Airport traffic

Quote: Nareed

"Believed to have been"????

Dutch officials investigating the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 said they would release the final report into last year’s crash over eastern Ukraine that killed 298 people onboard the Boeing 777 jetliner this Tuesday.

It's a courtesy to officials to wait until final reports.

Quote: Pacomartin

It's a courtesy to officials to wait until final reports.

Until then should we retain an open mind that perhaps a completely unrelated catastrophic failure happened after it was harmlessly struck by a missile?

Quote: terapined

Just saw this spam email in my inbox
Pretty weird

Did you consider writing back and asking if he'd be open to trade for a bridge? ;)

Quote: Pacomartin

Ghazal Mohamed runs a scam

So what is his scam? Con wealthy widows into buying jumbo jets?

Quote: JimRockford

So what is his scam? Con wealthy widows into buying jumbo jets?

I'm no expert on scams, but this one seems to be the bait, not the trap. You're curious and write back for further info. "Do you really own that many airliners? Lol!"

I would like to know what happens next. It is rather bizarre. I should think an offer to sell shares in an airplane, for private travel, would be better bait.

Quote: Nareed

I'm no expert on scams, but this one seems to be the bait, not the trap.

In keeping with the "bait" metaphor, it is called the "phishing" stage in the scam. He is establishing himself as a man of resources and that he thinks you are important. At this stage there is no request being made of you so that you are more curious than scared. The story that Malaysia Airlines considered selling their A380s was widely circulated. If you did respond he would maintain the illusion and begin looking for financial information.

Changing the subject, Singapore Air announced it will try to reestablish the world's longest flight, Singapore to NYC (or Newark??) on an as yet to be delivered A-350 900 something, with extra fuel capacity.

The note I read specified the trip at 15,000+ km, give or take, and 19+ hours flight time.

Now, on first and/or business, that's bearable. On economy it seems like a hardship (funny we would deem what is, essentially, a luxury to be hardship).

Wave of the future. Today such flights are outlier, more or less. But as efficiency increases, even longer flights will be, if not the norm then at least common.

Quote: Nareed

Changing the subject, Singapore Air announced it will try to reestablish the world's longest flight, Singapore to NYC (or Newark??) on an as yet to be delivered A-350 900 something, with extra fuel capacity.

The note I read specified the trip at 15,000+ km, give or take, and 19+ hours flight time.

Now, on first and/or business, that's bearable. On economy it seems like a hardship (funny we would deem what is, essentially, a luxury to be hardship).

Wave of the future. Today such flights are outlier, more or less. But as efficiency increases, even longer flights will be, if not the norm then at least common.

The flight was Newark to Singapore (SQ 21) 15,345km 18 hr 50 min on an Airbus A340-500 28 June 2004-23 November 2013
The companion flight was 14,114 km (LAX to Singapore). At the time, Singapore airlines procured 5 A340-500 to support both routes.

Only 34 A340-500s were ever produced. At the time they were by far the commercial aircraft with the longest range with advertised ranges of 16000 to 17000 km. They were also used to fly Bangkok to NYC and LAX. The flight to Singapore had 14 cabin crew and six flight deck officers, each working four-hour shifts. The plane was configured into two classes for several years, but was finally reconfigured into one business class with only 100 seats. A full load of fuel is 590,000 US gallons, or 590 gallons for each of the 14 seats. That is over 4000 pounds of fuel per seat. It really hits home that you have to burn fuel to carry fuel for the ultra long trip.

Despite nearly a decade of this flight, Singapore air finally sold back the A340-500's to Airbus in exchange for the agreement to activate 5 of it's unused options for the A380 (starting in two years). Instead they add intermediate stops in Tokyo and Frankfurt and went back to three class configurations (also they switched from Newark to JFK).

Using their fifth freedom rights, Singapore Air now makes a much better profit on flying some customers halfway on the Pacific side (Singapore-Tokyo or Tokyo-LAX). Singapore air is not the cheapest way to fly those legs, but it is considerably more luxurious. But there is comparatively little interest in flying to the stopover in Frankfurt on the other coast. There are many options to get to Frankfurt from NYC, and most Singaporeans want to go to London or Paris.

As a result Singapore Air has been looking for the best choice out of the newer generation of planes to re-activate the nonstop to NYC, but may not reactivate the Pacific nonstop to LAX (as the Tokyo layover is very profitable).

The A340 are popular as presidential or government jets since thy are capable of such a long nonstop distance.

A340-200 (two) France
A340-200 Brunei
A340-200 Egypt
A340-313X (two) Germany
A340-500 (two)Kuwait
A340-500 Algeria
A340-600 Jordan

The A380 is supposed to be designed for a 15,700 km range, but it is never discussed as a possibility of flying nonstop to NYC. Presumably you need a lot more margin.

These are the 66 airlines around the world whose average flight distance was 1000 miles or more last year. They are target customers for the A380 sales.

Quote: Pacomartin

The flight to Singapore had 14 cabin crew and six flight deck officers, each working four-hour shifts. The plane was configured into two classes for several years, but was finally reconfigured into one business class with only 100 seats.

That must have been a very expensive flight. Business class or not, 3 flight crews are a lot (yet what else can you do?)

Quote:

A full load of fuel is 590,000 US gallons, or 590 gallons for each of the 14 seats. That is over 4000 pounds of fuel per seat. It really hits home that you have to burn fuel to carry fuel for the ultra long trip.

I wonder how much that could be reduced with inflight refueling.
Yes, I know we agreed it's not a practical idea for commercial travel, but consider how much fuel is used up on takeoff with a plane so heavily loaded, largely with fuel. If you could refuel after climbing to 15,000 ft, surely the fuel needed for takeoff would be much less. It's not practical, it won't ever happen, and the savings would be mostly, but not totally, offset by the fuel needed by the refueling tanker, but it's interesting to think about.