Interesting from the FT [1]:

Airbus said although the design was worthwhile enough to protect with a patent — like about 6,000 other ideas its engineers devise every year — it was not an immediate prospect for shuttling passengers from Heathrow to JFK. “This is not something that’s currently under active development,” Airbus said.

[1] http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ba80c518-6492-11e4-b219-00144...

One surprising thing I learned is that large companies like to mass-produce patents, even ones they have no intention of ever implementing or suing over. Why? Because they provide a MAD defense against patent suits. If Boeing ever sued Airbus for violating patents, Airbus could countersue and, odds are, each company is violating some patent of the other. Also, if each company has 10,000 patents applying to aerospace, it's going to take each company's legal team a lot of time to sort through them and figure out which ones they can countersue over. Time = money; a patent attorney's time especially so. So coming up with as many patents as possible makes it expensive (often prohibitively so) to sue over patents.

Your natural reaction might be to think this is an outrageous waste of people's time, and you'd be right. But if you don't do it, your competitors will and you will be vulnerable to patent suits that, because of how this works, are essentially impossible for you to avoid making yourself vulnerable to.

Make patents 100x more expensive and see if they still think that.

Yeah, we definitely don't want Airbus to come up with new ideas. Fuck those guys.

it will create a market where only the rich can get patents - precisely the opposite of what I presume you hope to achieve.

Keep patent costs the same, but reduce their lifetime to 5 years.

What problem would that solve?

People patenting ideas they have no serious intention of ever building. The maximum effort they'll make is stopping someone else from doing it.

Much better idea would be something similar to trademark: "If you don't defend it you lose it".

Similarly, if you're not utilizing it, then you probably don't need it.

This is why patents are "short". To offset the monopoly.

It's why you hear pharmaceutical companies whine patents are strong enough, they need them longer. Automobile makers, aeroplane makers, ship builders, and "industrial" companies that make machinery and equipment rarely complain, they are pretty much ok with their duration, they might like them a little shorter but could take it or leave it. And on the other end if the spectrum we have software companies who are forced into the game because of consumer electronics companies (for whom perhaps something between 5-10 years would be best) taking patents on "features" they wanted to make as software... And the software companies pretty much want 0-5 years because this stuff is a all mostly math, or irrelevant, or under better protection by copyright, etc.

Patent limits were devised as a one size fits all solution not taking any of this diversity into account.

I imagine it'd be uncomfortable to be seated at an angle askew to the takeoff/landing vector.

This happens in business class on many airlines (long haul). I've never felt it to be a problem at all.

Seating that's displaced far from the centerline of the aircraft would also be less comfortable during banked turns. The sensation of falling or rising would be greater the farther you are from the centerline because you're moving through a larger displacement around the axis, and also at a higher rate.

Incidentally this style of aircraft looks really wide and flat.

This, if you've ever ridden in the jump seats of a jet and felt your head and guts go sideways during climb out it is very disconcerting. You know that feeling that the jet it tilting way up when your sitting forward? You get the tilt is really sideways when you are sitting sideways. I expect you get used to it but it no doubt makes those seats hard to sell.

The seats of a plane are never sold uniform price, I guess except on southwest.

I'd take the side seats to save money, and others would as well. I also sit behind the engine when it's cheaper.

My bet is that airplanes will look just the same in 2070 as they did in 1970...

The only thing that needs to change imo is space. If you got an extra ft width on the seat and an extra 2-3 ft between each row the increase in comfort would significantly improve the experience. I'm not a big guy or a very tall guy (6ft1in) but space is my one complaint about air travel. I can deal with all the other BS but being uncomfortable with practically no way of improving it when on a flight longer than a couple of hours is so frustrating.

Edit: Obviously this is from the perspective of a passenger. Planes could become more energy efficient, faster etc. etc.

It exists: first and business class.

In fact, domestic first class fares in the US have been really cheap lately, often just a $100-200 premium over coach.

In Europe the cheapest way to get around is a budget airline like Ryanair or kin (often easiest too due to more flights at smaller airports). To go business means not only upgrading your seat, but your airline too, so you are talking £450 vs £45 for a return from London to Dublin.

Only? That's a lot of cash, man. At least for me it is. And that "only" is a 25-50% premium.

That's another night in a hotel, or slightly nicer meals, or an extra drink, or...

I wish I could flippantly toss around a few hundred bucks without a second thought. One day, maybe.

If they offered the same space for economy seats, the prices would be higher. This way you can make the judgement for yourself.

Seriously?

I had plenty of space before about a decade of whittling away space in coach without whittling away at the price (plus removing meals, adding bag fees, and so on).

I've had a choice for decades. Coach used to be a half-way pleasant one. Now it's steerage, and the passengers treated as such.

Well, most airlines. I'm partial to Southwest, for a number of reasons - one being I don't have to sit with my legs spread to accommodate the seat in front of me (6' tall).

I wonder how much rising fuel prices have balanced that reduction in services.

I am taller than you and struggle for leg room on any airline. I just deal with it and spend the money saved missing premium classes on other things.

Currently on a plane (6ft3in).

Honestly I think that most of what we've seen is horizontal innovation...we're essentially just making the experience "nicer" and not really doing anything about the technical aspect of traveling. We're not flying faster, planes are not any bigger (really, not that much), and the airport experience is terrible.

I think for the average passenger, that's very true. For frequent flyers, the airport experience has actually improved in many ways. Global Entry and PreCheck make airport formalities much less inconvenient (I sped through LAX immigration and customs in under 60 seconds on Wednesday). OTOH, most passengers were stuck in line for a very long time. The TSA is actually tolerable when you have PreCheck—I'm sitting in PDX right now and clearing security took no time at all, no one in front of me, no nude-o-scope, kept my shoes on.

But yeah, for most passengers it really sucks.

So making the flying unbearable first, then implementing (for an extra fee) PreCheck to make it a little better, you call an advancement?

Unbearable? We all know TSA and PreCheck was the result of 9/11. Remember the public outrage of the terrorists being allowed to sneak in knives to hijack the planes?

Little less known is how common hijacking was in the 1960s. Back then one could go straight to the gate from the airport lounge. No security check.

http://listverse.com/2012/10/27/top-10-us-airline-hijackings...

Some guy was even able to carry a machine gun onboard!

This was in the US alone. Most of security procedures today were the result of those events. When was the last time you heard of an hijack in the US?

So yes, airport security is real PITA, and ideally I'd love not to subject to it. But to say it was implemented on a whim is a gross neglect of history events.

Some airlines (like Delta) offer "economy comfort" seats which give you access at ticket purchase time to some of the best seats on the plane, including bulkhead and exit rows. I'm 6'7" so I always pay the extra bit for these seats. It runs anywhere from $25-100 one way.

I flew from Minneapolis to Taiwan earlier this year and those seats made all the difference. I had as much leg room as any business or first class seat I've been in.

The key is to make sure you use http://seatguru.com while you're picking your seats.

I could see something novel changing for smaller craft flying a few hundred km, so that loading passengers and cargo was far more efficient. e.g., an electric plane that was propelled into the air and then would glide the remaining distance.

Any aeronautical engineers around who could give us the TL;DR of just why it's a good idea to have a hole in the middle? To a layman (me) it would seem seriously destabilizing to have a hole that's perpendicular to the direction of flight, esp. since a delta wing seems to pull off more or less the same shape without the hole.

Not an aeronautical engineer, but understand that the cylindrical shape used in today's aircraft design is very good at containing the stresses of a pressurised cabin.

However, the design does mean significant pressure stress on the front and rear of the cylinder. This must be managed with extensive (heavy) structures.

A doughnut design, in theory at least, solves for this by removing "the ends" of the cylinder.

Initially I thought the "hole" was meant to be enclosed within the airframe, but it is there. See Fig 2 - Fig 8 in the patent application. They have even diagrammed a method for boarding passengers using retractable escalators from parallel hatches located on the forward and aft planes of the inner-torus, as well as using an elevator to board passengers from within the hole! Fig 9 - Fig 16 diagram the invention applied to a more conventional airframe (without the hole).

The patent title is "aircraft including a passenger cabin extending around a space defined outside the cabin and inside the aircraft." My understanding is that the patent covers the torus-shaped passenger cabin within any larger aerodynamic envelope as a method of reducing constraints related to cabin pressurization (the "hole" is incidental). Very interesting stuff. I'm not an aeronautical engineer or patent attorney.

Paragraph 0030 says that figure 2 is without the aerodynamic envelope. The aerodynamic envelope is labeled 22, and visible in figure 7. Other parts of the description mention how the hole can be filled with cargo or other items, and that a non-pressure skin can be used as a cover.

I think the donut hole would be used as unpressurised cargo space for luggage, moving the floor of the cabin closer to the bottom of the pressurised envelope, and reducing the strength and fastening requirements of having a pressure bearing floor separating the pressurised cabin space in the top half of a cylindrical aircraft fuselage from an unpressurised cargo space below.

I don't think any aircraft are built that way though, so I'm a little confused.

Layman here. Looks to me like the outside of the aircraft would remain solid, while these 'doughnut walls' would be strictly internal to help with airframe strength.

Another layman here. In claim 1 it refers to "a space outside the structure" which to me implies this is literally a hold right through the aircraft. EDIT: I think I'm wrong here, the structure refers just to the cabin.

Figure 2 shows it without the aerodynamic envelope. Figure 8 shows the cross section. There are hatches on the bottom which open up for loading and unloading. These can be used for stiffening, but don't need to withstand pressure so can be weaker.

In paragraph 0085, this interior unpressurized space can be used for luggage or freight. Or (paragraph 0094) to store the spiral staircase.

Neat idea. Minor correction: This is a published patent application, not a patent. According to USPTO records, it published last month, but examination has not begun.

> AIRCRAFT INCLUDING A PASSENGER CABIN EXTENDING AROUND A SPACE DEFINED OUTSIDE THE CABIN AND INSIDE THE AIRCRAFT

So then they're not deck chairs on top of the plane? I'm not much up on plane design, but where exactly is "outside the cabin, but inside the aircraft" ?

Read the friendly headline: it's a doughnut-shaped plane, meaning there's a hole ("outside the cabin") in the middle ("inside the aircraft").

I get it, it's just worded in a really strange way.

On closer inspection, it looks like it's not an actual hole, but merely unpressurized space: in the fuselage, but not in the (pressurized) cabin.

A brief scan suggests they are engulfing an unpressurized section of airplane volume since unpressurized sections don't weigh as much.

The passenger cabin extends around a space. That space is located outside of the passenger cabin, but inside the aircraft.

Will there be windows in the doughnut hole?

It looks like 2 exit doors.

On that note, how would this affect the all important question of how to most efficiently board an aircraft?

Am I the only one here wondering why the layout of an airplane interior be something patentable?

It's not "layout of an airplane interior" but "a way to strengthen aircraft of a certain shape." Something like this is patentable because it apparently wasn't obvious and seems to be a good improvement.

It should not be patentable, but, unfortunately, the bar is very low at the moment.

The silly aircraft engineers and their obvious physics. /s

Spaceplane?

This doughnut creates a neat lifting body design.