Originally Posted by
AdamFrisch
In these days when air travel is the equivalent to having your teeth drilled, I, and many with me, simply refuse to fly hub-and spoke if we can avoid it. Surprisingly often one can't avoid it, especially here in the US. It can be a nightmare. Try to get from LA to New Orleans directly and you'll end up with a paltry two flights a day. Same kind of goes for any semi-big city in the US - always geared towards antiquated hub and spoke systems.
As a Swede, I used to remember our national carrier SAS flying directly from Stockholm to LAX. First with DC-8's, the 747's and finally with DC-10's. They shut that line in the mid 80's, because they couldn't fill these huge planes that were the only ones that could do the trip.
Times have moved on techically, so why hasn't someone made smaller, ETOPS, long range airliners that can serve skinnier routes? A smaller aircraft will burn less fuel and probably be close to the fuel burn/seat as the bigger ones. Sure you get some economics of scale with a thing like the A380, but skinnier routes that no one else serve could also probably take a slightly higher price. I sure as hell would much rather pay $100-200 more to go to Edinburgh directly from NY, than routing via London or Frankfurt. The environment would also benefit by more direct routings. I dream of the day when I can fly back for christmas to my mum in Sweden without changing planes two times.
So why aren't we seeing CRJ1000's with 4-5000nm range? Surely it's just as simple as chucking 20 seats out above the wing, and sticking a fuel tank there, no? I see huge market opportunities if such an aircraft existed.
LA to Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki, Berlin, Warsaw, Prague, Copenhagen, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, Rome etc etc. One simply can't say there is no demand on these routes - it's the aircrafts that are too big. The list could be made endless.
Like a Gulfstream V you mean? 5,800nm range, 19 passengers (always go with 19 rather than 20, it's the threshold between part 23 and the much more expensive part 25 certification), selling a moderate but healthy 20 or so aeroplanes per year. Netjets seem to work their eight pretty hard.
That said, ultra-long-haul is probably heading for the past, when taxation and corporate image become increasingly related to environmental impact and a very long haul aeroplane burns so much fuel just to tanker fuel, rather than multiple 1000-3000 mile legs, which from a carbon footprint viewpoint, look a lot less bad.
G