Page 46 - AAA SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2016 Online Magazine

FeatuRe AVIATION

route structures for the MOM,” Delany told 34 inch pitch in a 2-2-2 pitch. was shown at the 1987 Paris Air Show.
media. With the push by passengers to bring all It took the twin-aisle concept further
But here is the problem, says Norris. their luggage into the cabin, the boarding with a 188-in. (4.8m) cabin width that would
“This may look promising on a of single aisle aircraft has become a major permit 2-3-2 seating, 17 inch (43.2cm) wide
presentation. The stark reality depends headache with airlines forced to allow up to seats and 18 inch (45.7cm) aisles in economy.
on Boeing’s ability to produce the aircraft 30 minutes for the boarding process in the It would be powered by rear mounted
at a sufficiently low cost to meet the price US and Canada, which means a turnaround of unducted fans but later Boeing looked at a
sensitivity of the market,” Norris said. at least an hour. wing-mounted International Aero Engines
The issue, explains Norris, is that the And that trend is spreading. Super Fan configuration and engine that
aircraft straddles the “gap between today’s Those times wipe out the low cost airline was originally to be fitted to the A340 but
single-aisle and twin-aisle markets thus model’s 30 minute turnaround. dropped it due to technology issues.
airlines expect to pay narrowbody prices for The McDonnell Douglas DC-11 cross Boeing assembled an international
widebody performance.” section was just 21.7 inches (55.1cm) wider team to build the 7J7 including the Japanese
But as Asian Airlines & Aerospace than a 757 and 19.3 inches (49cm) narrower heavies Short Brothers, SAAB Scania and
revealed last year (Back to the Future – than the Boeing 767. Australia’s Hawker de Havilland.
Sept/Oct), the gap may not be that big and These cabin dimensions allowed for 17.7 Head of the 7J7 program was Alan
certainly not a deal breaker. inch (45cm) wide (45.7cm) seats and an 18 Mulally, who would later rise to be President
Back in 1980 that certainly was not a big inch (45.7cm) aisle. and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes
issue, according to Boeing legacy company Clearly however the world has moved and later President of Ford Motor Company.
McDonnell Douglas (MDC). on since 1980 and any new twin-aisle design Like MDC, Boeing polled over 2,500
In its brochure “A First Class Experience would certainly be wider again to permit a frequent flyers after they toured the
– At Economy Fare” extolling the virtues of 18.5 inch (47cm) wide seat and an 18 inch aisle. 7J7 mock-up and the layout received an
its twin-aisle Advanced Twin Medium Range And for those airlines who insist on cramming overwhelming thumbs up.
(ATMR) 757 competitor, it stated that it only as many passengers as possible into their The twin-aisle surfaced again as one
required one passenger per trip to offset the aircraft there is also the option of taking out of two patents filed by Boeing under the
weight and drag of the additional aisle. one aisle and introducing a 4-3 configuration. heading “Twin-Aisle Small Airplane,” with
MDC also claimed that the 178-seat Interestingly MDC also looked at a Mithra Sankrithi, a manager in Commercial
mixed class ATMR would have a fuel burn 24 slightly different double bubble cross section Airplanes’ product development,
per cent lower than the 757. to enable the DC-11 to take LD3 containers configuration and engineering analysis
According to the presentation, the increasing its revenue generation potential. group, named as the inventor.
ATMR, later dubbed the DC-11, would have 14 The overall drag penalty was put at 3 per cent. The patents were submitted on October
first class seats at a 38-inch pitch in a 2-1-2 Boeing also toyed with the twin-aisle 2, 2001 and approved in 2003 and 2004. One
configuration and have 168 economy seats at concept with its 7J7 and a full cabin mock-up cabin sports a 2-3-2 configuration and more
width than height. In the patent applications,
Sankrithi claims the new configuration could
deliver “the comfort typically reserved
for larger aircraft” while at the same time
minimizing drag, weight penalties, fuel burn
and “economic penalties.”
But while all the rhetoric and logic points
to a twin-aisle solution Delaney was coy
on a direct question from Asian Airlines &
Aerospace as to what preference the airline
had for the MOM - single or twin-aisle.

Boeing’s 757 replacement could
very likely be the basis for a 737
replacement with the longer 240-
seat model coming first and the
‘baseline’ 200-seat aircraft coming
later next decade
46 ASIAN AIRLINES & AEROSPACE SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2016 WWW.GBP.COM.SG/AAA