Heathrow 3rd Runway.

Author
Discussion

Taita

7,607 posts

204 months

Sunday 1st March 2020
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How bad actually is modern air travel? Or is it just an easy thing to pick on?

I just find it baffling all the 'we must stop xyz' which is utterly opposed to how humans are wired to make better lives for themselves and their families.


skyrover

12,674 posts

205 months

Sunday 1st March 2020
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surveyor said:
So 50 mile radius or 100 mile ferry

I'm assuming this already has reserve fuel/range factored in?


surveyor

Original Poster:

17,836 posts

185 months

Sunday 1st March 2020
quotequote all
skyrover said:
surveyor said:
So 50 mile radius or 100 mile ferry

I'm assuming this already has reserve fuel/range factored in?
It’s being trialed by a Canadian airline that typically only does 20 minute flights.

Ideal for their scenario.



Brave Fart

5,736 posts

112 months

Sunday 1st March 2020
quotequote all
Taita said:
How bad actually is modern air travel? Or is it just an easy thing to pick on?

I just find it baffling all the 'we must stop xyz' which is utterly opposed to how humans are wired to make better lives for themselves and their families.
Here's the thing: we are constantly told to "live your life to the full" or that "you're a long time dead" and so on. I'm 58 years old and I have a heart condition which may shorten my life. If some brainwashed Greta acolytes tell me I can't fly to foreign lands, or that I can't drive my Porsche, or that I won't be able to eat imported Madagascan prawns............well they can FRO.
The measures proposed by groups such as XR are incompatible with having fun, consuming for pleasure and travelling. I simply don't believe that people will embrace XR / Greta policies (vegan diet, anyone?) because, well, YOLO!

Evanivitch

20,102 posts

123 months

Sunday 1st March 2020
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hidetheelephants said:
Video conferencing tech has existed for 40 years, it's been cheap and reliable for 25-20; despite this we barely evolved troglodites still like looking at, sniffing and touching each other before signing on the dotted line. No amount of Teh Internetz, Greta or other things are likely to shift this trend.
I think video conferencing is great, but the implementation is often poor. A single, wide angle lense at the end of a boardroom showing an image on a big screen at the other end of a boardroom still means you're effectively 8m eye-camera-screen-eye distance from eachother. So the implementation needs to improve.

Plus, there's still a lot of limitations over what content certain industries are legally allowed to discuss over video conference. We know the tech exists, but doesn't seem to be widely distributed.

Randy Winkman

16,148 posts

190 months

Sunday 1st March 2020
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World population is growing significantly and it's human nature to want to travel, consume and generally do stuff. So however much noise there is about environmental issues humans will make a mess of the planet in the end. One contradicts the other but with billions of people on the planet it's quite possible for them to happen at the same time. The same way that there are loads of vegans, loads of people cycling and doing park run or riding £2k exercise bikes at the same time people are getting fatter and have started dying earlier.

borcy

2,889 posts

57 months

Sunday 1st March 2020
quotequote all
skyrover said:
surveyor said:
So 50 mile radius or 100 mile ferry

I'm assuming this already has reserve fuel/range factored in?
I've seen those before, the company that use them seem a perfect fit. I think there's an Israeli company that does the conversions.

As for larger aircraft, the head of R&D at airbus said they'd need energy density of batteries to increase by a factor of 30, even then an a320 could fly half the distance with half the payload.

hidetheelephants

24,428 posts

194 months

Sunday 1st March 2020
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There are niches for very short range operations, as that air-taxi shows; in the UK there is the well-known Islander operated by Loganair between Westray and Papa Westray, a sector time of 6 minutes is surely crying out for battery electric conversion. There are other islands in the west of Scotland which are provided with air links for which the long-term cost savings of electric drive could help to reduce the need for public subsidy; the sector times of the flights run between Oban, Tiree, Coll, Colonsay and Islay also lend themselves to this, the longest sector being 35 minutes.

anonymous-user

55 months

Sunday 1st March 2020
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hidetheelephants said:
There are niches for very short range operations, as that air-taxi shows; in the UK there is the well-known Islander operated by Loganair between Westray and Papa Westray, a sector time of 6 minutes is surely crying out for battery electric conversion. There are other islands in the west of Scotland which are provided with air links for which the long-term cost savings of electric drive could help to reduce the need for public subsidy; the sector times of the flights run between Oban, Tiree, Coll, Colonsay and Islay also lend themselves to this, the longest sector being 35 minutes.
I’m not sure you can look at these routes in terms of one way trips. The crew need to return to base. If an e-plane takes several hours to recharge, the airline has to pay the crew for the time of the two sectors plus the sitting around during the recharge. It might find that is economically unattractive.

hidetheelephants

24,428 posts

194 months

Sunday 1st March 2020
quotequote all
Why is it going to take hours to recharge? Existing lithium technology can take an 80% charge in 30-40 minutes, Musk and others are claiming this will continue to drop.

BMW A6

1,911 posts

65 months

Monday 16th March 2020
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Will there still be demand/ appetite for a 3rd runway once this coronavirus pandemic is over?

aeropilot

34,650 posts

228 months

Tuesday 17th March 2020
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BMW A6 said:
Will there still be demand/ appetite for a 3rd runway once this coronavirus pandemic is over?
Forget it.

3rd runway was as good as dead as soon as the Govt said it wouldn't appeal the court decision last month, and what little hope HAL might have had in pursuing it alone has been well and truly ended by this pandemic.

Rumours are that if this does drag on through the summer its possible that half of the world's airlines will have gone to the wall.....let alone whether Boeing and Airbus can survive.




Robertj21a

16,477 posts

106 months

Tuesday 17th March 2020
quotequote all
aeropilot said:
Forget it.

3rd runway was as good as dead as soon as the Govt said it wouldn't appeal the court decision last month, and what little hope HAL might have had in pursuing it alone has been well and truly ended by this pandemic.

Rumours are that if this does drag on through the summer its possible that half of the world's airlines will have gone to the wall.....let alone whether Boeing and Airbus can survive.
Quite. Coronavirus has killed off any chance of a 3rd runway.

borcy

2,889 posts

57 months

Tuesday 17th March 2020
quotequote all
Robertj21a said:
aeropilot said:
Forget it.

3rd runway was as good as dead as soon as the Govt said it wouldn't appeal the court decision last month, and what little hope HAL might have had in pursuing it alone has been well and truly ended by this pandemic.

Rumours are that if this does drag on through the summer its possible that half of the world's airlines will have gone to the wall.....let alone whether Boeing and Airbus can survive.
Quite. Coronavirus has killed off any chance of a 3rd runway.
I'm not sure it's a given, I wonder how quickly flights will pick up again.

S7Paul

2,103 posts

235 months

Tuesday 17th March 2020
quotequote all
borcy said:
Robertj21a said:
aeropilot said:
Forget it.

3rd runway was as good as dead as soon as the Govt said it wouldn't appeal the court decision last month, and what little hope HAL might have had in pursuing it alone has been well and truly ended by this pandemic.

Rumours are that if this does drag on through the summer its possible that half of the world's airlines will have gone to the wall.....let alone whether Boeing and Airbus can survive.
Quite. Coronavirus has killed off any chance of a 3rd runway.
I'm not sure it's a given, I wonder how quickly flights will pick up again.
I think it depends how quickly we get through the worst of the coronavirus impact. If it takes months (as seems likely) businesses will have got used to managing without all the travel. They will have seen how many hours it saves (as most business travellers get paid for travelling time), and how much money it saves (flights, hotels, hire cars, taxis, etc.) and won't be too keen to go back to how it was pre-coronavirus.

Consequently, I think there's real chance that this could re-shape and downsize the airline industry forever.

aeropilot

34,650 posts

228 months

Tuesday 17th March 2020
quotequote all
S7Paul said:
Consequently, I think there's real chance that this could re-shape and downsize the airline industry forever.
I think that's very real possibility.

It will all depend on who's left to pick up the pieces, and what measures Govts will put in place to rejuvinate it, against the undoubted pressure from the eco-nazi's to not do so.

It will be interesting to see which, if any, of the low cost no frills european airlines survive.




hidetheelephants

24,428 posts

194 months

Tuesday 17th March 2020
quotequote all
It's possible air travel will remain at some reduced state once CV disappears or a vaccine is perfected, but it will take legislation; it didn't take long for air travel to recover and continue growing after the previous shocks of 2001, the various previous lurgies, volcanic eruptions etc. Without laws making it more expensive/difficult people just like squeezing into explosive metal tubes and breathing each others' germs too much. In that event not expanding LHR is just going to mean that traffic goes to CDG, AMS or FRA instead and the UK economy suffers.

Condi

17,206 posts

172 months

Tuesday 17th March 2020
quotequote all
aeropilot said:
let alone whether Boeing and Airbus can survive.
They'll be fine. Both will be backed by governments if required. Boeing's mess with the MAX aircraft is looking worse than it ever did though. Airbus at least hasn't got a few hundred ready-built, but not yet delivered, planes on the tarmac!

vaud

50,560 posts

156 months

Tuesday 17th March 2020
quotequote all
Condi said:
They'll be fine. Both will be backed by governments if required. Boeing's mess with the MAX aircraft is looking worse than it ever did though. Airbus at least hasn't got a few hundred ready-built, but not yet delivered, planes on the tarmac!
The EU will back Airbus in extremis, it was their project...

Robertj21a

16,477 posts

106 months

Tuesday 17th March 2020
quotequote all
S7Paul said:
borcy said:
Robertj21a said:
aeropilot said:
Forget it.

3rd runway was as good as dead as soon as the Govt said it wouldn't appeal the court decision last month, and what little hope HAL might have had in pursuing it alone has been well and truly ended by this pandemic.

Rumours are that if this does drag on through the summer its possible that half of the world's airlines will have gone to the wall.....let alone whether Boeing and Airbus can survive.
Quite. Coronavirus has killed off any chance of a 3rd runway.
I'm not sure it's a given, I wonder how quickly flights will pick up again.
I think it depends how quickly we get through the worst of the coronavirus impact. If it takes months (as seems likely) businesses will have got used to managing without all the travel. They will have seen how many hours it saves (as most business travellers get paid for travelling time), and how much money it saves (flights, hotels, hire cars, taxis, etc.) and won't be too keen to go back to how it was pre-coronavirus.

Consequently, I think there's real chance that this could re-shape and downsize the airline industry forever.
Totally agree.