Category: Video answers

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Video answers: Why the 737 doesn’t have landing-gear doors

Here are the answers to last Friday’s video, enjoy!

Suggested ICAO level for video: 5+

  1. Boeing wanted the 737 to be low to the ground, as a result they realized that they didn’t have enough space for landing-gear doors.
  2. They’re heavy and complex, making the plane heavier and more likely to have a problem and cause delays.
  3. No, the landing-gear doors cover the wings and landing gear struts, but not the wheels.
  4. Boeing engineers decided to place hubcaps on the wheels to reduce the drag.
  5. If the hubcaps are lost there is a significant fuel penalty that the pilots have to apply to the flight plan.
  6. Boeing uses rubber blade seals to remove the gap between the wheel and the wheel-well bay.
  7. As the main landing gear is retracted, the brakes are applied to stop the wheels spinning.
  8. Icing doesn’t affect the wheels as the aircraft flies because that’s not an area of the plane that typically suffers from icing. Icing usually forms on wing leading edges, horizontal stabilizers, tail fin and the nose.

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Video answers: Overnight shipping

Here are the answers to last Friday’s video, enjoy!

Suggested ICAO level for video: 5+

  1. It’s an enormous company with more planes than Etihad, Emirates and Qatar Airways combined, approximately 650 planes serving 400 destinations.
  2. The superhub is in Memphis and is located there because it’s close to the mean population centre of the US.
  3. Hundreds of flights arrive there and are unloaded between 10pm and 1am. Then the packages are sorted for planes to begin taking off again between 2am and 4am.
  4. To operate to smaller destinations, smaller ATR and Cessna planes are used, which connect to the bigger hubs.
  5. No, not every package is sent through the superhub, secondary hubs help reduce the inefficiency of sending everything through the superhub.
  6. It’s very important because it’s directly between FedEx’s hubs in Memphis and Osaka, Japan and it’s heavily used as a location to refuel, swap crews and sort packages.
  7. They buy these aircraft because they’re cheap and often don’t fly for many hours during the day, which would lose the company money if they had more expensive planes.
  8. In general, it’s not the same for commercial airlines, which generally buy more expensive planes and use them for as many hours per day as possible. However, some airlines buy cheaper planes and can use them less while still making a profit.

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Video answers: Why are the 737 engines flat?

Here are the answers to the previous video, enjoy!

Suggested ICAO level for video: 5+

  1. It was designed in 1960s.
  2. Designing it to be low to the ground made it easier to load by baggage handlers.
  3. This characteristic became an issue for the 737 designers when they wanted to update it with turbofan engines which were much bigger than the previous turbojet ones.
  4. The solution was to redesign the engine pylons and move the engines further forward to the front of the wings and raising them a little. Also, by making the engine intake a little flatter they were able to gain a few more centimetres of clearance from the ground.
  5. Landings are sometimes performed with a slight bank angle and this could cause engines which are low to the ground to hit the runway, so making them as high as possible is desirable.
  6. A lot of equipment was moved to the side of the engines, making them wider.
  7. The MAX has a higher ground clearance to accommodate the new LEAP engines. This means that the MAX doesn’t have the iconic engine shape of former 737 generations.

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Video answers: How Airlines Price Flights

Here are the answers to last Friday’s video, enjoy!

Suggested ICAO level for video: 5+

  1. It was chosen because it’s one of the most competitive routes in US and thus one where pricing strategies are very important.
  2. The cheapest fare is $129 and it’s this cheap because Tuesdays are less popular for business travellers and thus have to be cheaper for leisure travellers.
  3. It’s interesting because there is price matching going on with this fare. When this price is available it’s because other airlines are also charging this price and each one is matching each other to remain competitive.
  4. They would do this as a way to drive another airline off that particular route, as when a bigger carrier drops the price significantly on one of their routes that has recently been taken up by a another, often, low-cost carrier. The bigger carrier can absorb the loss on this route for much longer, while the smaller one has to stop operating the route to remain profitable.
  5. A certain number of tickets are sold at each price point, when that number of tickets are sold, the price point increases to the next category. Sometimes though, the price will increase automatically because the of the proximity of the departure date, regardless of how many tickets have previously been sold. There can also be seasonal variations for these prices.
  6. The return flight is cheaper because it includes a minimum stay requirement of seven days at the destination, while the one-way ticket has no minimum stay requirement. This minimum-stay requirement policy allows airlines to discriminate against business travellers and require them to pay more for their fares.
  7. They have very different prices depending on the competition on the route, with more competition, the route becomes cheaper.

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Video answers: The plane of the future

Here are the answers to last Friday’s video, enjoy!

Suggested ICAO level for video: 5+

  1. It regretted the decision to end production of the 757 program.
  2. It has left them with the problem of not having a modern plane with between 231 and 358 seats.
  3. The market wants a middle-of-market plane that can fly longer distances and carry 250+ passengers.
  4. Boeing plans to make a middle-of-market plane with between 225 and 260 seats. Boeing intends to call it 797.
  5. Airbus is offering the A321LR as a solution, but it’s not quite as big as the airlines would like and will probably only be used temporarily until the 797 is built.
  6. Manufacturers are looking into electric planes that could make flying competitive in price with trains or even buses.
  7. It might be particularly useful for shorter regional routes, between 200 and 400 miles in distance.

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Video answers: ‘Can an airport be green?’

Here are the answers to last Friday’s video, enjoy!

Suggested ICAO level for video: 5+

  1. The use of elements of the natural world in terminal designs is becoming more popular nowadays.
  2. The expansion project at Oslo airport exemplifies this characteristic.
  3. They achieved their objectives by using simplicity with terminal signage, by keeping the airport as quiet as possible, by adding trees to the food court and by adding green walls and waterfalls.
  4. Large floor to ceiling glass panels allow as much daylight as possible into the building.
  5. Snow which is collected during the winter helps to cool the building during the summer.

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