THE world’s biggest passenger plane thought to be twice the size of a Boeing 747 and carrying nearly 1,000 people was first designed decades ago.
The double decker super plane was thought up in 1996 by Lockheed Martin and would’ve blown any other passenger jet out of the sky.
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Officially called “The Lockheed Very Large Aeroplane” the jet lived up to that name as it weighed in at a whopping 635,000kg – over triple the weight of a Boeing 747.
Made up of four very powerful engines and a massive 282ft wingspan the plane was set to take flying to the next level.
At 262ft long it ranked as one of the worlds longest aircrafts at the time and still to this day is near the very top of the tree.
Because of the behemoth size of the plane it would require a specialist runway and modified airports just to allow it to be stored.
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Luckily the impressive wings could move to help reduce the width bringing it to 211ft.
It could’ve flown 450 passengers on each side of the plane and be made up of the usual three classes.
A staggering 17 different seats per row make it even more unbelievable as a concept, as today the maximum seats across is only 10.
One other clever design idea was to carry the masses of people on top of the jet and have a seperate storage floor for huge containers full of goods people had paid to fly across the world.
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Despite all these great concepts and thoughts the main issue was the sheer weight of the huge aircraft.
As it weighed over 600,000kg by itself when you crammed in people, luggage, containers and everything else essential for a cross continent journey the weight skyrocketed.
As a result it could only manage short journeys of a maximum range of around 5,900km – almost 2,000km short of the Boeing it was trying to usurp.
Nonetheless the plane could’ve theoretically taken the 900 onboard from places like New York to London.
But anything outside of range – mainly to Asia or the Middle East – was utterly useless for the aircraft, no matter how big it was.
The manufacturers remained hopeful that there was a sure fire market for the jumbo jet though and thought they could sell up to 370 models.
These planes also didn’t come cheap to make, setting you back half a billion per jet in today’s money.
Back in the 90’s it was estimated to be a mouth-watering $300million for just one to be fully completed meaning potential buyers were instantly looking for guaranteed success in the skies.
But the plane never took off and the reason for it was exactly as you’d expect.
Lockhead published a damming report of the concept idea and admitted they had no idea how to build such a plane or the resources to do it.
They even suggested partnering up with its main rivals Boeing and Airbus so the idea could get off the ground.
Reports went on to show the total they’d need to make the planes would be reaching around $18billion – something that just wasn’t feasible at the time even between the three air giants.
Other major drawbacks of the idea was the ear-piercing noise it would make taking off.
Being so heavy and needing four super strong engines, the plane would have to reach a mega speed to take off and land as they require a lot of energy to be used.
It would’ve also caused major delays to other planes because of the air vortex it would leave behind.
Essentially, mini tornados would plague runways as it came in carrying so much force and velocity, blowing air across the airports.
The other major flaw came from what a plane that size would mean for existing airports.
New gates, runways, hangers and even vehicles used to service the plane before it takes off again would be needed to deal with this new mega plane – costing an additional huge chunk of cash.
The plane had the potential to literally crush a lot of runways currently used because it weighed so much.
Other safety issues would be on emergency landings.
The size of the plane meant it couldn’t safely avoid certain areas and if it was to end up in the sea or ocean it would almost immediately start sinking.
To make matters worse, evacuating the jet could’ve taken literal minutes to do in an emergency situation meaning it would be totally unsafe.
Even just boarding and exiting the plane on a normal flight, passengers would’ve been hit with longer wait times due to the number of passengers having to find their seats and walk off.
Lockheed Martin wasn’t satisfied with the mammoth vehicle just being able to fly as they also tried to make one that could remarkably sail across seas.
Much like the plane this idea didn’t get very far and we never got to see it in action.
A similar idea did come to fruition years later in the Airbus A380 and found some success.
The iconic A380 went on to fly over 800,000 flights, carrying more than 300 million passengers since its first flight in 2005.
It is to this day the world’s largest passenger airline and the only full length double decker jet to have existed.
But even that has now stopped production due to the massive production costs.
Lockheed are famous for their innovative projects – even if many of them never end up becoming a reality.
The Lockheed Ring Wing was set to be the first passenger plane to have only one huge circular wing.
It was designed to use up less fuel, have smoother landings and be able to land on tiny runways.
Earlier this month, a supersonic plane that promises to be the next generation of commercial travel announced it was in the works.
Designed by Oscar Viñals from Barcelona, Spain, the spaceship-like aircraft looks like something straight out of Star Wars and can carry 300 passengers in ultra-lux flights.
It is also powered by electricity and reaches a top speed of around 1,150mph.
NASA has also been working on a supersonic hydrogen plane that aims to be twice as fast as Concorde.
The US space agency has been researching the possibility of a Mach 4 passenger jet that only takes 1.5 hours to get from New York to London.
If the plane was to achieve that flight it would be four times faster than what’s currently possible with commercial aircraft.
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