Classic British Flight Sim

On airliners.net one person said that the A350's nose reminded him of a Vanguard. Personally I think the real aircraft looks much better than the pre-production drawings Airbus had been floating around. Yuck!

Brian

Yes

Often the real thing looks a lot better than the pre production drawings.

Some have likened it to the 787, only better looking.

I agree with that , on the other hand I saw the rear end of a cow recently and that was a lot better looking than a 787

Just in time for Santa with the Reindeer substitute Nose???
Keith

Airbus should've took the radical step and gone for the blended-wing design. I know there are evacuation issues with it, but I hope they're the first to sort it out.

Efficient it may be but I hope no one goes down that route.

I'd not want to fly on something without proper windows and watching a camera view of the outside is no substitute

Fair comment. But it would look very good from the outside!

Aircraft windows aren't always a good thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=827OGkGn_Kk

Brian

The blended wing concept is really a variation of the flying wing which after WW II it was thought to be the direction

The only thing about an aeroplane is the wing, the rest is to make it function and give some space to control it and for whatever work it needs to do.

Minimising all the other bits to get as near as possible to just the wing by putting most of it into the wing is going to be sound aerodynamically, but how practical is it to build and use?

No doubt when folks saw the fist jet fighters and the Comet the lack of propellers must have made them look almost as futuristic as blended wing does to us now.

I guess it will all boils down to who can afford to do it first as it costs a huge amount to build a state of the art conventional machine like the 787 and A.350 but to start from scratch is unimaginable.

For a new design the A.350 looks quite nice and good they abandoned the orignal idea of a new development of the A.330 which was to an extent a modernised re winged, re engineered A.300. They have to make the break sometime and this was a good time.

The airlines made it very clear they didn't want the rehash and here is the result.

As a clean sheet I wish them well and with the 787 being a clean sheet also means a step forward for travel as a whole.