Originally Posted by
what next
The Airbus A400M military transport has a maximum Mach number of .72 using 8-blade turboprop engines. With this aircraft, noise and passenger comfort are no major issues, but it already comes close to the speed range of the RISE engine.
The A400M is already extremely noisy, anything more than that will start waking up the noise lobby around airports with its additional restrictions .
As to speed / cruising altitude, there are fortunately very few A400M cruising above 30.000ft , but those that fly are already creating us some capacity issues. , If this Hybrid /ac is planning to be cruising at the same altitudes as the current Jetliners, but at much lower speed, and come in big numbers to replace the A32+s , 737s and 220s, we're going to have a major capacity issue when they arrive as they will not mix well with the current fleets. Or they are going to be left below FL290 , which will probably no be that fuel effective anymore..
BTW we already had this discussion when Boeing presented its 7J7 to us.in Le Bourget decades ago..