Wide-body Aircraft - Design Considerations

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.