Peter, you are right in that that's one of the most mentioned disadvantages of open rotors. I wonder if its a bit opportunistic reasoning though. For 100 years hundreds of aircraft design were developed, build and operated that way, thousands are flying around.

Is the TP400 illegal / useless? Or the Q400, ATR-72, An-70, DC7 or Conny?

f the prop is a little stronger then the ATR and the skin a bit stronger too, is there a problem?

Can anybody name the last time an aircraft was taken down by the failure of a propellor blade??

FACT.:}

Great idea IMO, doesnt seem right for B737 and A320 to be doing 20-30 minute "hops". Guzzling fuel. As the man said its the shorter routes he targets! B737 has bigger range so let it off..nobody will stand going to tenerife anyway!!Plausible idea..I would say more like over due. Could well see these coming in and out of London and big densely populated capitals.

Passengers dont know if the plane is goin Mach 0.84 or .7!Is at 10,000 feet or 40,000feet and dont know difference between props and jets. Time of landing is all that relevant to them.

The ideal solution to this problem is an aircraft with VTOL capabilities, a little like an Osprey. Maybe 50 pax or so. Take off from the centre of London, land in the centre of Paris, 1 hour door to door. No faffing about with taxiing etc, and very little airport infrastructure or space needed.

(C) Ex Cargo Clown

"Take off from the centre of London, land in the centre of Paris, 1 hour door to door. No faffing about with taxiing etc, and very little airport infrastructure or space needed."

So about a four hour journey with security etc. I don't think there is a market left for such a journey, hasn't 90% of flights been replaced by Eurostar? Similar situation with Spain, high speed train and completely replaced air travel for certain journeys. EU policy will encourage this in future.

I think that is right for some (major) city pairs.

However if we look at the 20-25 most populated cities/city areas in Europe with their 500 million inhabitants, they create hundreds of citypairs.

Take the train from London to Berlin, from Turin to Bruxelles, Milan to Amsterdam. Madrid to Manchester, it doesn't work (yet?) to get to that 10 o'clock meeting.

And those are bigger cities, dozens of <1 million places. Same in California, US and China East Coasts.

I think city to city VTOL flights have been sought after for decades and they never became profitable. The only aircraft in service capable of carrying such loads is the Boeing Osprey, it's reliability is questionable, its seat mile cost are staggering, how much it has costed during the last 25 years, nobody wants to know / be reminded of..

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...rald_Coast.JPG

EU policy is to ban this sort of thing by 2040. They intend to ban petrol cars from cities in that time scale as well. Of course this needs a major upgrade to high speed rail.

Travelling internationally so you can have a chat with colleagues is a waste of energy and its only done now because its feasible and economic.

"Great idea IMO, doesnt seem right for B737 and A320 to be doing 20-30 minute "hops". Guzzling fuel. As the man said its the shorter routes he targets! B737 has bigger range so let it off..nobody will stand going to tenerife anyway!!Plausible idea..I would say more like over due. Could well see these coming in and out of London and big densely populated capitals."

As has been discussed many times on pprune, standing up is and always will be banned on safety grounds. It will never be allowed.

When I saw this thread I wasn't sure if it was tongue and cheek or if it was serious, especially after I saw the standing passengers..

So you want to chase efficiency? Ok...

Standing passengers, no drinks, one stew, only water is offered.
Single engine, big Williams, run it out as far as trend monitoring will allow.
Engine operated on long range fuel economy, optimized for winds/alts.
Single pilot operation, UAV pilot on the ground monitoring flight.
Simple avionics. No EFIS or FMS, basic two ILS heads, GPS, steam guages.
Reduce all weight, use of composites, fast wing, no TRs, no extras

They sit.

Like on a motor cycle or scooter.

http://www.traveldebate.com/images/smallseat.jpg

or the Riddlers Revenge ;)

http://www.coastergallery.com/sf/Chang1.jpg

Interestingly Boeing features an even more radical engine configuration.

An "open rotor N3". Boeing, not being engine maker, freely combined technologies devlopped by RR and PW..

Flightglobal made an artist impression:

http://www.flightglobal.com/assets/g...x?ItemID=40146
Engine Programme Updates

(ground clearance doesn't seem ok, but its about the concept)

Don't do it
 

I've been around long enough to remember the mistakes of the Dassault Mercure and the A310.

Don't, ever, make the error of building a plane optimised for short range.

The day it comes out the customers will want longer range.

It's the best way of losing money I can imagine.

When fuel was cheap and anything with capasity had to be able to fly coast to coast, standarizing on 1 type was a good idea.

That's why 737 and A320 fly 3000nm.

For almost all flights the 500 million Europeans make within Europe it is a total waste, a gross overkill.

http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z...g?t=1267566303

ATR andBombardier will come with bigger props, as will India. Embraer said they will probably make their new 5 abreast optimized for shorter ranges too.

Times change.

keesje
 

It's nice to see the same old analyses I saw when I was a kid 30 years ago.

Don't join the party if you can't satisfy the family market. Niche market demand is no way to build a business case. It will always let you down.

Anyone who buys a plane optimised for short haul immediately starts demanding the same efficiencies but on longer ranges.

Unless you want to lose your customers your engineers will spend the next ten years tweaking and re-tweaking to extend the range.
It's very tiring, and costly.

Plus Airbus and Boeing will match you on operating cost any time you go head-to-head with them.

I know. Get out now...

Old china, RJ's were a bad idea until they took off 25 years ago. The A380 was a dead end for many, until recently. The Cseries under the 737/A320, don't go there.. The 100 seat E190; haven't you seen what happended to the F100 & BAE146? Just no market.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1371/...4c5625c850.jpg

Hopping around with 40t birds is OK when fuel is cheap. It aint.