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"Jumbo jet" redirects here. For other uses, see Jumbo jet (disambiguation).
The Airbus A380 is the world's largest and widest passenger aircraft.
Size comparison between a Sukhoi Superjet 100 (narrow-body) and an Ilyushin Il-96-300 (widebody aircraft)
A wide-body aircraft is a large airliner with two passenger aisles, also known as twin-aisle aircraft. The typical fuselage diameter is 5 to 6 m (16 to 20 ft). In the typical wide-body economy cabin, passengers are seated seven to ten abreast, allowing a total capacity of 200 to 850 passengers. The largest wide-body aircraft are over 6 m (20 ft) wide, and can accommodate up to eleven passengers abreast in high-density configurations. By comparison, a typical narrow-body airliner has a diameter of 3 to 4 m (10 to 13 ft), with a single aisle, and seats between two and six people abreast. Wide-body aircraft were originally designed for a combination of efficiency, passenger comfort, and to increase the amount of cargo space. However, airlines quickly gave in to economic factors, and reduced the extra passenger space in order to maximize revenue and profits. Wide-body aircraft are also used for the transport of commercial freight and cargo and other special uses, described further below. The largest wide-body aircraft, such as the Boeing 747 and Airbus A380, are known as jumbo jets due to their very large size.
1 History 2 Design considerations 3 Engines 4 Interiors 5 Wake turbulence and separation 6 Special uses 7 Future development 8 Widebody specifications 9 Gallery 10 See also 11 References 12 External links
Boeing 747, the first widebody passenger aircraft, operated by Pan American World Airways
Following the success of the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8 in the late 1950s and early 1960s, airlines began seeking larger aircraft to meet the rising global demand for air travel. Engineers were faced with many challenges as airlines demanded more passenger seats per aircraft, longer ranges and lower operating costs. Early jet aircraft such as the 707 and DC-8 seated passengers along either side of a single aisle, with no more than six seats per row. Larger aircraft would have to be longer, higher (such as a double deck), or wider in order to accommodate a greater number of passenger seats. Engineers realized having two decks created difficulties in meeting emergency evacuation regulations, with the technology available at that time. During the 1960s, it was also believed that supersonic airliners would succeed larger, slower planes. Thus, it was believed that most subsonic aircraft would become obsolete for passenger travel and would be eventually converted to freighters. As a result, airline manufacturers opted for a wider fuselage rather than a taller one (the 747, and eventually the DC-10 and L-1011). By adding a second aisle, the wider aircraft
could accommodate as many as 10 seats across, but could also be easily converted to a freighter and carry two eight-by-eight freight pallets abreast. The engineers also opted for creating "stretched" versions of the DC-8 (61, 62 and 63 models), as well as longer versions of Boeing's 707 (-320B and 320C models) and 727 (-200 model); and Douglas' DC-9 (-30, 40, and -50 models), all of which were capable of accommodating more seats than their shorter predecessor versions. The full length double-deck solution was not realized until the twenty-first century, in the form of the Airbus A380. The widebody age began in 1970 with the entry into service of the first widebody airliner, the four-engined, partial double-deck Boeing 747. New trijet widebody aircraft soon followed, including the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 and the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar. The first widebody twinjet, the Airbus A300, entered service in 1974. This period came to be known as the "widebody wars". After the success of the early widebody aircraft, several successors came to market over the next two decades, including the Boeing 767 and 777, the Airbus A330 and A340, and the McDonnell Douglas MD11. In the "jumbo" category, the capacity of the Boeing 747 was not surpassed until October 2007, when the Airbus A380 entered commercial service with the nicknameSuperjumbo. In the mid-2000s, rising oil costs in a post-9/11 climate caused airlines to look towards newer, more fuel efficient aircraft. Two such examples are the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Airbus A350 XWB. The proposed Comac C929 and C939 may also share this new widebody market.
Cross-section comparison of Airbus A380 and Boeing 747-400
Airbus A300 cross-section, showing cargo, passenger, and overhead areas
Although widebody aircraft have a larger frontal area (and thus greater form drag) than a narrow-body aircraft of similar capacity, they have several advantages over their narrow-body counterparts:
Larger volume of space for passengers, giving a more open feeling to the space Lower ratio of surface area to volume, and thus lower drag on a per-passenger/cargo basis. The only exception to this would be with very long narrow-body aircraft, such as the Boeing 757
Twin aisles that accelerate loading, unloading, and evacuation compared to a single aisle (widebody airliners typically have between 3.5 and 5 seats per aisle, compared to 5-6 on most narrow-body aircraft)
Reduced overall aircraft length for a given passenger or cargo capacity, improving ground maneuverability and reducing the risk of tail strikes.
Greater under-floor freight capacity Better structural efficiency for larger aircraft than would be possible with a narrow-body design
British and Russian designers had proposed widebody aircraft similar in configuration to the Vickers VC10 and Douglas DC-9, but with a widebody fuselage. The British Three-Eleven project never left the drawing board, while the Russian Il-86 widebody proposal eventually gave way to a more conventional wing-mounted engine design, most likely due to the inefficiencies of mounting such large engines on the aft fuselage.
Mechanic working on a Rolls RoyceTrent 900 engine during testing. The Trent is a typical type of high bypass turbofan used in widebody airliners.
As jet engine power and reliability have increased over the last decades, most of the widebody aircraft built today have only two engines. A twinjetdesign is more fuel-efficient than a trijet or four-engined aircraft of similar size. The increased reliability of modern jet engines also allows aircraft to meet the ETOPS certification standard, which calculates reasonable safety margins for flights across oceans. The trijet design has been effectively dismissed due to higher maintenance and fuel costs compared to a twinjet. The vast majority of aircraft designs today have two engines, with only the heaviest widebody aircraft built with four engines (the Airbus A340, Airbus A380 and Boeing 747).
The Boeing 777 twinjet features the largest and most powerful jet engine in the world, the General Electric GE90, which is 134 inches (3.40 m) in diameter. This is almost as wide as the entire fuselage of a Boeing 737 at 148 inches (3.76 m). The massive maximum takeoff weight of the Airbus A380 (560 tonnes (1,200,000 lb)) would not have been possible without the engine technology developed for the Boeing 777 (such as contra-rotating spools). The Trent 900 engine pictured, used on the Airbus A380, has a fan blade diameter of 116 inches (2.95 m), only slightly smaller than the GE90 engines on the Boeing 777. An interesting design constraint of the Trent 900 engines is that they are designed to fit into a Boeing 747-400F freighter for relatively easy transport by air cargo.