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First flight of the Airbus A321XLR with up to 4700 NM range
- sdoering 4y agoSadly I wasn't able to watch it lift off. I enjoy watching the Airbus models, esp. the Airbus Beluga XL over Hamburg, Germany.
- KingOfCoders 4y agoSeen one for the first time in flight in RL when being to Hamburg last month. Was amazed!
- blakesterz 4y agoNot that I'm in the market, but this page has the sales pitch stuff on it, and it's pretty interesting reading: https://aircraft.airbus.com/en/aircraft/a320/a321xlr https://aircraft.airbus.com/en/aircraft/a320/a321xlr According to a few other sites they appear to cost between 130 and 140 million. Looks like they've sold some already too.
- ju-st 4y ago"London" https://imgur.com/a/RSVdLjM https://imgur.com/a/RSVdLjM
- londons_explore 4y agoOn the maps of where it can fly, are they using some super advanced model to give the 'odd' shapes (for example the delhi one, which is totally not just a circle projected onto the globe and then reprojected onto a map)? Or is it just an artist impression who was given a list of cities and has drawn a dotted line around them?
- VBprogrammer 4y agoI wondered from your question whether it was accounting for ETOPS requirements but it doesn't look like it.
- masklinn 4y ago> Or is it just an artist impression who was given a list of cities and has drawn a dotted line around them? Seems to be the latter, some cities aren't even in the right place (London is set in french Brittany, Rome seems to be adrift in the Thyrrenian sea).
- bismuthcrystal 4y agoRather purchase an EUV machine for that price.
- AnonMO 4y agoWhy would an airliner purchase and EUV machine? Unless you know something I don’t. Delta 4nm process node coming to a chip near you.
- zinekeller 4y agoFunnily of all airline companies out there you picked Delta which is not to be confused with Delta Electronics (https://www.deltaww.com/ https://www.deltaww.com/), so a Delta 4nm node is not that far-fetched.
- kristianp 4y agoOne EUV machine does not a fab make.
- stephen_g 4y agoYes, TSMC are apparantly investing $12 billion [1] to build and maintain their new Arizona fab over ~10 years. So yeah, costs a bit more than the $200m EUV machine! 1. https://www.eenewseurope.com/en/tsmc-confirms-5nm-fab-in-us/ https://www.eenewseurope.com/en/tsmc-confirms-5nm-fab-in-us/
- cycomanic 4y agoBut that can only do 4nm, so the airbus is like 1000x better
- rektide 4y agoFuel capacity 40,000 liters of fuel. At a range of 8,700 km, that'd be 0.217km/l or .511mi/g. An Airbus A350-LM, a widebody/higher-capacity plane that can go 15,000 km, has 141,000 liters of fuel. That'd be 0.106km/l, or .249mi/g. I suspect these figures are a bit off, as I doubt "range" == "all fuel burned". But it's at least somewhat representative.
- ddalex 4y agoNormally for airliners you compare fuel burn per distance per passenger. At 200 passengers you'd get 2.3 l per 100km per passenger (100 miles per gallon per passenger), in line with a small sedan car.
- rektide 4y agoPersonally I think it's useful to use scales & dimensions people already know & grasp. I'm having a hard time combining all the factors you're smooshing together. I haven't figured out- 2.3 what per 100km per passenger? I haven't run any numbers to run that have gotten me 2.3 anythings. Using my figure, if you want to get per-passenger, if we say it seats 200, we can multiply .217km/l by (1 plane/200 persons) and get 43.4 km/l / person, or, 102mpg/p, which I think most people will understand reasonably intuitively, compared to what they already know. This is indeed a rather impressive claim. It makes me wonder why they don't just call this thing the 100mpg plane, if true.
- davidgay 4y ago> Personally I think it's useful to use scales & dimensions people already know & grasp. To the best of my knowledge, most of the world reports transport efficiency in l/100km. And the poster even nicely included the US-centric mpg value for people in not-most-of-the-world.
- foepys 4y agoSome (most?) regions compare fuel efficiency by how much fuel in liters is needed to travel 100km. English speaking countries (or at least most of them) usually do it the other way around and compare the distance one can travel by fuel unit.
- colordrops 4y agoCouldn't figure out what the big deal is from the link, so after some further research, this is what's going on. The A321XLR is a smaller more efficient plane that will make long range but less frequently travelled routes profitable without the need for transfers on bigger planes.
- iso1631 4y ago4700nm would allows flights from say London to 49 states and all of Canada (as well as the middle east and most of Africa etc) http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?R=4700nm+%40lhr&MS=wls&MP=o&DU=mi http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?R=4700nm+%40lhr&MS=wls&MP=o&DU=mi That said there's already a 4000nm range, and narrow body flights of that distance aren't that common.
- chrisseaton 4y ago> 4700nm would allows flights from say London to 49 states and all of Canada (as well as the middle east and most of Africa etc) Isn't that already possible? An ancient 747 can do up to 5300.
- walski 4y agoYes, but a 747 wide-body is a lot larger and hence needs a hub-and-spoke route network to fill these giant planes at a hub to make the flight viable economically. The narrow-body A321 can be filled with ~200 passengers (compared to almost 500 pax capacity for a 747-800) at many smaller airports, making long-distance point-to-point routes from these airports viable.
- masklinn 4y agoFWIW long-range widebodies are not necessarily jumbos, a 787-9 seats under 300, and an A350-900ULR has 315 passengers. Assuming the XLR can be configured like a regular 321neo, it can reach 244 passengers in single-class configuration, and 200 in dual-class.
- Stevvo 4y agoI have no desire to cross the Atlantic in a narrow-body. It's inhumane to have that many people locked together in a thin metal tube for that long.
- erddfre3423 4y agoI don't see what impact the aircraft being narrow-body has on travel comfort. It's all about seat pitch IMO, and that can be bad also in a wide-body.
- yread 4y agoThe cabin is a bit wider than standard a320. They advertise 18" wide seats. If they are 32" apart that's ok. It can even fit lie flat business class seats. And if it means flying direct instead of changing planes in a busy overcrowded airport and having to lose time waiting and queuing (and "saving the planet") that's pretty appealing
- version_five 4y ago> And if it means flying direct instead of changing planes in a busy overcrowded airport and having to lose time waiting and queuing (and "saving the planet") that's pretty appealing That is the most important thing imo. A 6 or 7 hour flight to your destination is so much better that the same length to Frankfurt or wherever and then waiting and taking another 1-2 hour flight somewhere. Most of the pain with flying, except maybe of ultra long-haul, is what goes on before take off and after landing. If you only have to go though that once, it's a big deal. Plus, I dont see any material difference in comfort between modern wide and narrow body, other than your less likely to be stuck in a middle seat on a narrow plane and they board faster.
- exidy 4y agoThe A321 is not wider than an A320. The A320 family[1] comes in a variety of sizes and configurations to support different profiles, but they are all variations in length, fuel capacity and MTOW. Making a plane longer is relatively straightforward, just insert additional sections before or after the wings. Making a plane wider you may as well design a whole new aeroplane. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A320_family#Specifications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A320_family#Specificati...
- cinntaile 4y agoNM = nautical miles or what?
- bee_rider 4y agoThe main alternative I can think of is nanometers, which they probably wouldn't write an article to brag about. :)
- olyjohn 4y agoProbably not Newton-Meters either. That's a lot of torque.
- bombcar 4y agoYep, most airplane things are measured in nautical miles.
- Ekaros 4y agoStuck in the past of nautical miles and knots for distance and speed. And feet for height. Not that nautical miles don't make sense for navigation on maps.
- S201 4y agoUh huh... feet is more useful for aviation than meters. 1,000ft is a comfortable vertical separation between planes and it's a nice round number instead of ~300m. As for nautical miles and knots, one nautical mile is equal to one minute of latitude making for easier navigation when you're traveling over significant distances of the planet. I'd hardly call it stuck in the past but rather the right units for the application at hand.
- tourist2d 4y agoSo by that logic we should mix metric and imperial whenever it rounds to a nice number. Pretty awful argument.
- ginko 4y agohttps://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/f-wxlr/#2c40a673 https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/f-wxlr/#2c40a673
- rossdavidh 4y ago4700*10^-9 meters seems like an extraordinarily small range for an airplane.
- erikig 4y agoAfter a huge investment in the hub-and-spoke uber-plane (the A380), this plane feels like a hopeful departure, especially for people that travel to the less popular ends of the earth that have to take 3 hops to get there.
- trhway 4y agoLooks like it uses PW1000G which in its most efficient version is 12:1 bypass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_PW1000G#Ultra_high-bypass_version https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_PW1000G#Ultr... The Trent 1000 on 787 is 10:1.
- glaucon 4y agoWonder how emissions/seat/km on representative routes differs from the larger planes? Given that landing and takeoff is particularly bad for emissions if you're avoiding a change of planes I guess that might be a win ? Not as big a win as not flying but better ... Given that the first example they give is NYC-LON it's a question that interests me.
- bobthepanda 4y agothe issue with big planes is that they're more efficient if you fill them up. with 747 or 380 sized planes that was always a tenuous proposition at best. if it's not full it's still burning the fuel to lug its heavy big self around.
- red369 4y agoI find the other trade off (against the extra fuel consumption from each takeoff and climb) interesting. Additional fuel is consumed to carry the weight of the additional fuel required for a longer range (and so that is recursive). For example, under the Weight - Flight Distance heading of the Fuel Economy in Aircraft Wikipedia page, it notes that for trips above 3000 NM, it is more efficient for a 777-300 to make a stop for refuelling. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft
- wly_cdgr 4y agoGot excited briefly cos I misread "first flight" as "fist fight"
- devoutsalsa 4y ago/r/planeswitharms
- ewokone 4y agoWhy isn't there a flight between Buenos Aires and cape town? Who is planning this routes?
- Glawen 4y agoAs nearly all airplane are now twin jet, you need to respect the ETOPS rating of your aircraft, which is the time the aircraft can fly with one engine down before landing. That's why the transatlantic or transpacific routes are not direct and go over small islands
- stephen_g 4y agoThe ones quoted are just examples. The airlines will decide the actual routes.
- wiz21c 4y agoIs it going to use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_biofuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_biofuel ?
- erddfre3423 4y agoThese could become quite popular for tourist charter flights as they should have a decent range even when packed to max capacity. Plenty of long-haul tourist flights from Europe to Africa, South-East Asia and Caribbean could use something like this. Not the most comfortable way of travel perhaps, but people won't care if the price is right.