I'm sure everyone asked the same questions when people started proposing flight as a legitimate transportation means.
What if a plane breaks down in flight or the flaps get stuck? There's low atmosphere at high altitudes, so you can't just open the door without risking structural damage to the aircraft. What happens if there's a fire on board? Where will these planes land? How big will the runways be?
My point is that the development of commercial flight took place over a long, long time to get where we are today. We're still in the whiteboard stages with the hyperloop. Lots of people had to break a lot of planes to get where we're at now.
I can actually answer some of that. The first flights were unpressurized and there was no door to break down. The first commercial flight was a Benoist seaplane which flew that trip under 50 feet altitude, though it could fly up to 1,000 feet. The first KLM flight (the oldest airline company still in service) used an Airco de Havilland 16 in 1920, a year before the first pressurized cockpit.
Therefore, no one would have asked about problems with low atmosphere or opening doors.
The Wright craft used wing warping, and not flaps, so people didn't ask that question. What if the motor stopped - that's a much more critical question. The Benoist seaplane flight above had problem part-way through. The pilot landed on the water, fixed the engine, and took off again.
As for runways, the Wrights landed on the sand in front of them, the same as Chanute did earlier with his experiments with gliders on the dunes of Michigan. The first airplane flight in New England used a frozen lake surface. Early on people used large fields, like Penn Field or Roosevelt Field. The movies of Lindberg show there wasn't really even a marked route; I assume the better to align with the wind. Runways as we know it took a while to exist - they were airfields.
While I understand your intent, it would have been better to omit examples rather than make ones up. Otherwise your ahistorical comments affect my interpretation of your ability to judge an appropriate development cycle. People aren't talking about problems which might occur after 20-30 years of development, but rather problems that are well-known already.
This would be like telling Félix du Temple in 1870 that steam engines aren't powerful enough for a flying machine to carry humans.
Thanks for the comment. I'm a stats guy who wishes he studied engineering. I'll be more careful in my word choice next time. Learn something new everyday, right?
What if a plane breaks down in flight or the flaps get stuck? There's low atmosphere at high altitudes, so you can't just open the door without risking structural damage to the aircraft. What happens if there's a fire on board? Where will these planes land? How big will the runways be?
My point is that the development of commercial flight took place over a long, long time to get where we are today. We're still in the whiteboard stages with the hyperloop. Lots of people had to break a lot of planes to get where we're at now.