Lets say there are 52 windows and each shade weight 2 pounds which I don't think they do. That is 104 pounds on a 380,000lb aircraft. That is .02% of the weight of the aircraft.
There's also the cleaning and maintenance aspects. I would guess the pull-down shades broke/tore more often than the dimming technology fails (repairing either would require pulling the seat row and wall panel to get access, so more reliable == win)
The actual number is almost double that, but that doesn’t negate your point. More than weight, I think it was seen as a “nicety”. I think with the new Gen 2 (and soon Gen 3) Windows, people won’t mind them as much as the newer generations are MUCH darker.
If there were a 100 windows lets assume there are 1 on each side so that is 50 rows. lets say first 10 rows are first class. That would leave 40 rows. Its 9 seats across that is 360 people. There 1st class rows have 4 across 787 does not hold 360+40 people.
Also it doesn't get all the way dark. I just feel it was a piece of engineering that doesn't need to be there in my opinion.
I have friends that are involved in aircraft design. They tell me they count every tie wrap for wiring vs. weight requirements. The remove as many moving parts as they can to cut mantaince cost.
I worked at a company that made a complex piece of networking equipment. On the board they spent a ton of time engineering out caps. They only cost a few cents per board. The cost was not the issue. It turns out that removing as many as they could upped the MTBF by 40%.
Everything is never that simple. Boeing did not just add this type of window because they thought it was cool.
Correct, but not every window aligns directly with a row.
Let’s use an UAL 787-8 for example. There’s ~10 windows per side in first class, but yet only six rows of seats (6x6 = 36 seats for about twenty Windows). In economy, there’s about 32 windows (give or take 2) on each side and yet only 20 outside rows. The middle section has 21 rows, all sections having three across seating, for a total of 183 seats in economy.
> Also it doesn't get all the way dark.
As I said, the Gen 2 windows (just rolling out now) and the forth coming Gen 3 help solve that problem. Rather than the dark blue of the current Gen 1 windows, each successive generation gets darker with the Gen 3 windows being 100x darker.
