Airbus A350 successfully completes maiden test flight

Re:Airbus A350 successfully completes maiden test flight by OldSchool on Friday June 14, 2013 @11:36AM (#5880486)

As an engineer, I find it amazing that aside from cleaner, more efficient, quieter, and safer, we really haven't significantly improved mainstream jet travel speed for over 50 years. Supersonic must be a major barrier for all practical purposes.

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Re:Airbus A350 successfully completes maiden test flight by joezydeco on Friday June 14, 2013 @12:06PM (#5880683)

"You're Too Cheap to Fly Faster"

https://medium.com/we-live-in-the-future/7885a299bca2

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Re:Airbus A350 successfully completes maiden test flight by Shivetya on Friday June 14, 2013 @12:51PM (#5880928)

Well http://www.risingup.com/fars/info/part91-817-FAR.shtml pretty much sums up the whys.

The passenger miles per unit of fuel were not in favor of super sonic planes which were originally developed to compete with the smaller jets (707) that were around when development started. Those jumbos (747) made air travel really cheap.

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Re:Airbus A350 successfully completes maiden test flight by nawitus on Friday June 14, 2013 @01:02PM (#5880993)

It's a matter of cost. It's "easy" to build Mach 2.5 jetliners, but customers actually prefer to fly really, really cheap instead of flying really, really fast.

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Re:Airbus A350 successfully completes maiden test flight by Gmo on Friday June 14, 2013 @11:52AM (#5880583)

We had supersonic flight (Concorde, also by airbus btw) and it was far too fuel inefficient (that and I think also they were not allowed in some countries if I remember correctly)

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Re:Airbus A350 successfully completes maiden test flight by jacquesm on Friday June 14, 2013 @01:06PM (#5881028)

> also by airbus btw

By its predecessor Sud Aviation and BAC.

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Re:Airbus A350 successfully completes maiden test flight by megablast on Friday June 14, 2013 @12:33PM (#5880817)

You think cars have changed? Trains? Most things have not changed much.

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Re:Airbus A350 successfully completes maiden test flight by potatolicious on Friday June 14, 2013 @01:51PM (#5881304)

Cars and trains have changed a lot.

This video shows the difference pretty clearly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_ptUrQOMPs (it's a head-on crash test between a 1959 Bel Air and a 2009 Malibu).

Cars are immensely safer than the death-traps they were in the past. They're also immensely more comfortable, mind-bogglingly more fuel efficient, and produce a hell of a lot less pollution.

These aren't marginal improvements.

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Re:Airbus A350 successfully completes maiden test flight by trust-me on Friday June 14, 2013 @01:28PM (#5881165)

The newer, lighter planes are using a lot of plastic and are worse at isolating passengers and crew from the radiation at high altitudes.

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Re:Airbus A350 successfully completes maiden test flight by smackfu on Friday June 14, 2013 @02:42PM (#5881638)

People do not like sonic booms, at all.

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