French Bee Could Become The Most Efficient Long Haul Carrier

It feels like we're back at the turn of the 20th century and the age of the great ocean liners, with each company trying to outdo the other in size, speed and economy. I'm just waiting for our "Titanic Event" because we all know its coming and it won't be pretty.

They're proud of this?? One flight on one of these flying sardine cans will eliminate any passenger from re-booking with this misguided carrier.

Sure, sure it all looks great on paper until someone puts and eye out or a wheel comes off.

Efficiency involves a lot more than fuel burn with hypothetical full loads.

Just on fuel:
If you've got 448 seats, but only sell half, then your fuel consumption per passenger mile is going to be a lot worse than a fully-loaded 350 passenger version. (And let's not go down the rabbit hole about the weight of a business class seat vs that of an economy one.)

i

hear

SUBSIDY!!!!!!!!!!

Not an attractive-sounding option for some reason. (:-)

"Let’s say, as we saw with the 787-9 Dreamliner, adding 10 passengers improves miles per gallon per seat by eight. The A350 with its 98 mpg for 315 passengers could, therefore, be boosted by 136 mpg, giving it a total mpg per seat of 234!"

The author calculated incorrectly by successively adding 8 mpg for each additional 10 pax. That's not how it works. The actual estimate is 98(488/315)=~152mpg. Then, as stated by the author, one must adjust downward for the additional weight.

Emergency evacuations in under 90 seconds????? Add a few more doors.

Fly me in the cargo hold on a slab. I'll be more comfortable.

During one of those flights I'd be begging for a French guillotine.

Used A380's are essentially free but they do cost more to operate than an A350 - but if you want 500 pax and humongous range thats how you do it. If I were starting up something like this - I'd buy an essentially free airplane, rather than a new one that I need to depreciate. Depreciation and operating costs are both deductible -

"Already, it operates the A350-900 with 411 seats"
"French Bee is planning to take its A350-1000 with a massive 488 total seats."

Yeah, no thanks

So this would explain why Qantas did these long haul tests , thankyou for heads up as they have reconsidered about flight plan and added a stop over in Singapore as they use to do many years ago.

Oh no! Not the bees!