
Airbus proposes new drop-in airplane “cabin modules” to speed up boarding - ucaetano
http://arstechnica.co.uk/cars/2015/11/airbus-proposes-new-drop-in-airplane-cabin-modules-to-speed-up-boarding/
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mdorazio
As a frequent business traveler, I've long thought that slow boarding could be
fixed by two things: 1) Standardized luggage 2) Not letting passengers handle
their own bags

If you watch while boarding to see what slows the process down, it almost
always seems to be related to people trying to cram oversized bags in the
overhead bin, or being unable to effectively manage their own bags in the
aisles. If you remove that from the equation entirely, the passenger
responsibility becomes solely to get into their seat quickly.

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brk
Yes, and this also eliminates the need to have "priority boarding", which is
really just a way of ensuring that the frequent traveller customers don't end
up without overhead space for their bags.

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knughit
What flights are you on that priority boarding fills all the bins?

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lliiffee
I think brk was just saying that everyone in priority will have room for their
bags. Without priority boarding, they would have to fight with everyone else.

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swingbridge
I don't get it. People would still need to board into this pod thing and then
they'd have to move the pod onto the plane and check to make sure it's secure
and such. That seems like it would take even longer.

I suppose one could argue they can limit downtime for the rest of the aiplane
by just popping in a new module and going, but there are lots of things going
on that mean the aircraft needs some downtime on the ground: refueling,
loading cargo, simple maintenance, preflight checks...

Not really clear what problem is being solved and seems to create lots of new
problems (airports will also freak out... They hated the A380 and changes
required to accommodate that bloated thing). Seems like the sort of thing
companies patent because they have lots of lawyers sitting around looking for
something to do rather that this actually being a meaningful innovation.

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mikeash
I've had a similar idea for a while. In my version, the passenger module
includes the seats and floor but _not the walls_ , which remain part of the
plane. If you could do it this way (I'm sure it would be a great engineering
challenge to make it work) then you could load and unload the modules
virtually instantaneously because people could just go out the sides. Each row
would basically be independent.

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JoshTriplett
Good idea. One practical challenge: you have to make sure nobody (including
small children who don't listen to directions like "don't stick your arms
out") gets hurt when getting moved next to the walls.

Also, if you don't have the walls attached to the module, then you'll have a
challenge including the ceiling, and the overhead luggage racks.

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Terretta
This patent is not going far enough, and as mentioned, the tech isn't designed
yet.

What you want is to open the nose of the plane, dock to the terminal, and
slide out all the seats right into a controlled access room in the terminal
waiting area, expanding the row to row distance by an extra foot. Flush those
passengers out.

New passengers enter the enclosed room, and can all get to their comfortably
spaced rows and seats from the outside at the same time, no center isle
queuing needed. Once seated, slide all the seats back into the plane, undock,
close the nose, and depart.

Between Boeing's existing nose design and the roller coaster industry, this is
all existing tech.

[https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cargolux_B747-400F...](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cargolux_B747-400F.jpg)

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TheOtherHobbes
That's a better idea than the patent, although still debatably practical.

The whole point of plane design is to keep weight down while maximising
strength.

The patent does the opposite for both. You're going to have dangerous weak
points all around the fuselage, especially around the doors and the pod locks.

A front loader could work better, but you'd still have to add some weight to
handle the overheads and other support structure.

The bigger problem is that either idea would mean massively expensive
retooling for airports around the world, and it would - at best - limit
flights to specific upgraded destinations.

This seems more like a blue sky (...) patent filed because - why not? Not so
much a practical design.

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jessriedel
This can possibly lower costs, but it doesnt really do anything to improve
airport throughput. That's runway limited. Can anyone estimate how much of the
ticket price could be saved if this all worked perfectly?

Seems to me that devices for moving people quickly around airports and take
them directly to their gate would be much higher value for much less cost and
complexity. Sensible or not, safety restrictions make fast moving walkways
unworkable. I'd like to know why personal rapid transit is so darn difficult
to make cost effective. They seem ideal for airports.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit)

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lentil_soup
Reminds me of this concept for boarding trains in China where the train
wouldn't even need to stop at the stations:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/12/this-
propos...](http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/12/this-proposed-
chinese-train-picks-up-passengers-without-stopping/282598/)

~~~
Xophmeister
I seem to remember seeing this idea before (even before the 2013 date of this
article and not being designed by the Chinese). Regardless of that, it's a
really good idea: As well as making boarding somewhat more efficient, it
really helps with energy consumption as there's no waste from slowing down and
accelerating, because the train just loops round a course at constant speed.

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beachstartup
the problem with boarding is that very few people actually optimize their
behavior to board quickly. they just take their sweet ass time because they
feel they're entitled to it. like, why would anyone bother to take off their
coat and put it in a bag, or transfer the crap they need during the flight
from their overhead bag to their handbag _before_ the boarding process? that's
just way too obvious. better do it in the aisle and hold everyone up for 30
seconds.

it would probably be cheaper and more effective just to hire marine drill
instructors to scream at people as they're boarding.

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dghughes
I've actually thought of this but for a different reason, my plan was to have
the pod "ejectable" (if that's a word). In the event of a bomb in the belly of
the plane the pod or pods could be ejected with parachutes and maybe some sort
of auto-guidance land and picked up later.

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knughit
Wouldn't help with a bomb in the pod, which would be the obvious place to put
one.

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serf
Well, if the main plane was still air-worthy, the crew at the front probably
wouldn't think that.

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ams6110
I don't know about one huge pod, but it shouldn't be much of a stretch to do
something similar using "unit load devices" (containers) similar to those used
on freighter aircraft.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_load_device](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_load_device)

One could imagine each of these containing about half a dozen rows of seats.
Board them from each end, and you have almost eliminated the bottlenecks of
people standing in aisles loading overhead bins. They are then loaded out to
the aircraft.

This would greatly simplify terminal architecture as well since you don't need
complicated articulated jetways or parking aprons for a lot of planes close to
the building.

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evan_
This would also do a lot to solve the problem of filthy, unhygenic cabins- the
cleaning crew would have a lot more time to go through the "pod" than the're
currently able to spend in the plane between flights.

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arethuza
Swapping the entire cabin in and out seems excessive - why not use seats like
those on an amusement park ride. Sit down and strap-in at the gate and then be
moved in batches into the aircraft... :-)

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prohor
Yesterday's discussion on that subject:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10627873](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10627873)

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burger_moon
>dehumanizing, dropped, squeezed

It's great how with the right words you can make something sound very evil and
awful. I don't believe there would be any dropping of airplane components or
people.

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prokes
They could make great strides with less cost by ordering the boarding order.
It seems some pattern of boarding window seats first, starting from the back
and moving up, would be most efficient. Of course that breaks all the rules on
frequent flier statuses, overhead space and such.

Once heard an anecdote about a marching band chartering an aircraft. Flight
attendants were floored at the speed everyone was settled.

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Terretta
Most airlines do some form of this. They're up to 6 zones, outside in and back
to front, not counting premiums.

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coldcode
I always thought they should make planes out of vertical tubes, drop people
out the bottom, drop new ones into the top, and go. Then again I hate flying.

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antod
Like Thunderbird 2 but with passenger modules?

Edit: that will teach me about not reading the article first. It already had a
picture of Thunderbird 2. Doh.

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venomsnake
Two problems that I have with that - 1st there is no inventive step. Second -
how viable will be the airframe?

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ucaetano
My apologies, the previous submission had a wrong link, I deleted it and re-
submitted.

