Agree completely as a L-UAL guy. Fences are just an artificial carve-out to protect a distinct group of pre-merger pilots, often at the expense of other pilots from that pre-merger list. Fences are a signal of a failure to craft a comprehensive solution that applies to the whole group.

 

As well as the end of an Airbus wing, don't leave that one out.

 

Even Airbus decided that fences are not that great and they are not retrofitting most 320's with guppy style winglets.

 

Well played sir well played.

Helps tie into the point that they are outdated, not as efficient as current methods, and really don't have place

 

Many of the 747 guys may have a different take on the fence. For one, the 747 didn't get caught up in the daily Black and Blue fights for "best practices" and had a fairly stable work environment during this time. To a lesser extent the "undesirables" got protection from the fence on the 787, but it did make it easy to find them.

Bottom line, there likely would not have been much of a difference in seats/bodies movement without the fence. The big impact areas were Sparky setting itself on fire and getting grounded and indecision by Jeff on his MASTER PLAN with costly base opening and closing moves for the 747.

We should all give thanks to JP for insisting on pay-banding the 767-400 and Sparky to the 747/777. This may have been a driving force for the fence in SLI. Bright side is more people making more money on these fleets long term.

 

Agree with a lot of what you say except the part about 747 pay the same as sparky. Essentially, the 747 now makes 767 pay.

 

And.....the guppies are getting the split scimitars that look similar to wingtip fences...

 

Thread drift ahead!!

Very interesting though if you read Boeing's white paper on wing tips and flow effects doing research on winglets.

If you look at the new guppy wing tip from the side, it looks a lot like a dolphin, or whale's tail. I guess nature knows her stuff.

 

......... or co-workers