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Old 08-06-2015, 09:13 AM
 
Location: London
4,709 posts, read 5,029,785 times
Reputation: 2154

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Back to the future.

"Researchers at Imperial College London have developed a design concept for a transatlantic flying boat that would move the low-level flight paths of large aircraft offshore, away from heavily populated areas."

"The 2,000-passenger model is about 80m long and 20m high from bottom to tip, and has a 160m span. The Airbus A380 is 72.72m long and 24.09m high and has a wingspan of 79.75m."

"Meanwhile, major aerospace organisations are looking into the possibilities of the aircraft configurations the Imperial team has been studying, including NASA and Boeing, which collaborated on an experimental blended wing body called the X-48."

Plane sailing: the seaplane of the future? | In-depth | The Engineer

This all makes sense. Water is everywhere and these are perfect for trans-Atlantic flights. Any problems and the plane glides onto the water. Having the airports in estuaries and bays means the runways are sort of free and as long as you like.

Planes have to be moved away from overflying land and cities for clear environmental and safety reasons.
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Old 08-08-2015, 07:04 AM
 
5,718 posts, read 7,213,201 times
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Baltimore Harbor had a seaplane facility in the late 1930's-early '40's, when the Martin company was building them a few miles away at their Middle River factory. A couple of their Mars flying boats are still in use as firefighters. It might be interesting to see something like that happening again.
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Old 08-10-2015, 02:58 AM
 
Location: USA
23 posts, read 19,676 times
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In 1947, Hughes H-4 Hercules made first flight. This model is seaplane with length: 66.65 m and wingspan: 97.54 m. This model was designed by Hughes Aircraft company. I guess that this model is the largest seaplane ever built.
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Old 08-10-2015, 09:11 AM
 
Location: Denver, CO
1,421 posts, read 1,626,085 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by John-UK View Post

This all makes sense. Water is everywhere and these are perfect for trans-Atlantic flights. Any problems and the plane glides onto the water. Having the airports in estuaries and bays means the runways are sort of free and as long as you like.

Planes have to be moved away from overflying land and cities for clear environmental and safety reasons.
I don't see any water in Denver, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, London, Paris, Frankfort, Madrid. And NYC downtown doesn't have a straight stretch of water large enough to accommodate, requiring travel far out of downtown. etc.

Structure for a seaplane of that size would be unsustainable. Extremely heavy to be able to withstand the forces of landing at that weight and much, much harder to do maintenance and inspections. In addition, getting a plane of that size up to take off speed would be near impossible with the drag the water creates -- or you'd need very, very powerful turbofans, using a lot of fuel in the process.

The design is just a researcher's pipe dream that will never come to fruition.
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Old 08-10-2015, 09:30 AM
 
5,718 posts, read 7,213,201 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by caverunner17 View Post
I don't see any water in Denver, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, London, Paris, Frankfort, Madrid. And NYC downtown doesn't have a straight stretch of water large enough to accommodate, requiring travel far out of downtown. etc.


Not sure about the other cities mentioned, but Philadelphia has a navy yard, and those ships aren't all in drydocks. London has a rather large river, and NYC is surrounded by water, enough that an airplane made a successful forced landing in the Hudson a few years ago.

I believe that all three had seaplane facilities in operation during the time that flying boats were in regular operation.
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Old 08-10-2015, 09:35 AM
 
Location: Berwick, Penna.
16,214 posts, read 11,260,290 times
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A few minor refinements to a tried-but-discarded technology is not a mandate for major change. There is a very large gap between the pages of Popular Science (or whatever) and what can be readily adapted to the needs of a mass market.
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Old 08-10-2015, 09:44 AM
 
Location: Denver, CO
1,421 posts, read 1,626,085 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by P47P47 View Post
Not sure about the other cities mentioned, but Philadelphia has a navy yard, and those ships aren't all in drydocks. London has a rather large river, and NYC is surrounded by water, enough that an airplane made a successful forced landing in the Hudson a few years ago.

I believe that all three had seaplane facilities in operation during the time that flying boats were in regular operation.
True, but you'd need multiple strips of uninterrupted water that was 2-3 miles long that cannot have any other floating vessel traffic.

London has too many bridges and the open water is around 35-40 miles to the east of downtown vs 10 for Heathrow. I'd bet that NYC's waters are extremely busy as well, even if it was closer to the ocean with infrastructure.
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Old 08-10-2015, 11:38 AM
 
Location: Type 0.73 Kardashev
11,110 posts, read 9,744,781 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by John-UK View Post
Back to the future.

"Researchers at Imperial College London have developed a design concept for a transatlantic flying boat that would move the low-level flight paths of large aircraft offshore, away from heavily populated areas."

"The 2,000-passenger model is about 80m long and 20m high from bottom to tip, and has a 160m span. The Airbus A380 is 72.72m long and 24.09m high and has a wingspan of 79.75m."

"Meanwhile, major aerospace organisations are looking into the possibilities of the aircraft configurations the Imperial team has been studying, including NASA and Boeing, which collaborated on an experimental blended wing body called the X-48."

Plane sailing: the seaplane of the future? | In-depth | The Engineer
Yet another example of a speculative article that will prompt legions of future assertions that "Science promised that by 2020 we'd have huge flying boats crisscrossing the Atlantic!" when, of course, science said no such thing - the occasion futurist writer merely said such things.

Quote:
This all makes sense. Water is everywhere and these are perfect for trans-Atlantic flights. Any problems and the plane glides onto the water. Having the airports in estuaries and bays means the runways are sort of free and as long as you like.

Planes have to be moved away from overflying land and cities for clear environmental and safety reasons.
The fact that so many of the world's airports aren't near suitable water for landings will mean that every one of these craft purchased by an airline can never be put into service on a flight to any of those airports - that right there significant decreases the utility and thus value of such craft. No - rivers, even large ones like the Mississippi and the Ganges and the Danube, are not going to suffice for the flight volume of a major airport. And as for places like Chicago? Sorry - 3000 flights per day (the combined total of O'Hare and Midway) landing and taking off from Lake Michigan isn't going to make anyone happy, and the environmental 'benefit' of putting that many flying boats just off the piers and beaches and boardwalks is, shall we say, dubious.

This will be become a reality about the time we can all head to the airport in our flying jetpacks.
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Old 08-10-2015, 12:10 PM
 
14,612 posts, read 17,341,553 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by John-UK View Post
Planes have to be moved away from overflying land and cities for clear environmental and safety reasons.
I want to say that commercial transportation does not like variables. But, of course, you deal with variables all the time like snowstorms, ice storms, etc. But even a 5-10 miles commute via waterway under the Verrazano Narrows bridge to the open ocean brings in a whole new set of variables. Too many social media stories of people throwing up in rough weather, and you have a massive public relations problem.

Presumably you would land near Folkestone, UK so that you could take trains to London, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels and Cologne. It wouldn't hole much appeal to businessmen, so you would aim for the tourist market. I think it is important to point out that airlines have limited interest in the all tourist plane. It has taken a decade until Emirates is configuring an A380 with only two classes of seats in order to surpass 600 seats in one plane.

Of course people talk about it all the time. Air Austral ordered 2 A380's on 15 January 2009 and announced they would put the maximum number of seats permitted under FAA (853 seats) providing low cost vacation flights from Paris to the island of Réunion. But in the past 6-7 years, they have backed off on this plan as too risky.

But I don't want to dismiss the idea out of hand. I maintain that LAX will need another runway soon. Perhaps a runway in the ocean surrounded by floating breakwaters where the planes are towed to a pier would work to sustain the airport through the 21st century.

But the general observation that water is plentiful and runways are scarce, expensive, and noisy is not exactly a revelation. It is the equivalent of saying that overhead viaducts above freeways are the perfect place to build intercity rail. Everyone knows it for 50 years, but for many reasons no one has ever acted on it.
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Old 08-10-2015, 12:40 PM
 
Location: Billings, MT
9,885 posts, read 10,906,080 times
Reputation: 14180
A long time ago, the United States Navy tried a Jet Powered Seaplane, the P6M.
It didn't work, and never went into production.
When the last P5M was retired, the Navy dropped seaplanes for good.
Jet engines don't like seawater, and there is never any guarantee that the surface will be calm when it is time to land. In a true seaplane, landing on the runway is NOT an option!
In an amphibian (such as the Goose or the Albatross or the Catalina), yes, a runway landing is possible.
The huge 8 engine (R4360s) Hughes flying boat (H-4 Hercules, or "Spruce Goose") made ONE flight; never got higher than 70 feet, and lasted about a mile. Howard landed it, and it never flew again.
Pan Am flew the Clippers over the Pacific for a few years. 12 were built by Boeing, the last one was retired in 1946.
I wonder why there has never been an effort to revive commercial seaplane flights?
Why doesn't the Navy have any seaplanes or amphibians?
Maybe there is a lesson there...
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