[Fictional] When time and speed are essential!

[ValAstur 1,198]

All characters appearing in this thread are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

 

Please read the text first. It makes it more interesting!

 

Farnborough, 15th July 2014

Planes from every era and every branch are standing on the fields and in opened hangars being watched by fans of aviation.

One hangar stays closed with no name on it and no sign indicating its content.

Michael Holte, journalist from FLUG REVUE has an appointment with the CEOs from Dassault Aviation (Francois Moyen) and Air France (Jean-Marie Petit), where both will probably announce a new joint venture in civilian transport. Since no information was leaked, Mr. Holte does not really know what he has to expect.

Holte: Mr. Petit, can you please tell me what is it about that rumour, that both Dassault and Air France formed a joint venture for a new way of civilian transport.

Petit: Well Mr. Holte, first of all I would like to ask you to keep all classified until we unveil what will be a new exclusive service of Air France. The official presentation is scheduled for tomorrow twelve o'clock.

Holte: Of course.

Petit: You maybe made the same experience once. You miss a plane for reasons you could not prevent and worse, you lose an important opportunity to get a great story. Well, the customers we want to serve in this new service are exactly those,

          who need to be elsewhere in short time. When you miss a plane and nothing else can bring you faster to your destination. When time and speed are essential! That's where our new service somes into action! Apart from flight schedules and

          standard flight routes, our new aircraft only needs open airspace to travel. We took several possibilities into consideration and we decided in favour of Dassault Aviation, supporting the french economy by the way (laughs).

Holte: And what is this new plane? Mr. Moyen?

Moyen: The plane is a heavily modified Mirage 2000B, now designated 2000AF.

Holte: A Mirage 2000AF?! But how?

Moyen: The plane has been stripped from all warfaring equipment, avionics have been reduced to serve navigational purposes only. The only things that have been left in the plane are the countermeasure dispensers. You never know when

             some hot jocks launch a missile at you (laughs).

Holte: Have there been modifications to the engine?

Moyen: The engineers at SNECMA managed to reduce the fuel usage by improving the combustion process by achieving a higher thrust, both dry and wet. Improvements were effectuated by using lighter and more resistant materials, which

             does also contribute to reduce the plane's weight achieving another reduction in fuel burn. We are speaking of net weight reduction of 9.7 percent by a thrust increase of 12.1 and a fuel usage reduction of 9.5 percent.

Holte: Mr. Petit. How will this service be called, what will be the price for transportation and what services do you offer to the passenger?

Petit: The service will be called V.I.P. Express Service. Prices for transport have not been fixed yet, but we think that they will be in the five-figure area, starting at around 20.000 euros.

         The onboard services are pretty small, since the plane does not offer a place for a stewardess (smiles). The passenger will be seated behind the pilot at the former WSO position. The passenger has the possibility to entertain himself with  

         movies, music and internet. The plane sports a internetconnection via Satellite with 256bit-security, enabling the passenger to continue his work even in air. We are negotiating with several movie and music providers for streaming contracts

         to offer the passenger a widespread variety of media, including the newest movies and music.

Holte: How about personal security of the passenger and who will pilot the planes?

Petit: All passengers have to read and sign a disclaimer, that they know the risks of using this service and therefore neither Dassault nor Air France could be charged for any harms caused to the customer. In the case of being shot down or a

         massive malfunction of the plane, the ejection seats have been preserved but the ejection process can only be initiated by the pilot. This was added to prevent ejection of the passenger in panic leading to the loss of the plane.

         The pilots are all former Armee de l'Air pilots, which already flew the combat version during their career. This way we don't need to invest money and lose time training our civilian plane pilots.

Holte: How much time will it take between the purchase of the ticket and taking off?

Petit: We aim to get our customer in the air within one our after the signing of the disclaimer.

Holte: What destinations will be offered?

Petit: First we will serve inside France, but we plan to expand all over Europe if the service is accepted. We will now proceed to do some final checks and tests and think that we can start this service at the end of this year at latest.

Holte: Thank you both very much for this interesting interview. Now I can't wait to see the plane!

Both Moyen, Petit: Thank you.

Petit: Remember. Tomorrow twelve o'clock.


The next day at Farnborough, the great moment has arrived and the Hangar opens:

 

 

 

 

Rolling to runway

 

Entering runway

 

Pilot and Passenger

 

 

Closing canopies for liftoff

 

 

 

Reached altitude and aproaching travel speed

Edited June 7, 2013 by ValAstur

[+Cliff7600 1,120]

Air France pilots syndicate would not allow that! xD

 

Nice skin, nice story. Can I keep my bag aboard?

[+Spillone104 553]

Nice businness class jet!

Some months ago me and Dysko had quite a similar idea for our national airline and originally intended as a supersonic trainer for the Concorde. The idea is born since Alitalia had 4 MB-326 to train pilots for the new jet fleet in 1960.

Here some screens:

[ValAstur 1,198]

Hey Spillone

 

Those Starfighters are looking completely aweseome!

 

Air France pilots syndicate would not allow that! xD

 

Nice skin, nice story. Can I keep my bag aboard?

 

Of course. But during take offs and landings your bag has to be stored .

Edited June 7, 2013 by ValAstur

[wrathbringer21 44]

Pretty nice idea.

Not too long ago I found this proposed project of a low-cost conversion of an F-106 to a business jet:

 

 

 

And an edited cutaway from: http://www.zonamilitar.com.ar/foros/threads/cutaways-cortes-esquem%C3%A1ticos-de-aviones.24700/page-80#post-1299835 :

 

[Stratos 3,167]

Interesting story, maybe when everything collapses we will see high ranking executives flying like this.