Please Tuck In Your Sheets And Get Ready For Takeoff…

October 27, 2007

I recently stumbled across an article on Singapore Airlines newest addition to their fleet: the Airbus A380. At over four stories tall and with a capacity of 853 passengers, at usurped Boeing’s iconic 747 as the largest and most spacious commercial jet. It has a few features that Boeing lacks, too. With private suites, beds, flat screen TVs and lobster and champagne meals, it is among the most luxurious places you can be, on ground or in the air, anywhere.

At 276,800 kilos and a length of 73 meters and a height of 24.1 meters it is the longest, tallest and heaviest plane ever produced– but it’s also the quietest and most fuel efficient as well.

This raises quite a few questions. How can a plane laden down with over 800 passengers, beds, and lobsters run more efficiently than standard passenger planes? How well designed is the A380 and how antiquated is every other plane is service?

It also raises questions about the nature of flight. Are hyperluxery flights soon to be the norm, or is this merely, excuse the pun, a blip on the radar? While I’m sure that a cross-continental flight in the luxury of the most glamorous of settings is the apex of comfort, and at a minimum of $5,000 a pop, they’re priced accordingly, do we really need it? After all, once you go A380, in the words of one of the big spending patrons, “It’s going to make everything else after this simply awful.” Oh if only I could suffer like that…

In an age of record amounts of air travel, should we be focusing on our own comfort or, should we instead focus our efforts on improving plane’s carbon footprints and fuel economy? Do such forays into the extreme world of flight luxury help or hinder such efforts?  The plane would obviously be even more efficient if it wasn’t laden with so much superfluous baggage.  How much more efficient could it get?

Personally, I’d feel better knowing that my environmental impact was kept to a minimum while flying, rather than my comfort being kept at a maximum. Luckily, for tickets priced well into the thousands of dollars, I won’t have to debate over choosing one over the other…ever…but nonetheless, it’s an interesting debate to consider.

The A380 can carry over 800 in a single flight, thus eliminating the need for multiple flights, but is the future of aviation a land of jumbo, over sized, flying small countries?