Building The Perfect Aircraft - What Would It Look Like & Where Would It Fly?

What is the perfect commercial aircraft? Is it a long-haul 600 seaters like the A380? Or is it a smaller 100 seater narrowbody like the Boeing 737 MAX? Grab your pencils because we are going to sit down and design the perfect aircraft.

This video will be a little different from my others, in that we are going to design the perfect aircraft together. What do I mean? Well, imagine we are making a new company called Found And Explained Aerospace and we are going to go head to head with Airbus and Boeing in the commercial plane market.

Question 1: Passengers

The first question we need to ask ourselves is what is the most popular passenger configuration. If you are new to planes, you might think that bigger is better, like the famous Boeing 747 or the double-decker A380. However, this could be further from the truth.

The two most popular aircraft currently available in the world is the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320. There are many variants of the type that we won't go into detail today, but we have seen a trend of these aircraft becoming bigger over time, reaching towards a passenger capacity of around 200-230 passengers.

Thus we could rightly suggest that our perfect plane should comfortably seat 200-250 passengers in either a two-class cabin or 250 in an all-economy cabin. The passengers will be seated in a staggard 1-1 then 2-2- configuration in business class, 2-2 in premium economy, and 3-3 in economy.

Question 2: Range

Let's talk about range. As mentioned before, the best selling aircraft have a range on average of around 4,000 nautical miles. Our perfect aircraft is going to push that and fly around 5,000 nautical miles, enough to open up routes from London to Cancun, Singapore to Istanbul and Los Angeles to Tokyo.

But this aircraft won't be designed for hub to hub travel, but rather allow small airports to small airports. This means flights from cities like Boston to Helikrion, Greece, or Sydney to Sri Lanka.

Question 3: Narrowbody or Widebody

Speaking of economics, we need to discuss the difference between a narrowbody plane and a widebody aircraft. A widebody aircraft, characterized by its twin aisles has more passenger seats, is more comfortable for long-haul flights, and can carry more cargo. Typical widebody aircraft flying are the Boeing 787 and the Airbus A330.

A narrowbody aircraft has a single aisle and is more fuel-efficient than the A330, but is more cramped and not very suitable for long-haul flying. There are some ways to combine these two types together as I examined in my previous video about the Boeing 7M7, however, for our purpose, we will only go with one - the cheaper to operate narrowbody.

Question 4: Cargo Capacity

The cargo capacity question is a little bit tricky. If we go with the narrowbody choice we just made, we are going to severely limit the cargo-carrying capacity of the aircraft in the hold as it will not be able to take LD3 containers.

That being said, we will offer a cargo version of the aircraft with a tail door. It is important that the aircraft's tail opens like a Boeing 747 nose door, so cargo can be loaded in quickly and without having to perform a 90-degree turn.

Question 5: Who will buy it?

This aircraft will target the transatlantic and Asia-Pacific markets for low-cost carriers to compete against flag carriers and make international travel cheaper. As it is designed for long-thin routes, we will finally see a highly profitable low-cost carrier base itself off this aircraft.

Disadvantages.

For one, passengers are going to hate the tighter conditions onboard, but the seat width will be wider than that found on a widebody aircraft with a 3-3-3 configuration. With a premium economy cabin, passengers who don't want to share their row can sit together, and economy is not similar to that found onboard a 737 or A320. One of the issues will be turn around time, with the plane taking longer to turn around than its smaller 737s that may make it unsuitable for short-haul routes.

There is also the question of cabin crew rest times and how meal service will be conducted with one single aisle. There will have to be a blanked off section for cabin crew to fly long-haul, and plenty of bathrooms onboard that can be accessed by different cabins.

You might have been watching this video and thinking that this all sounds awfully familiar. And that's because it is. This is essentially the same aircraft as the popular Boeing 757, which back when it was in production, sold over 1000 units. Today there is no aircraft under production quite like it, and if it was built, we could easily see orders for at least 1000 more.

And we might be close to the truth. Back in May this year, Boeing was reportedly working on a Boeing 757 Plus aircraft based on the 757-200, which they would quickly bring to market to rival the success of the Airbus A321XLR. Alas, the current market conditions have slowed such an idea.

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