, let alone the exponentially increased risk conformity introduces to a system that was fault tolerant and hedged against risk through localized, diverse homogeneity across the globe. It is the black swan that no one sees, in spite of it being right before our eyes ... not even only because this comment is censored by the fools on the ship heading for the cliffs.

yardie 7y ago

The current generation of passenger jets have been optimized to the point of looking similar across makers and models. High bypass turbofans, wing and body design are all similar. For me, the quickest way to distinguish a Boeing and Airbus is nose taper and cockpit windows. Everything beyond that point are not unique enough.

a_bonobo 7y ago
It's like convergent evolution in nature - there are only a few possible 'best' solutions, so at some point everyone uses that one. One example would be eyes in mammals and eyes in cephalopods: they are extremely similar safe for some details (the location of the blind spot is different, but it's there) even though both groups are hundreds of million of years apart!
nine_k 7y ago
Landing gear?
- yardie 7y ago
  If it's deployed. Due to my partner flying for work I've seen most passenger planes from above while at the gate or in flight. Never paid attention to the landing gear except to note that it was down. But for most people when they look at a plane it's either from the front or the back. Boeing planes have a sharp tapered nose. Airbus have rounder nose with a steep incline at the cockpit window. To me, one looks like a shark and the other a dolphin. It get's complicated for the smaller, regional fleets. I know an ATR when I see it but I would have some difficulty differentiating an Embraer from a CRJ or 707.
  - zeusk 7y ago
    707 was a quadjet, you mean 717? You can tell it apart by how the engines are mounted at an angle from the body (pointing slightly upwards).
rootusrootus 7y ago
If you can hear them, sound differentiates them pretty effectively too. Most Airbuses haven't been fixed yet.

jillesvangurp 7y ago

This is about to get interesting again when hybrid/electric planes enable a complete rethink of how planes work and are designed. The first commercial electric planes are currently under development. Both Airbus and Boeing have some plans for about a decade from now on this front. Most of that (but not all) will be hybrid electric. Current economics are based on the notion that fuel is expensive and therefore you try to fly huge planes with lots of people because it delivers better fuel economy. This completely dominates everything in the aviation industry currently from design, logistics, to operations. The economies are such that you only fly routes where you can fill all the seats and still pay for the fuel. With electric your energy cost is a much less significant. Your main cost shift to infrastructure, cost, maintenance, etc. of the plane. If electric cars are an indication, you can expect some reduced cost there as well. So, suddenly, flying short hops with small air planes becomes cheap and feasible. So, why fly short hops with a few huge planes that cost tens of millions and burn tons of fuel when you can fly the same route with many smaller planes that you charge using solar/wind/etc. for a fraction of the cost? Changes the game completely. E.g. London-Amsterdam could be dozens/hundreds of 6-12 seater electrical planes instead of a handful of airbuses flying back and forth. Also, London City suddenly becomes more attractive because small electric planes are not so noisy. Basically on board staff becomes the limiting factor, not fuel cost. Now add autonomous flying to the mix and you solve that as well.

rwmj 7y ago
> E.g. London-Amsterdam could be dozens/hundreds of 6-12 seater electrical planes As long as they don't all need 2 pilots. I'd really like to see self-driving planes, must be easier than self-driving cars surely? (And, yes, I would fly in one)
- marcinzm 7y ago
  >As long as they don't all need 2 pilots. I'd really like to see self-driving planes, must be easier than self-driving cars surely? (And, yes, I would fly in one) The issue I think is that airplane autopilots rely significantly on sensors which occasionally fail. That means self-flying planes must be able to cope with sensor failures which generally means falling back to visual cues. Self-driving cars that rely just on cameras (rather than LIDAR) are a point of debate regarding their feasibility. Planes that would have to rely on just cameras likely have the same issues.

maxxxxx 7y ago

the same is happening with cars and phones. Physics, ergonomics and supply chains lead manufacturers converge towards similar designs. There is almost no way around it once things mature. For example I was hoping that electric cars would lead to a reevaluation of the basic design of a car and we would see something new but instead electric cars look pretty much like cars with a gas engine.

magduf 7y ago
>For example I was hoping that electric cars would lead to a reevaluation of the basic design of a car and we would see something new but instead electric cars look pretty much like cars with a gas engine. What were you hoping for? There's only so much you can do with the basic design of a car. It needs to have crumple zones in the front and rear for safety (really old cars with radically different designs didn't have this, but they weren't safe in a crash), and a car that can't seat 4 generally won't sell, so you're not going to get anything that looks substantially different from today's cars.

twic 7y ago

The time has come for flying wings! https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/northrop-once-built-planes-that-were-just-giant-wings-1608574997 https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/northrop-once-built-planes-t... https://www.nasa.gov/topics/aeronautics/features/greener_aircraft.html https://www.nasa.gov/topics/aeronautics/features/greener_air... http://www.aeroflight.co.uk/civil/flying_wings1.htm http://www.aeroflight.co.uk/civil/flying_wings1.htm Or if you believe these nerds, a sort of flint axe with little weedy wings: http://oddjob.utias.utoronto.ca/~dwz/Miscellaneous/ReistZinggJofA2016.pdf http://oddjob.utias.utoronto.ca/~dwz/Miscellaneous/ReistZing...

llukas 7y ago
Unless you'd rebuild all airports for higher wingspan aircraft (ie. same process that had to be done for A380 to land but on bigger scale) - it's not happening.

mncharity 7y ago

> the days of visually distinctive aircraft designs are long gone SpaceX hopes to eventually provide business-class and other Earth2Earth service with its BFR/Starship/SuperHeavy, a two-stage (1st returns to launch site) stainless-steel rocket. The design is still in flux, and may or may not end up with enough wings to be somewhat "aircraft"-ish... rather than just a belly-flopping skydiving spacecraft with a bit of body lift and wing-like control surfaces. But it's certainly visually distinctive.