What if the B-52 was a passenger plane?

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[Hykje]

It would probably be very effective when it comes to getting the passengers to leave the plane -just open those big doors at the bottom of the plane.

[michaelripperger]

That awkward moment when the Bombay doors opened and you lost 75 passengers

[modrak]

One huge factor: even if you ignore the huge load-bearing ribs when placing seats, the rear of the B-52 is not pressurized, nor designed to be…so you’d arrive with lot of suffocated and frozen cargo 😅

[weatheranddarkness]

Love how at 3:39 you’re like “oh yeah 4 seats wide no problem” and then overlay the seats and the seatback is fully sticking outside the fuselage.

[davidshepherd]

The first thing that came to my mind was those 8 engines - I mean the main reason airlines recently retired 747s was due to modern 2 engined airliners now being able to do what once needed 4 engines. I imagine most airline execs would laugh at anyone who pitched the idea of an 8 engined airliner.

[JechtAruon]

As I was a crew chief on the B52 H. One flaw is your upper seating deck is all fuel tanks and if you take them out then your range is cut drastically. Sure during Vietnam on the D models they did do the big belly mod of taking out the mid body tanks to put more bombs in the bays. Also I doubt you get 4 seats and a center isle in that fuselage. The landing gears takes up a huge area and goes pretty much to the bottom of the fuel tanks. In the end you would never get a B52 to use in the civilian aviation as the H model are nuclear capable. No way they will give anyone access to that. It to mention current engines on the bomber can use 3 to 4 quarts of oil in a 8 hour flight. Also the ride isn’t that great. Tastier to take the tankers which are basically commercial airframes and convert those. Even cargo planes would be better suited.

[pegcityeva]

I've been on a B52 at an airshow. Saying it was cramped was an understatement.

[MatthewAnderson]

The advantage the Tu-114 had was mainly due to the fact the Tu-95's fuselage was removed from the equation and a totally new, larger fuselage was put in its place. The same was done by Convair with their experimental XC-99 cargo and troop transport, built out of the B-36B, Consolidated turning the B-24 Liberator into the Model 39/R2Y LIberator Liner and by Boeing itself funny enough, with the B-17 Flying Fortress into 307 Stratoliner and the B-29/B-50 Superfortress into the C-97/377 transports, tankers and airliners. Likely, the same would need to be done with the B-52. Same control surfaces and landing gear, but the fuselage is a totally new design that has very little in common with the original airframe. In terms of jet bombers, the Avro Vulcan and Convair B-58 both had planned airliner/transport versions, which never got off the drawing board.

[tgunner]

The Tu-114 required an entirely new fuselage for conversion from bomber to passenger plane.

[MasterSanders]

Even when I was little and first getting into planes, I’ve always wondered why the B-52 was never made into an airliner. I love these sorts of presentations.

[eronavbj]

Having flown on B-52s during my years in the USAF, I was curious to see how you were going to modify the interior of this plane to address passenger comfort. I know how confining it was with just six or seven airmen aboard, so the idea of hundreds of passengers was unthinkable to me.

We had a “relief can” that served as our comfort station. It was located just behind the navigators' position in the lower deck, and it was NOT private—this was the military after all. The truly massive structure of the bomber was its wings, which in large part helped carry the quarter-million-plus pounds of fuel that give the plane its extended range.

Military gear in general is not designed for human comfort, but for utility, so form must follow function. Ergo they are designed from the ground up. Ditto with airliners.

Interesting video nonetheless.

[ThatBaritoneGuitarGuy]

I once saw a comic of a B-52 with warp nacelles. The subtitle was "Are they EVER going to retire that thing?"
I believe it.

[DefinitelyNotEmma]

A similar question I always had was what if the A350 was turned into a bomber. Considering neither France nor Germany have a dedicated bomber aircraft currently.

[gordonslippy]

The AA livery looks great on the B-52!
This just goes to show how quickly airplane design advanced in the mid 20th century, and of course, how planes are purpose-built.

[attemptedunkindness]

I, for one, would enjoy being deployed into my vacation spot like a strategic warhead.

[CB-keeq]

Am I alone in finding the irony in the Soviet Tupolev airliner having upper and lower class seating arrangements. 😂

[DrPotato]

Who here is trying to extend the b52s life span who

[atomicsnarl]

Fun to think about! Keep in mind the high wings require a wing box structure to connect to the fuselage and each other, so no passengers in that area either.

[mattbite]

When you calculate the weight of a typical passenger, you forgot to include the weight of the seat and cabin floor beneath that he/she will sit on :) Also, the bunk cargo shelves and windows alongside the fuselage will weight the whole aircraft down quite some.

[avrahamhirsch]

The B-52 has 8 low bypass turbofans. They built it with 8 engines for redundancy, but it's incredibly inefficient. If the USAF is paying, it's not a huge issue, but commercial airlines wouldn't want that.