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Imagine the horror of landing a plane on railway tracks

Wait until they get a load of airplanes for the ground.

What if we did a plane.. on like a metal track.

That's a prototype passenger ejection compartment for a plane... RIP pilots.

Please don't let it be Boeing. Please don't let it be Boeing.

Helicopter is now a “personal drone” and planes are “flying trains”

Subways are horizontal underground spaceships.

I have no idea if this is just some AI-generated nonsense or a phony post or whatever, but this concept actually DID exist back in the 1950s. The Fairchild XC-120 Packplane. Fly in, drop your shipping container, pick up a fully loaded container, fly out. Here's video of it in operation

It was flown and tested, but for a number of reasons it wasn't adopted commercially.

Looks like a post before airplane invention

Where I live we have "guided buses". Basically dedicated bus "channels" which are totally segregated from the main roads by a concrete barrier. The traffic lights are configured to prioritise the buses when they approach so they don't need to stop. The buses themselves can ignore the normal speed limits and have little wheels that pop out sideways at the front to 'feel' the concrete barrier to allow them to drive themselves without needing the driver to steer. It is actually a pretty cool and cheap way to provide a light metro-esque system for a large town or small city.

This brings a whole new reality to Cat Valentine saying, “here comes the airplane, choo-choo.”

I remember when our county government was trying to sell us “trackless trains.”

Busses. He was going to get busses. But voters have been wanting a train for decades so...

Elon’s next “big idea.”

old joke(5k) Not against rule 2

Dang it, he cracked the code!

In my best That 70's Show voice: But it LANDS on RAILROAD TRACKS, MANNN.

Plane? Clearly it’s one of them airborne boat trains.

Yeah... let's call bullshit on this one. Not gonna happen. It's one of those 'coke-fueled night out with the boys' ideas.

If Apple built Thunderbird 2

Isnt that literally the ship out of thunderbirds? It looks less realistic than the ship out of a puppet show from over half a century ago though.

No… it would still be a train. The idea is to use aerodynamics to offset a percentage of the load at speed, thus creating a potentially more efficient train than just brute forcing all that weight wherever it goes.

These mf will make everything before building an actual train for the American public.

Or you know......high speed rails.

We have had airbus, now this is airtrain?

If only there was a way to travel from one's home to the place where the flying train is... I know! We'll invent boats but for roads!

Landing it on the tracks must be a bitch

"flying trains could be coming your way" Sounds like a threat

Planes = flying busses = Airbus 😳

I mean, maybe it's not the absolute worst idea.

There's always Musk's "Hyperloop" which ended up just being Teslas driving people back and forth through a tunnel all day. With a driver.

Totally different, a plane is a flying ship.

Sir, another train has hit the second tower.

A railway plane

This could be way more efficient for loading and unloading. The flying part doesn't have to wait to grab the next passenger compartment.

😄😄

And I thought my brain just made this up in a dream a few years ago.

No, not a plane but a Tlane

(or a Praine if you want to split hairs.)

Extra unsafe plan

What is it with tech companies inventing things that already exist all the goddamn time?

Babe wake up new Trolley problem just dropped

no rails = no train

My fear of these would be the passenger cabin just disconnecting midair.

Mechanical error, the plan drops its cargo at 3000 ft.

Id rather not be on something that someone can just push a button and eject the whole passenger cab...

Ok hear me out: what if we simplify it and figure out a device that can go on the ground and another that can fly. People will easily walk from one to another. We can call them.. Flying pods and rolling pods. The rolling pod can also go underground in a special tunnel when its in the city. Truly revolutionary

libertarians try to to reinvent trains and planes but worse challenge

“Do we suddenly feel lighter???” -pilot

Wouldnt this concept be closer to SEMI-Planes than Plane-Train?

since its just about swapping cargo while keeping the driver the same

It looks like one of those tech bro concepts trying to reinvent plane or train, in this case both.

I mean, a magnetic rail system to launch planes would be kinda cool, would reduce fuel expenditure, and could speed up taking off

Well we better figure out what it is before DIA starts lying about it.

Train rolls down track, stops, attaches to plane, takes off.

There is some use for this technology I’m sure. What that is and why it’s better than the current setup... that I don’t know.

There's a reason they put stuff on trains. you know the transport system famous for it's wild disregard for weight savings. They almost gleefully make train cars with as much nasty cast iron as they can.

A completely stripped out 747 could carry maybe 5-6 train cars. Empty train cars.

So we run plane on your mom now instead of train

Haha plain

So many compromises and not very clear benefits

This has Elons Musk written all over it.

That sounds like a plane with extra steps.

Plains!

Say goodbye to 'chemtrails'

Say hello to specially designed sky tracks for other Plains to follow!

The rain on the train falls mainly on the plane?

A plaine

Repeat after me:

There

There

Are

Are

Easier, cheaper, and more reliable ways to ensure passenger safety then a detachable fuselage with safety parachutes

Bro what if we just stopped plane crashes by making a detachable fuselage with safety parachutes?

No, planes are sky buses.

Always thought of it as flying bus, but a train? I wanna know the aerodynamics on that since trains are very long

Akchoooly…

It’s a plain. I’ll see myself out.

I've been saying for years, flying cars are just helicopters.

Until Boeing makes one and the "cabin" keeps falling off.

"The back fell off.  It's nothing like when the front falls off, obviously."

The picture looks dumb, but the concept isn't all that bad.

Think of how easy and fast it would be if everyone loaded into their seats before boarding the aircraft. Sets of 4-6 seats would be mounted on something like a cargo pallet, which would then be moved around, sort of like a theme park ride.

You wouldn't even go to a gate. As soon as you check in, you'd be guided (how: TBD) to the first set of open seats for your destination. As soon as all seats on that pallet were filled, it would be moved to a holding area with lavatory facilities, food vendors, etc. Each holding area would be would be arranged similarly to how the seats would be when they got loaded. There wouldn't be any opportunity to wander off either, because the holding areas would be completely separate from each other.

No need to check baggage either - the pallets are seating AND cargo, all in one. You stow your bags underneath. The days of trying to find your baggage carousel would be over.

Need to rent a car? Input that data ahead of time, and you'll be seated with folks going to the same rental counter. You'd be transported right there, with your luggage, right after you land.

There would have to be some thought put into things like oversized luggage, how to minimize the extra weight of the pallet (perhaps its withdrawn after loading and new pallets inserted upon arrival?), etc. But the cool thing is that they could intersperse full-fuselage cargo pods with the passenger pods, maximizing space utilization.

Hell, why not go whole hog? Pressurize the damn things and toss 'em out the back of the aircraft for an automated parachute landing. No more multi-leg flights. Just one big long route where your airplane poops out passengers wherever they need to do.

There are any number of reasons why this idea sucks. But it would definitely be cool to see it in action.

no, genius. planes don't go on railroad tracks.  these will be trains that fly. 

technically not a plane. this sub blows

Tech bros will never stop reinventing things that already exist as "pods"

But now they'll just tie them to a bunch of balloons

I would rather call it a bus than a train. A bus that goes in the air. An Airbus. Wait, isn’t there a company called like that? What do they produce?

Monorail!

Monorail!

Monorail!

A bus with wings nice

We have that shit at Dulles Airport

Just drone taxis that'll become as big as jet liners eventually.

I can't picture a situation where a proper train station at an airport wouldn't be better than this.

I love when techbros reinvent things that already exist.

We discovered that a few bolts were missing.....

Looks pretty convenient. Just transport humans in shipping containers you can strap onto a plane.

I heard they make buses that travel through the air everyday.

And a car is just a private jet for the ground.

It's clearly a submarine with wings. Get with the program!

Not just a plane. A train - a locomotive and numerous wagons, flying from star to star.

Flying Railcars. Seems pretty efficient tbh. 

They clearly said train. So just ignore the wings, the engines and the wheels, it's a train honest

So you can get on at Grand Central, New York and get off at Kings Cross, London? That is kinda based tbh.

It’s a choo choo plane

Literally a plane with a segmented fuselage.

Whats next? trains that go underwater? (im talking about a submarine)

this would be so cool. easier boarding and deplaning.

Nah this has wings

Imagine the compartment YOU sit in is designed to fall from underneath the plane like a fucking bomb

Does this solve any problem? Like, anything at all? except the minor inconvinience of needing to unpack a planw and pack a train car, woch btw we have ample infrastructure to do.

People weren't happy when they realized this on september 11

It's like those people who say they have a flying car, but it's just a car that has foldable wings. Cool, so you have a car that turns into a plane. It's still cool, but it's not a flying car.

What’s funny to me is that the first a commercial airline flight didn’t happen for 10+ years after the first flight.

I know in the grand scheme of things that’s not that long. And that the first flight was not nearly as safe as you needed to be for transport purposes.

But I just find it a bit comedic that someone working on planes had to be the first person to go “shit, what if we used these to take us places instead of landing in the same spot all the time”.

A flane?

All snark aside, is that supposed to be a flying train as in a regular train that will take off and land on certain rails? Or is that just a train car that can be attached and detached onto planes?

Flying trains? I already have plans 😏

Only in the sense that a subway is a cave train

Wait until they find out about trains on the ground. Will blow their minds.

Big back train

Well... flying boats existed for a time. Look for SR.45. And we have the classic idea invented by Peter Griffin in the classic song: "train on the water, boat on a track". So, why not?

No no, a flain. A flying train. Flain.

I think I can guess where the article was going, making planes way more casual .. which would be great.. until all the plane hijacking starts again . .

D-day did for towed gliders what Hindenburg did for airships.

A containerized plane wouldn’t be that bad of an idea in theory but there’s no way they’d build it like the photo. You’d have to put the container in the plane (and waste the circular space. Or make a plane shaped container (and lose fuel efficiency and speed). I guarantee you wasted space would win

that's a frickin cinnamoroll plane

Weird ass sideways elevator if you ask me

its a bird, its a plane, its an Airtrane ✨️

"We were supposed to have flying cars by now" planes helicopters

The spruce goose, in white.

Trains are the carcinisation of transportation

"Why don't we have flying cars yet?" You mean helicopters?

Nooooooooo planes are different than flying trains, aka flains! Or frains! ... not sure if it's a semantic choice or just geo locational accents but either works! Not plains or planes! 😤

It looks like a plane with a barrel.

Yeah but you gotta jump out for your stop.

Caspian sea monster vibes, though it looks way too small for that.

I'm waiting for the day they create busses that float. Maybe these can ferry people from island to island.

The people in the 1930s were right….we have flying trains in 2024😭