Design Considerations
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 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
- Wider fuselage that reduces the overall aircraft length, improving ground manoeuvrability 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.
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