Is this good PR by easyjet or is this the first concept for low cost travel?

It's usually Richard Branson that gets in first with this kind of thing. Well done EZY for getting onto the publicity bandwagon.

 It's dead ezy for an airline to come up with a wish-list like this, but would the EZY directors buy shares in a manufacturing company that had just decided to develop such an aircraft, faced with the prospect of failing to achieve the stated performance, and/or failing to sell it?

 The propfan is not a new idea. Boeing and General Electric produced an aircraft powered by a pair of of them twenty years ago, but it was killed by a drop in oil prices. Maybe this time it could be said that oil prices are unlikely to drop much and will probably climb steadily in the medium and long term, but I think it will take a serious hike in fuel prices beyond the current high level to make this commercially viable as a project, especially since the big manufacturers have so many other irons in the fire.

 I'm not an engineer but I wonder about gearboxes and what they mean for engine reliability in complex, high performance power units. Engine manufacturers have talked for years about geared turbofans but they never seem to materialise.

Hello :-)

Not only Boeing experimented with propfans. McDonnell Douglas used their MD-80-protoype and replaced the left engine with one profan. The program was shelved because of several factors. McDonnell Douglas went on to offer the MD-90 with IAE V2500s instead.

Kindest regards!

IB M87

The MD-94X was a planned propfan powered airliner intended to begin production about 1994, I also remember Boeing putting a propfan on a 727 test bed, was this to be the Boeing 7J7

Would you consider flying on this if it had gone into production???

Both Airbus and Boeing have studied concepts with the engines located above the fuselage between the tails, so as to get noise shielding, but they have focused on turbofans. What is interesting is EasyJet's use of open-rotor engines, which promise big reductions in fuel consumption, and therefore carbon emissions. I think this is just the start of pressure from airlines to move up open-rotor development to the 2014-15 timeframe foreseen for the next generation of Airbus and Boeing narrowbodies. They could develop the engine now, but the best it would do would be Stage 3. Perhaps EasyJet thinks the funky tail can get it to Stage 4.

Yes :-)

"Whirling bananas" as a former Flight editor described propfans

Goose:

The MD-94X was a planned propfan powered airliner intended to begin production about 1994, I also remember Boeing putting a propfan on a 727 test bed, was this to be the Boeing 7J7

 Here is one picture of McDonnell Douglas showing the MD-94X-concept:

 http://www.md-80.net/MD-94X.jpg

 In 1988 McDonnell considered an "MD-91" which was intented as a 114-seat aircraft with UHB-engines.

 Regards!