Originally Posted by
n5296s
Seems to me it's a very niche-y mission (even more so than other non-airliner aircraft). Basically it works if you want to spend a long time up there without actually going anywhere. For sure such missions exist, just not many.
You have no idea what the military does, do you.
If you had spent a little while in Iraq or Afghanistan over the last 15 years, you would notice that this is almost the only thing that the military does!
Originally Posted by
n5296s
Bottom line is it cruised at 37 knots. It had about the same payload and fuel consumption per hour as a Trislander. Awful the latter may be, but it flies at about 100 knots, so fuel/passenger-mile is about three times better.
For the latest one, they talk about 48 passengers. REALLY??? The German one, which was seriously huge, carried 10, in a tiny underslung cabin.
That one may have been a bit cr@p, but google the old German zepellins and the Hindenburg....