Fun fact: every MD-11F has window plugs because McDonnell Douglas is only capable of making passenger and freighter conversion aircraft. Even the last MD-11 built as freighter also had window plugs.
I believe emergency exit doors are required to, but the rest are _legally_ optional. I have a feeling that the moment a carrier tries to do that in the US the FAA would step in for safety reasons since looking in from the outside can also be important in some emergency situations.
Windowless would be stronger, too bad the squishy things inside like natural light. Taking a flight weight pressure vessel then making a bunch of holes in it is a dump engineering decision in some respects.
I'd pay €100 extra just to have the experience of the Ryanair cabin crew forcing all the other passengers to look away from the window id paid extra for.
Do they really add to the strength of the fuselage ? Seems unlikely as that would require a fully riveted plug and seems unnecessary as the window frame was designed to function without such strength-member within it
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My comment does not fit any of the reasons you just listed. So there is no reason you should have incorrectly removed my comment. It seems like Boeing also has the mods paid off, or possibly mods are Boeing employees.
Probably saves a little bit of weight too. Having regular aluminum plugs instead of all that heavy glass & acryllic combo. (Acrylic isn't heavy but you get the point)
Saves a *ton* of weight actually. In my former life as a maintener, I lifted a whole lot of airliner windows. Each one is ~40 lb (18kg). Now 40 of those per side, two sides, and that’s 3200 lb (1451kg).
You replace them with aluminum plugs, where each one is maybe 2 lb (0.9kg), and an insulation blanket cover that literally floats like a leaf when you drop it, and you’re saving 3,040 lb (2379kg) per takeoff. It makes a huge difference.
Now, in order to support the weight and openings of the factory windows, there’s reinforcing structure on passenger aircraft that doesn’t have to be there on factory-built freighters, so purpose-built freighters will be significantly lighter than that.
I wasn't sure exactly how much lighter an equivalent size plug might be.
It's aluminum, but it has to be bulky enough for the pressure vessel.
Thanks for the details though!
When talking about aerospace, it's all about weight, and the little things add up. It's not a plane, but the best example I know offhand is the external fuel tanks for the Space Shuttles and SLS rocket. That orange colour is the sprayed-on foam insulation, which was initially painted white for UV protection (for the first two flights). A NASA engineer figured out that the paint actually didn't protect the foam, and it was left off all subsequent launches, saving 600lbs and however many man-hours painting them took.
In the last year of WWII, B-17s and B-24s went into combat with shiny bare aluminum. They figured the camo paint simply wasn't worth the effort and the weight after the Luftwaffe got nerfed.
Which led to the bare metal livery on some of the most beautiful postwar aircraft. The F-104 might have been a mediocre at best fighter, but IT SHALL RIDE ETERNAL, SHINY AND CHROME.
Yeah, I know it got a lot of the poor reputation mostly from export customers trying to turn it into a multirole fighter-bomber. Need to read more about it in USAF service, never really understood why they lasted so long with everyone else but barely lasted ten years with the US.
The U.S.A.F. knew it wasn’t a dogfighter, the bomber intercept mission basically evaporated with the proliferation of ICBMs, and Lockheed bribed other countries to buy it for unsuitable roles. Not one of Lockheed’s most glorious moments.
Was a huge public ordeal in post war rebuilding/arming Germany due to a long succession of crashes, deaths and spiralling costs. Starfighter affair if someone wants to look it up
The interceptor role vanished, but the Air Force kept the F-106s in service well into the '80s, though. That's what I've never been able to figure out.
The 106 wasn’t prone to the same fatal handling issues as the 104, the USAF already had them, and there weren’t enough F-4s to go around. The 106 was kind of the opposite of the 104 - it was pretty good at doing things it wasn’t designed to do, *and* it was rather ridiculously forgiving for an interceptor - witness the 1970 incident where a pilot got into a flat spin, ejected, the plane *got itself out of the spin and belly-landed in a field*, and the plane was recovered, repaired, and continued in service for years. Had that been a 104 it would have been a smoking crater, probably with the unfortunate pilot still inside.
Same with pretty much all post 1943 usaaf fighters too. Even 1943 mid production of the razorback p-47d-21's came in bare metal. The navy kept the blue schemes.
People in general don't think about how little things add up. I don't fly as much anymore, but for a few years pre-COVID I was flying 70-90 flights per year. I got to the point where if I could shave a couple minutes off of something I repeatedly did it would in aggregate save me hours. Just making a point of sitting a couple rows closer to the front of the plane, showing up to the airport a few minutes later, etc. added up quickly. And of course bigger things like absolutely never checking a bag saved me days and days of time sitting around in the long term.
Rockets are special, as you have the "tyranny of the rocket equation" to deal with: for every bit of extra mass you bring, you need more fuel to lift it into space and get it into orbit. But then you need even more fuel to handle the weight of that extra fuel, and then more fuel for the fuel for the extra fuel, and so on - so every gram that you add or subtract snowballs.
Planes have a much more linear relationship between extra payload and extra fuel consumption.
The metal has a higher strength and stiffness to weight ratio so they’ll be less weight. That small amount of weight times the number of windows, flights per year, years of service translates into lots more cargo moved.
I’d replace the win for economic reasons alone.
Aluminum window plugs are substantially lighter than the plastic laminate windows too…
The cabin linings are often stripped back too for the same reasons.
Something as simple as paint can substantially affect the payload of an aircraft too.
Pretty much all of them are pressurized. Special ones like Beluga and Dreamlifter have unpressurized cargo bays. Might be a few others as well I'm not aware of.
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On cargo aircraft I’ve worked on I’ve seen metal plugs in place of the windows and pieces of white plastic placed up against the inside of the windows to make them look like they’ve been plugged
I would be very much in favor being handled more like cargo on airline flights. Put me in a cozy box. Drug me so I sleep the entire trip. Wake up in Newark? Dream come true. Well, not the Newark part. But just think of how many more people you could fit on a plane?! And Air Rage? Virtually eliminated.
I’ll be posting this on r/unpopularopinion next.
You may be suprised. I worked at FedEx before and after college. When I worked the MD-11, we had several instances of live cargo including race horses and exotic cats transferring between zoos.
Thanks man, I appreciate it.
Been going through some rough times and just feeling extremely down about myself and my abilities.
Thanks for your compliment, makes me feel like I can at least still do something of value in this world, even if it's just a little Reddit post.
Hey friend, life is like being on a boat in the ocean. Sometimes you hit storms and big waves and see dark clouds. But just like real storms these dont last forever and you will emerge again into the calm waters and blue skies. Keep going. Eat good, sleep good, workout, chase hobbies.
I recognise the feeling friend
I could do so much more with what I was given, but all I do is make a mess of things
But it's not all bad friend, like you said, these tiny positive interactions we humans have, they're real.
You'd have to source air conditioners, windows, the seats and bin. And you'll need to reinstall everything for a lav like white and black water tanks, pumps, grey water drain, unless your plan is for people to never use the bathroom.
Interesting question.
Assuming you're talking in flight at some normal cruise altitude it would depend if the plane were pressurized or not.
If the cargo area is pressurized, outside air at -40C at 30,000 feet when compressed to 8,000 feet equivalent (what most passenger planes are pressurized to) would be about 150C. This is why there are always cooling packs on passenger air systems.
If not pressurized, then yes, it would be cold fairly quickly at altitude. Maybe not as cold as outside temp as there is always some sort of "waste" heat from hydraulics, pumps, electronics, etc., but pretty cold pretty fast!
It’s really really hot on the ground anywhere above 10C, since it’s a tin can in the sun.
And chilly, even quite cold on long flights, due to the long exposure to the very cold higher altitudes. (-45°C or lower).
And not just cargo, even commercial planes would have this issue, just delayed slightly due to perhaps better insulation.
The exact height depends on the aircraft model, but the cabin becomes taller once converted because all the bins and other cabin trim is removed / replaced with thinner one.
How much space is there above the ceiling in a passenger 747? I've loaded cargo 744 and 748 main decks and it seems like a massive space to fill on passenger plane.
I didn't take into consideration how much space is lost with the plastic roofing, good point!
Would it be a comparable height to lower deck, just with an opposite contour?
https://preview.redd.it/grvy3e5i3i0h1.jpeg?width=3827&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=835db8a37fddfe0325b9886badfafbddebd103d6
Here’s what the inside of an empty B777F looks like.
https://preview.redd.it/1g9i5knn1m0h1.jpeg?width=1163&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=640642d7ee3c9da97418ea1a3981840256696cb9
these are the drive wheels (pdus)
Majority or cargo airplanes cargo deck is pressurized. There are some oddballs here and there, such as Airbus Beluga, Antonov AN-10 and some others, they are few and far between.
Happy to see someone enjoys my photos. I took one of her today. Lots of activity surrounding her at the ramp. Can't wait to see her fly.
https://preview.redd.it/j084rejcyl0h1.jpeg?width=6000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=025a101e0bbc16b094be2a8128c489e95770a5f8
Yeah…but the 10s I flew had a window (no windows replaced…just painted over) left unpainted so on the off chance we had a gear problem in the daylight with the right load we might be able to get a look at the ‘red beer cans’.
Actually depending upon the cargo there was a chance. I mean one time we hauled one (1) gallon of alcohol from Kadena to Travis via Guam. Took a fair number of signatures. Getting back to see the ‘beer cans’ would not have been a problem…except for simply seeing the thing.
However you had two completely different set of sensors, wiring and lights for the gear. One set for the pilots and one for the FE. Eight green was best but one green per gear leg (four gear on the -30) you were good to land.
UPS permanently retired theirs, they aren’t bringing them back. FedEx is bringing their 29 left back and already has their first one back in service. Western Global has been radio silent on the fate of their fleet.
Not MD-11s but 10Tanker and Orbis are in the process of bringing their DC-10s back to service.
Plane's taken to an MRO who cuts a giant ass hole, installs the door actuator and installs a door. Plus obviously beefing up airframe and other structural mods but very simplistically, that's it
The same areas as a passenger version remain pressurized. And in some types there’s an altitude limitation to restrict the differential pressure due to the cargo door modification.
I was talking to my dad about the MD-11 and I had no idea he did a lot of consulting for Convair in San Diego and the fuselage sections were manufactured in San Diego before being shipped up to Long Beach for final assembly. Such beautiful planes.
Correct me if I am wrong but I heard a rumour from the people doing these conversions that in some regions the world, like Africa for example, it is specifically preferd to have cargo planes with windows retained. And it's just cultural preference as in it looks better that way than any other regulatory or cost argument.
Anyone from experience know if this is true as it does ring some of the racist bells when hearing it?
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