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Aviation History
1963
1963 - 0129.PDF
FLIGHT International, 24 JanuaryJ965 Furnishing Finishing How Comfortably will the Mach 3 Passenger Travel? BY MOLLY NEAL, BSC, DIC, AFRAes WHAT can the passengers in supersonic airliners expect in amenities and comfort? At present nobody seems keen on commiting himself to a firm answer. Broadly speaking, there are two schools of thought, roughly to be classified as the "commercial" and the "engineering" viewpoints: the one con cerned with selling seats to passengers and demanding comfort standards at least as high as those of current jetliners; the other preoccupied with the economic efficiency of the supersonic vehicle. A typical engineers' approach to the problem was presented at the 1961 IATA Symposium on Supersonic Air Transport by two Convair men, Paul Shipps and James Frick, in a paper on Passenger Fig / Relation between journey duration and acceptable passenger density, with "comfort zone" classification superimposed 60 40 A a. w "3 -J > 20 PROPELLER TRANSPORTS- r> CURRENT JETS kSST-*, _^_ UNDERGROUND SUBWAY^TRAIN RANSPORT COMPRESSED COACH TRANSPORT FIRST I- CLASS TRANSPORT COACH LONG-DISTANCE BUS PRIVATE AIRCRAFT 21 SUBWAY (Rush) yiuBWAY (Dasign max) _ HOMOGENIZED PEOPLE STAGECOACH 0 2 4 6 TYPICAL TRIP DURATION (hr) PLUSH COMFORTABLE ~ CONFINED ARDUOUS Density and Accommodations as Factors in Supersonic Transport Design. Fig 1, reproduced from this paper, shows a relation between trip duration and acceptable level of passenger density, for various surface vehicles as well as for aircraft; and the Convair engineers have superimposed a "comfort-zone" classification on the graph. From this they deduced that a Mach |3 aircraft, with flight durations not much over two hours, could be designed for much higher passenger densities than are currently considered acceptable in air transport. From a cost analysis they concluded that, for the supersonic transport, big cost savings could be achieved by increasing passen ger density, because aircraft size and shape will be as important as weight considerations. The costs of a Mach 3 airliner could, they claimed, be cut in half by changing from current first-class passen ger densities to automobile or private-aircraft values. In Fig 2 they show the interior dimensions of several well-accepted types of passenger vehicle, arranged within the cross-section of their super sonic transport study; they do not offer this as a practicable propo sition, but merely to suggest that there may be new ways of thinking to be applied to passenger stowage—possibly some form of vertical staggering. Any such radical change of approach would need to be tried out in the form of a passenger-reaction test vehicle before any attempt was made at commercial application. Lack of actual spaciousness, they suggested, might be compensated by "diversion ary tactics," among which they listed TV and "refreshments and snacks delivered with mechanical assistance" (a form of human pressure refuelling, perhaps ?) However, future passengers in the Anglo-French Mach 2.2 airliner are unlikely to be subjected to any such unconventional treatment. One may guess that on the short-range version, and possibly on fleets destined for routes where the terminal airports are separated by not more than about three hours' flying, the arguments for reduced passenger amenities may to some extent prevail: washrooms may be less lavish, seating pitch may be reduced a couple of inches or so, and meal services may be less ambitious. The international design consultant on aircraft interiors, Charles Butler, points out that "Having lunch in New York, then departing for Los Angeles, would just about get you there in time for lunch all over again, so it would appear that today's Chateaubriand and wine cart would not be a requirement." He visualizes instead a snack
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