Why Planes Don't Fly Faster

"Time is the enemy of the privileged few. Cost is the enemy of the masses." Well said.

"Time is the enemy of the privileged few; cost is the enemy of the masses" might be one of the best quotes for modern economics.

"Why don't we fly faster?" Because time is money, but not that much money, apparently.

"When someone says, 'Why don't they...' the answer is usually money." Robert A. Heinlein

What generates the most thrust in a turbofan is the bypass air and not the turbine. Usually the fan generates around 80% thrust and the turbine generates around 20%. There are some rare cases where the turbine generates more thrust, but in most high bypass turbofans (which are the most we use today) the fan is what generates most of the thrust.

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Its worth pointing out that although we may be flying no faster we fly a lot lot safer. The progress has been immense.

This video makes some very good points. For example, it’s never occurred to me that with flying, more than any other mode of transport, I (and everyone relevant who I know) never book flights by shopping around for the quickest flight. Ever. Whether the flight time takes say, 7h 31m or 6h 56m, never crosses my mind. By far the main factor is of course, cost. Followed far behind by factors such as stopover locations & numbers; airport convenience; etc etc. Interesting…….

OK... as an aviation nut and aerospace engineer, let me go through your wrongs: 1. Turboprops are only more common in commercial prop planes. "Most propeller planes" are piston, as they are far cheaper to buy and run then a turboprop. 2. Most (if not all) modern built fighter aircraft use turbofans. These are called "Low Bypass Fans", usually with ratios bellow 0.5 : 1 (The F404, engines on the FA-18, are 0.33 : 1 I think). Low bypass engines spin much faster then high-bypass engines (such as the ones on modern airliners), and many of them allow for aircraft to fly well above the speed of sound without afterburners (Known as a "Super-Cruise"). 3. "Concorde" does not use an article, IE, no "The" before Concorde (look it up!) 4. The insane ticket cost of Concorde did not kill it. Concorde was killed off for various reasons: for starters the crash of Flight 4590 in 2000 was a major role in it's death. This (combined with the sharp decline of air travel following the September 11th attacks) led to a decline of ticket sales for Concorde. Prior to 2000, most flights on Concorde were actually booked solid, despite costs. With the decline of passengers, ontop of the aging fleet and outdated technology used (one of the few planes that had a flight engineer at the time), led to the program ending in 2003. 5. The MAIN reason we don't go supersonic is also largly impart due to Sonic-Booms... You see, although Concorde was very inefficient for it's time, that was not the reason why it wasn't selling... It was the sonic boom! Thanks to test performed in 1964 over Oklahoma City, we learned that people get mad when we go supersonic over them. This meant that planes could ONLY fly supersonic over bodies of water. We have technology to make another supersonic passenger aircraft (Known as Supersonic Transports, or SSTs) that are far more efficient then Concorde (perhaps not as much as other airliners, but still) that fly super-cruise at speeds > Mach 2.0, but still don't as they are limited to overseas flights (which means essentially NY to London or Paris)... Sorry for the rant.

Points at 787 “THIS is brilliant.” Points at Concorde “But I LIKE this”

At 2:37 he says that most of the thrust comes from air going through the core. When I went to A+P school and became a certified mech, we were always taught that 75-90% of thrust comes from the bypass air produced by the fan.

Great video man, only small correction at 2:35 it's actually the other way around, the majority of the thrust actually comes from the bypass (on most commercial airliners)

do one about why old oceanliners aint no more

Pro tip, when you're talking about turbo prop aircraft, don't show footage of a piston engined Cessna 410.

The F-15's you pictured are NOT turbojets. They are turbofans with a lower bypass ratio than the cargo planes you started off talking about, and they are afterburning turbofans. There are hardly any pure turbojets left anymore, including the SR-71 Blackbird. Also, the F-15 tail number 042 from Kadena ("ZZ") is one of the aircraft I worked on when I was in the Air Force.

The other big advantage to high-bypass engines is noise abatement. The cold air sheath from the bypass surrounds the hot (noisy) jet exhaust from the core. Cold air is denser and absorbs the hot air and noise slowly, cutting down on sound.

The aircraft you showed as having turboprop engines actually is a piston engine aircraft, which are exept for the propellers quite diffferent from turboprop aircraft. The difference is that a turboprop is basically a jet engine driving the propeller and a piston engine is basically a car engine driving the propeller, of course this is quite simplified though. Piston engines are by far the most common in light aircraft, planes with up to ten or so passangers, but as you said in the video turboprops are most common in scheduled commuter airplanes. Other than that the video is spot on and I must say you did a grat job exlaining it!

So basically the answer to "Why planes don't fly faster" is money.

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Even if a commercial aircraft could theoretically fly supersonic, the transonic shockwave would damage the front compressor face. Concorde could fly supersonically because the intakes have variable geometry ramps which slowed down the airflow. Most transonic/supersonic aircraft have specially designed intakes to reduce the airspeed for the engine. One other point - the older military aircraft have turbojet engines. A lot of newer aircraft have low-bypass turbo-fans.