Smaller long-haul planes are the future of flying
-- but also its past
John Walton, CNN • Updated 27th November 2020
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(CNN)
— For
nearly half of the entire history of commercial aviation, long-haul flights
have conjured up images of large, wide-bodied aircraft, with two aisles, up to
10 seats in every row, spacious overhead bins and, more recently, shiny
on-demand tablet-style entertainment systems.
That's in sharp contrast to smaller
narrow-bodied aircraft, with their single aisles, six seats per row and,
generally, less space and comfort.
But before the Boeing 747 started
carrying passengers in 1970, narrow-bodies were the standard for long-haul air
travel, although their definition of "long haul" wasn't quite what we
know today.
The Boeing 707s you might remember
from that "Pan Am" TV show nearly 10 years ago, say, could barely
make it from London or Paris to New York without needing to refuel, often at
Gander in Newfoundland, although they were faster and quieter than anything
seen before.
A 1960 photo shows an American
Airlines Boeing 707-120B in flight.
AP
On the outside, these jets are more
similar to what we're flying on today -- and will fly on tomorrow -- than you
might think. Even the shape of the nose and the size of the fuselage of
Boeing's 737 airplanes, the world's best-selling aircraft, are taken directly
from the 1950s Boeing 707.
On the inside, meanwhile, while he
"never had the opportunity to fly on a 707," aircraft interior
designer Ben Orson, managing director of Orson Associates, tells CNN,
"It's clear that the new generation of single-aisle aircraft benefit from
decades of interiors optimization, which has delivered significant improvements
in terms of weight, environmental comfort factors -- cabin pressure, lighting
and so on -- space efficiency across seating, linings and bins and lavatory and
galley integration."
That's certainly a long and technical
list, but it all means more space and more amenities for you, the passenger.
And if passenger experience has come a long way, so have the airplanes -- and
their capabilities.
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There are three planes in the latest
generation of narrow-body aircraft, with the latest engines.
The first is Airbus' A220, formerly
the Bombardier CSeries, which is the smallest of the lot.
The second is Boeing's 737 MAX, an
update of its venerable 737, although its low-slung design means its engine
size is constrained compared with the others, so it's not truly a long-haul
machine.
But the third is the real player: the
Airbus A321XLR, the most recent member of the A321neo family, an updated
version of Airbus' short-haul workhorse with new internal fuel tanks.
The A321XLR can fly far as those early
707s and more than half again: up to 4,700 nautical miles, or around 10 hours
-- something like the distance from Florida to the UK, or from Beijing to
France.
It's a sea change and it harkens back
to the start of the jet age in 1958, when the Boeing 707 first started flying
-- at nearly the speed of sound, across the oceans, landing to refuel every
four or five hours.
A mock-up model of the cabin of the
new Boeing 707 Stratoliner, circa 1957.
Underwood Archives/Archive
Photos/Getty Images
In some ways, travel was very
different back then
People dressed up, whether flying in
first class or in coach. Luggage was checked into the hold, because overhead
bins hadn't been invented yet. Instead, there was the hat rack, a literal shelf
above passengers' heads for light items only.
The overhead bins of today are still a
pain point for passengers, and it's one that today's aircraft manufacturers are
working on.
"Once only possible with larger
aircraft, a single aisle long haul will open a world of new routes with all the
trappings of long-haul cabin comfort," Airbus' head of single-aisle
marketing Antonio Da Costa explains to CNN. "On top of offering direct
flights to the passengers' final destination, the A321XLR's new Airspace cabin
is quieter and features a new airy design and larger hand luggage bins, easing
boarding-deboarding."
While today's planes have on-demand,
high-definition video and fast WiFi Internet, inflight entertainment has only
been around since the 1960s, with the now-defunct TWA the first to introduce
films for everyone on board, projected onto screens in each section of the
aircraft.
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Individual headsets -- which were
pneumatic, literally pushing sound through the air via tubes to passengers'
ears -- were brought on board in the same decade, and lasted into the
early 2000s on older aircraft. A common sight at the time was children leaning
their heads against the armrest to hear the audio crackling tinnily from the
sockets if their parents declined to pay to rent the headphones.
Cabin service was elegant on board an
intercontinental Boeing 707 during a Lufthansa flight in 1967.
Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty
Images
In first class, the caviar,
chateaubriand and Champagne lifestyle was real.
Airlines went all out with tuxedo-clad stewards and stewardesses gliding
glamorously down the aisle with cocktail trolleys, chariots of hors d'oeuvres,
and rolling carving stations for massive roasts, sliced to order.
Even in economy, generous TV
dinner-style meals were, if faintly horrifying to us today in a vintage meal
card sort of way, very much à la mode.
But in other ways, the experience was
very recognizable
If yoga pants and neck pillows have
replaced gabardine suits and expensive hats, the basic layout of the
narrow-body passenger experience hasn't changed all that much.
Up front, passengers on a 707 would
have been seated two either side of the aisle, in big squashy recliner chairs
that, depending on the airline, would recline a little or a lot.
That's essentially what you see today
unless you're on a long-haul specific A321, 757 or 737 MAX, which have over the
last decade moved from these recliners to convertible flatbed sleepers --
usually still two-across, though.
In economy, the configuration was the
same as we see today as well: three seats on either side of the aisle. They
were a lot thicker and a fair bit more padded than now, but modern industrial
design engineering is working hard on improving today's seats.
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Mark Hiller, chief executive of Recaro
Aircraft Seating, which makes both short-haul and long-haul seats, explains
that "when selecting the right products and features, the passenger
seating experience on a A321XLR can be on the same level as on any wide-body
aircraft. The given size of the fuselage allows for a more generous seating
layout compared with other aircraft types and our RECARO seating solutions
further improve this."
That fuselage size point is another
important one when thinking about today's passenger experience versus
yesterday's.
A computer rendering of the
narrow-body Airbus A321XLR
© AIRBUS S.A.S 2019
Boeing's 737 is essentially still the
same cross-section as the 707, but the Airbus' A321's fuselage is a fair bit
bigger, which means seats can be a full inch wider -- 18 inches rather
than 17 inches. Indeed, at a time when people are simply taller and broader in
frame than they were 60-70 years ago, 18 inches is even wider than many
long-haul aircraft seats, and a seat's width is one of the most important
factors in whether we think it's comfortable or not.
As the 1950s and 1960s gave way to the
1970s and 1980s, more efficient aircraft replaced the original long-haul
narrow-body jets, including the narrow-body Boeing 757 that today's Airbus
A321neo family is itself replacing in turn.
But key to the story of these aircraft
is that their smaller size meant then -- and means now -- that you can fly
nonstop to more destinations, especially if you live somewhere that isn't a
megahub like London, Atlanta or Dubai.
So even if you're not persuaded by the
idea that long-haul narrow-bodies can have the same seats as long-haul
wide-bodies and be just as comfortable, if not more so, you now have the choice
of a nonstop flight and cutting several hours off your journey -- and
that's a comfort in and of itself.
Top image: The Boeing 707 Jet
Stratoliner Number One under construction at Boeing's Transport Division in
Renton, Washington, circa 1958. (Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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