A personal ode to the Boeing 747 | Hacker News Reader

A personal ode to the Boeing 747

theverge.com

48 pointsTomte46 comments

How can someone write an ode to the 747 while simultaneously decrying "vile, predatory capitalism"?

I suggest anyone wanting to read something non-hypocrytical about the 747 instead try https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/travel/747-airplane-je..., for some informed commentary that isn't half diatribe.

/end ironic rant

I was rolling my eyes at the subtitle. The article devolved from there.

Some great (sometimes indirect) information on why the 747 and to a lesser extent the A380 are being phased out, from my new favorite YouTube channel, Wendover Productions:

The Economics of Long-Haul Flights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlIdzF1_b5M

ETOPS: Explained https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSxSgbNQi-g

Politics of Aviation / 5 Freedoms of Aviation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thqbjA2DC-E

> Concorde was eventually undone by its excessive noise and fuel consumption, limited capacity, and destructive high-altitude emissions.

This is incorrect. “High altitude emissions” had zero to do with Concorde being retired.

https://www.quora.com/Why-was-the-Concorde-retired-in-2003-d...

It might seem that the author of this piece has a problem with facts — there seems to be a willingness to distort the truth to fit some kind of leftist agenda.

"A new fleet of supersonic aircraft with similar particle emissions would significantly increase stratospheric aerosol surface areas and may increase ozone loss above that expected for NOx emissions alone." [0]

[1] http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1995-10-08/news/1995281022_...

That the Concorde polluted isn’t disputed — what I am referring too is the reason for the airplane’s grounding. Pollution wasn’t the reason the Concorde stopped flying.

Seems unlikely to me that a new fleet of supersonic aircraft would use engines from a bomber that first flew in 1952[1]. I am assuming that modern engines would not have "similar particle emissions". For example, I would imagine that they wouldn't have afterburners.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Vulcan

Allow me to respond to the downvotes: the author decries the “race to the bottom” due to deregulation and “vile predatory capitalism,” yet that very capitalism is what made air travel so affordable to the masses. In 1974, very few families could afford to fly. Now pretty much anyone in the middle classes can afford it. That “vile” capitalism created competition and that resulted in being able to fly round trip from Denver to Frankfurt for roughly $1000 while in the halcyon 70s, such a trip would have been far more cost prohibitive. It wasn’t regulation that made flying something almost everyone could afford — it was the very capitalism the author seems to abhor.

As far as the downvotes — it’s clear the author has some leftist agenda — first of all lying about the reasons for the ending of Concorde — it wasn’t some environmental nonsense about emissions or noise or even fuel costs — it had to do with maintenance availability. That is just a fact. Next complaining about capitalism that enabled the masses to travel while attempting to evoke Hunter S Thompson when describing drinking champagne on the upper deck. How ironic that the author savors the exclusivity of the upper deck, while complaining about capitalism that creates the opportunity to actually make money to buy an upper deck ticket.

To be even more picky it is somehow elitist leftism.

Anyway, the Concorde had not exactly a backlog of reservations when it was retired, besides whatever technical and environmental reasons, the same "capitalism" that allowed it to exist seemingly didn't produce enough people willing to pay fares of around US$ 12,000 for a US/EU round trip[1].

And most probably Mr.Berk would have appreciated the champagne with the caviar (which is a no-no[2]).

[1] roughly, around the time it was retired, 2003:

https://www.airspacemag.com/flight-today/my-ride-on-the-conc...

[2] same article, page 2:

https://www.airspacemag.com/flight-today/my-ride-on-the-conc...

Concorde was of course a state-subsidised vanity project sponsored by arch-socialist Tony Benn: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/oct/17/theairlinei...

(Entertaining little bit of Sir Humphrey in a quote there: ""Secretary of state, we should tell you that Whitehall agreed before the election that whoever won, the Concorde would be cancelled."")

> Now pretty much anyone in the middle classes can afford it.

https://www.npr.org/2016/07/07/484941939/a-portrait-of-ameri...

Quote from NPR "Since economists first began keeping track in 1970, every decade has ended with fewer people in the middle class than at the start. And 2015 was the first year on record when Americans in the middle-income bracket did not make up the majority of the country"

Middle class can afford it now you say and yet the middle class is shrinking and the poor class is growing. Are you ignoring the inequality and shrinking of the middle class when you make such a statement?

> deregulation and consolidation

If there were many air lines and now they are consolidated to fewer is this not anti competition? Or is the market going to fix it by less regulation?

Here's the graph from the 1970s to 2010s: http://psf_blog.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/201...

Do you believe in the concept of natural monopoly Ihttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly)? If so what's your solution to that?

edit/update:

Something in the back of my mind was skeptical about your claim of airflight being cheaper without source. It seems more like you're making a statement base on feeling.

I googled:

Note here's one article that stated that it went up on average by a bit adjusting for inflation:

http://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-tips/airlines-airport...

Another article argued that the statistics ignore the outlandish carry baggage checkin that in fact it is more costly today to fly than it is in the 70s.

https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/blog/seat2B/2014/05/...

>Note here's one article that stated that it went up on average by a bit adjusting for inflation:

And here is one that is saying exactly the opposite:

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-air...

And another one (US domestic): https://www.enotrans.org/etl-material/is-air-travel-becoming...

And here another nice graph (typical NY/London) : https://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch3en/conc3en/airfar...

In USSR everybody could fly also, it's not like this was made possible by capitalism.

This is not an ode.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ode

An ode is not a tribute, it is a particular form of verse. I guess people get confused because the word sounds like "owed", or something.

An "ode to X" means a "praise to X", because odes in ancient Greece were used to praise gods, heroes, etc.

My favorite is "ode to a goldfish", a particularly concise verse:

    My

    wet

    pet

I don’t know why you are being down-voted but here’s my modest +1 of moral support for having made a factual statement and paid the bitter price for it...

Because complaints about rigorous/academic meanings of words don't really add substance to the discussion.

I quite like precise use of vocabulary, it makes it so much easier to ensure everybody intends the same concepts if what one expects to be conveyed is the dictionary definitions. Apparently the OP felt so too. I think he’s justified in wishing to draw attention to that.

It's a well known phrase used appropriately in the article. The OP suggested that the author got "confused" and misused the word, which is clearly not the case.

Besides "tribute" is also used non-literally today, the original meaning is very different

The world "ode" is rarely used literally - it's usually used in a metaphorical sense.

As the OP points out, there’s the word ’tribute’ to denote what was apparently the author’s original intention.

I disagree with the implicit suggestion that using a word like 'ode' metaphorically is undesirable. It's certainly popular and not novel, in any case.

My dad was always proud of being the main guy on the ramp for the 747 Houston to Honolulu and Los Angeles flights. He used to tell everyone about how the wingspan was longer than the Wright Brothers first flight. Apparently it's true, but I had always thought he made it up.

> At the heart of the upper deck was, thus, a kind of louche and tragic nihilism.

Also aerodynamics.

I think there may be a future for 747 and even the A380 in the domestic routes in Indian and China. I can only wonder at the huge amounts of passenger traffic once a larger percentage of the population comes to dependent upon air travel.

China southern runs a 380 between Guangzhou and Beijing. But it won’t last forever: china is building lots of new airports to take pressure off its big city airports and provide more direct routes; while the big city airports are expanding and aiming to provide more frequent service betterment handled by smaller planes.

Plus the large network of high-speed rail that AFAIK will be a direct competitor for internal flights in China.

True, though HSR is often more expensive than flights in my experience. Also, china rail makes buying a ticket from a remote location obscenely difficult (like buying Guangzhou to Beijing from Beijing), and so often it’s just much easier to get a flight on ctrip (hence why I had to take that 380!).

Not willingly. The rumor is, none of the Chinese carriers wanted to buy 380, but the Chinese govt sorta promised the French govt. In the end China Southern agreed to take them, in exchange for some hot international routes like Beijing to Paris. By the time the planes were delivered, the official who promised the routes were long gone, and the new one refused to honor the deal. In the end, the poor carrier is stuck with those huge planes and no suitable routes to fly them. They are apparently bleeding money.

To be fair, the plane was full when I was on it, but maybe that was because of the cancelled flights (one of them ours) that were rebooked onto it.

Not with the current models. They were constructed for long haul flights and frequent takeoffs and landings on rather short haul routes will result in a faster degradation of the airframe, meaning safety concerns and high maintenance costs. That’s why Bowing came up with the 787-3 (which was cancelled)

Boeing used to make a specialized 747SR model optimized for domestic short haul routes in Japan. It had a stronger structure and lower fuel capacity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747#747SR

They're long-haul airliners though. They're not economic to run on short routes. For the routes you're describing, running more A320s (or similar) would be much more economic and would be better for passengers since flights would depart more often, giving more flexibility in travel plans.

There isn't a jet in existence that's optimized for ultra-high capacity and short routes, and there isn't a market for one either. You can count on one hand the number of airports in the world that are seriously limited by number of arrival/departure pairs. Heathrow is #1.

depending on what short routes means, airports are generally out of the way, and there are ridiculous check-ins and screenings that just makes them less feasible. you can add +1 hour for each.

Say I want to fly from Philadelphia to NYC, add more than 2 hours for getting to/from airports, and check-ins/screenings. But I can take a train in an hour and a half, and that drops me off in manhatan. I didnt even need to get de-belted, de-shoed, and throw away my sun screen and water bottle. And I wont be bumped off my seat because some senator doesn't like to book tickets in a timely manner.

humiliations aside, when I use to fly pittsburgh/philadelphia, i found that the train or bus was not a significant increase in time. The train/buses I could take and get off in the city centers, where as the airports added additional 2.5 hours time. but when you factored in waiting 30 minutes to get my baggage from baggage claim, time spent sitting on the runway, time having to show up early to get checked in and numerous security lines, it wasn't that much savings in time. I was paying about 300$ for 1.5-2 hour savings in time for a much more stressful experience.

A short-haul route is anything up to 1,500 km. NYC to Philly is one-tenth of that.

another ode to be is for the airbus a380 or more like a swan song. This is a marvel of engineering that will soon be put to an end cauz its not profitable.

Each time there is an aircraft where boeing can not compete technically like concorde and a380, they fight to make the market less profitable. I am not sure there are a380 buyers reading HN, but I think they should not buy boeing's lobbying. The more a380 are sold, the more profitable it is for buyers.

Looks like A380 with the max seating capacity of 853 would be significantly cheaper to operate per seat than anything out there. The current installed maximum is 615, hinting that the market is not quite there yet.

I could imagine that some airfields would soon increase their per plane landing prices as a result of crowding. That could make the A380 more profitable.

For some interesting discussion re: airport crowding, the 747, and the a380, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16014849

Airlines are pushing for more premium classes and less economy seats. 853 is all cattle class. The configuration of the A380 I flew with (LH/BA) has lots of cabin space reserved for Premium Economy, Business and First. I believe it’ll only grow more pronounced as the established carriers are fending off low cost airlines.

It's the 4 engines which gives airlines A380/747 fuel cost problems. Both fulfil relatively niche markets and are gradually being displaced by the more-efficient and flexible twin-engine A350/787 types. We're just starting to see the secondary market for A380s now which is a good indicator for its long term commercial viability.

Twins are actually overpowered compared to comparably-sized quads due to engine-out climb requirements. In terms of raw seat-km-litre they are therefore slightly less efficient.

A good example is the old A340-300 quad, often maligned for being underpowered. Now that it is mostly retired data has emerged that it was more efficient than the rival 777-200 twin.

Where twins are cheaper is in terms of capital costs and consumables, though ETOPs requirements mean you need more technicians to service a twin ( separate teams for each engine ).

I would've thought that more passengers on the same number of planes would be profitable for airports, considering how they double as shopping malls these days.

Air traffic control is difficult and gets more difficult with more planes in the pipeline. At very least we can safely assume that reputation of unsafe airfield is very unprofitable.

Indeed, but you'd think that would make airports encourage high-capacity planes - fewer planes for the same number of passengers means less pressure on air traffic control.

It's not lobbying, it's the model under which airlines operate. When airbus started to develop the A380 they assumed that hubs would become more important and airport capacity scarcer. Instead, there are more point to point connections now (mostly by low cost carriers) where A380 isn't profitable. That has helped Boeing's Dreamliner but also the A330 and A320 range. Boeing also spent some money developing the B748 and weren't successful, it's not as if their forecasts were very different.

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