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The empty, dolphin-like, forehead of the A380 seems like it would be an amazing place for the first and/or business class bar, especially if it had forward-facing windows.

I realize in the A380's case there are crew rest and storage compartments in that space, but wondered if there have ever been any passenger planes outfitted with forward-facing windows to enjoy the view?

Lufthansa A380 Image source: lufthansa.com

Dan1701
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    Not a complete answer, but there were plans to build a plane with a viewing dome on top of the fuselage. I haven't heard anything more about it so I'm guessing that, unsurprisingly, it was never put into production. – KlaymenDK Aug 06 '18 at 09:48
  • so does anyone know why such a seemingly awesome view isn't used for something like a bar in the A380? – Wolter Aug 06 '18 at 12:30
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    Probably because of the cost, weight, and structural complications that large windows entail. Party Ark's examples are all older aircraft that fly lower and slower than modern ones. – KlaymenDK Aug 06 '18 at 15:19
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    Other than takeoff and landing, is the view from the front that much better than from the side? Enough to pay for the high cost of building it? During takeoff and landings, no one would be allowed in the view lounge anyway, so seems like the most interesting view would be wasted. – Johnny Aug 06 '18 at 17:47
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    I have heard recently of aircraft offering rooms with virtual windows (using fibre optic cameras to get an outside view, not sure how they make up for lack for viewing angles!), but building on that you could add front facing views!? – Wilf Aug 06 '18 at 20:27
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    The view from the front is always better. It stinks to have to sit facing sideways, craning your neck to see out a little porthole that always seem to mounted too low (or the seats are too high), especially around someone else's head. I have flying commercial for that reason, vs flying my own plane. All the way across the US for business I don't really have a choice, but I never look forward to it. – CrossRoads Aug 07 '18 at 00:10
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    From my limited experience of commercial flight, it seems that the great majority would rather watch in-flight TV than look out the windows. – jamesqf Aug 07 '18 at 17:07
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    There is a story about a wide-body (not sure if it was a 747 or a DC-10 or variant) commercial jet with a forward-mounted camera that would be shown on the screen in the main cabin during takeoffs but the practice was discontinued after one of the planes crashed after a takeoff and they realized the passengers watched the whole thing live. While it could be apocryphal, I'd appreciate if anyone could verify or debunk the story, either way. – Kelly S. French Aug 07 '18 at 21:31
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    Amtrak has Dome Cars (they are holdouts from the 1950s, maintained for their scarcity) that have forward views. They, too, are closed during takeoff and landi-- I mean initial departure from origin station and approach to terminus. The modern equivalent is the Superliner Lounge Cafe, which is pretty much huge windows floor to ceiling. Pressurization? Not gonna happen. – Harper - Reinstate Monica Aug 07 '18 at 23:20
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    @Harper. Via Rail in Canada also has dome cars. At least on The Canadian line between Vancouver and Toronto, but maybe on other lines as well. Most of them are also from the 50s, so they're probably pretty similar to Amtrak's. –  Aug 09 '18 at 20:52

4 Answers4

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We could start with the Tupolev ANT-20 with its rather daring forward-facing passenger gallery. [edit - the prime seat right at the front in the gallery was for the navigator and his equipment.]

ANT-20 source ANT-20

Like the Tupolev, most examples are inter-war. Here is the moderately successful Latécoère 521 being assembled showing its gallery beneath the cockpit [edit - seems this was only for the navigator, not for passengers] :

Latécoère 521 source

... and the more esoteric Caproni Ca.60 which would have made for an interesting journey had it entered service -

Caproni Ca.60 source

-- EDIT - one special mention for the Junkers G.38 which also had a sizable glazed area in the wings. Unfortunately as far as I can tell (and despite what Wikipedia says) neither the nose nor wings were accessible by the passengers, but rather used by the navigators and engineers, which seems like a missed opportunity. [ed. the wing area was indeed intended for passenger, see comments]

Junkers G.38 source

Party Ark
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    I was wondering why the Caproni Ca.60 looked familiar before I realized: Hayao Miyazaki animated that amazing aircraft in his film The Wind Rises. – tonysdg Aug 06 '18 at 14:15
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    Did the ANT-20's flight pilot/etc share the nose with the passenger gallery, or were they in the pod structure on the top? – Dan Is Fiddling By Firelight Aug 06 '18 at 14:25
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    @DanNeely the cutaway isn't brilliant, but it and the photo do show the cockpit area above and behind the gallery in a fairly conventional manner. The pod on top of the upper engine is not, despite appearances, for a person, but part of the cooling for the engine. There's a better cutaway here - https://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/6986518667 – Party Ark Aug 06 '18 at 16:24
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    thank you. That picture was clearer, or was after I went into the page source to find the full res version. For some reason Flickr was only showing the lower res version even though it had a better one available. – Dan Is Fiddling By Firelight Aug 06 '18 at 17:01
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    Interesting aircraft. I suppose any examples of this features would be pre-1970s, before they realized that having actual seats with paying passengers was really the best way to go. – Dan1701 Aug 06 '18 at 17:04
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    It's good to have a healthy skepticism for Wikipedia, but maybe you trust NACA aircraft circular 116 more. The wing of the Junkers G-38 held six passenger seats, three on each side. The walkway for engine inspection was behind the forward passenger cabin. – Peter Kämpf Aug 06 '18 at 21:50
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    Thank you that was really fascinating. While I agree that this was the design intention, I'm sceptical it would have been much used: to get to the leading-edge cabins from the passenger cabin, you'd have to clamber through the area marked 'passenger, freight, tanks etc.' in Fig 1, which the NACA report states would be where you'd put all the luggage ( https://c1.staticflickr.com/7/6110/6326590078_21c8fb58c8_b.jpg ), and then through the engine inspection doors. Which might have been a bit much for a refined passenger. On the other hand, who'd want to miss an experience like that? – Party Ark Aug 06 '18 at 23:31
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    Here's a contemporary artist's impression. While there are a few errors, it does give a good idea of how the G.38 was divided, and the only view I've found of what it might have been like to be inside the wing as a passenger - https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-T0l0zPeCTcs/V450-_X3rXI/AAAAAAAArA8/FssZzrJhv9cqWhQja8FNW9XfB037iRz-wCLcB/s1600/11.png – Party Ark Aug 06 '18 at 23:39
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    @PartyArk Speaking of artist's impression of the (inside of) the G.38 , I think it's worth mentioning "The wind rises" (animated movie from Miyazaki) – leonbloy Aug 11 '18 at 14:03
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Boeing 747

I'm a little surprised to not already see the Queen of the Skies here. If 'partially forward' counts, the first several windows on each side of the lower deck of the 747 are angled partially forward. The angle is enough that passengers seated in the first row or so can indeed see directly in front of the aircraft.

KLM 747-400 Front View
KLM 747-400 Front View - Image Source: Wikipedia

Many 747 operators choose to install First or Business class seats in the forward part of the lower deck. Especially with some of the "reverse herringbone" style business class configurations, where the seats are angled relative to the cabin wall, this can result in the first row or two facing more-or-less straight forward with a window in front of them. This was the case with Delta's 747-400 configuration, for example. The 747 is notable as one of the few, if not the only, modern airliner to offer such a view to passengers through an actual window (as opposed to camera views on the IFE screens.)

Of course, there aren't any windows facing directly forward on the lower deck, as that would require placing them on the front of the nose itself, where the radome is.

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reirab
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34

That would definitely be an appealing feature for passengers but the airframe of the A380 at its forehead is too curved to be able to fit a viewing area for passengers. Furthermore, the design and operational (aerodynamic) costs associated with structuring an aircraft to be able to fit a cockpit and a forward viewing area, along with the cost of another set of cockpit-spec windows has economically ruled out such a feature for modern airlines competing in a market where ticket price rules all.

I would imagine airlines would opt to install remote viewing stations connected to external cameras before creating a space with forward facing windows. In fact, some airlines have already started to do just that -- Etihad's First Class "Apartment" seats have monitors that are connected to cameras with different viewing angles outside of the plane.

Many Soviet passenger aircraft did in fact have viewing areas in the nose of the aircraft aside from the cockpit. Unfortunately for travelers, these areas were designated for navigators, not passengers. Some examples:

Tu-104:

enter image description here

Tu-134:

enter image description here

An-12:

enter image description here

enter image description here

Murey Tasroc
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    The scumclass seat I was allocated on my Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong to Auckland (in Q1 2018) also had cameras accessible via the seat mounted monitor. We had great fun watching approach and landing. – Gusdor Aug 06 '18 at 13:16
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    Those Russian aircraft look like convertible bombers. That "navigator" position in the nose looks a lot like the bomb sight compartment. – Mike Brass Aug 07 '18 at 02:59
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    @Gusdor Same with my Qantas A380 flight earlier this year; the in-flight entertainment screen (even in coach) had an option to see a feed from a camera mounted on the upper forward part of the tail. – bogardpd Aug 07 '18 at 21:07
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    @bogardpd The cameras are on the 777-300ER, A380, and at least some A350s. – reirab Aug 07 '18 at 22:06
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    @Gusdor reminds me: on a recent Emirates flight a radio program about the Dubai World Expo featured a speaker about future of airplanes. He suggested that eliminating windows altogether and replacing them with cameras and screens would save 1/3 of fuselage weight, allowing for faster flight/ shorter trips at same fuel cost – jdog Aug 08 '18 at 08:32
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    Usual feature nowadays, I think this is standard for all new planes since release of the A380, the new B747-8 also features this. Lufthansa just hides this pretty good in the board-entertainment of all classes, at least in 2014. – Peter Aug 08 '18 at 21:26
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    @Peter The 777-300ER had it even before the A380. It was added to assist the pilots in taxiing, but several airlines also attach it to the IFE system for passengers to view. – reirab Aug 09 '18 at 20:28
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    @reirab: Good to know. And it is smart! Hope the smaller new ones (A320Neo and B737Max) will get this also, but even if, IFE is there seldom :( – Peter Aug 09 '18 at 20:54
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    @Peter Yeah, it would be nice to have it on narrow-bodies, but it's not really a need for the pilots in those cases, so it hasn't been as much of a priority to add it. It would mostly just be for passenger entertainment on those aircraft. As far as the presence of IFE is concerned, all of Delta's A320s and 737s have IFE now, as far as I know. Unfortunately, it's not as common with other carriers... and some carriers are even removing it. Many carriers do have streaming over the in-flight Wi-Fi, though. – reirab Aug 09 '18 at 21:08
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    @MikeBrass Good point - I don't think they were designed to be 'convertible' bombers, as the following post explains, but I agree that this design choice was probably linked to bombsight compartments. The navigator position was in fact important because navigation at the time in Russia relied a lot on ground reference: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/24115/is-the-glass-nose-tu-134-design-for-easier-conversion-to-military-use – Murey Tasroc Oct 27 '18 at 22:42
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Another two examples from the Farman Aviation Works, purveyors of the world's ugliest aircraft. Unlike the ANT-20 (the gallery primarily for the navigator), the Caproni (never operational) and the Junkers (where the wing pods are separate from the passenger compartment), the Farman F.120 and the F.60 "Goliath" were designed with the full gallery experience in mind.

The forward view in the Goliath was interrupted on the left hand side of the fuselage by the walkway up to the exposed cockpit on top. However, the F.120 had, I think, exactly what is being asked for - uninterrupted forward view for the passengers.

Farman F.120 interior F.120 interior source

F.120 in flight F.120 in flight (also known variously and confusingly as the F.3X and F.4X) source

F60 "This unidentified horse accompanied Miss Betty Rand and the Hamm brothers from London to Paris aboard the Farman F.60 Normandie in 1922." source

Party Ark
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