If they were to add a big fat dude with a drum to the flight staff and give everyone some sort of cycling device to add in power to the airplane, how much fuel could be saved? 
None because they wouldn’t do it.
Maybe you could make them wear air masks with a valve in line. Air would come from forward, and expel out the tail end when they exhaled.
Probably not a lot. A single 747 engine outputs about 30 MW–and that plane has 4 of them. A human in good health can put out about 100 W continuously. If a plane can hold 500 people, that’s about 50 kW–a drop in the bucket.
I think the extra energy needed to lug around the paddles, energy converters, drum and fat guy would offset the energy passengers could produce.
True but what if you put pedals under every seat and tell the passengers that their pedaling is essential to keep the plane in the air? The pilot could read the data about how hard people are trying and kill the engines and drop quickly if it gets below a certain level. A frantic plea for help would be announced. Take-offs would require extraordinary efforts from everyone. A lax effort would mean stopping on the runway and giving it another try. In flight movies would be “powered” this way as well. This is a great way to a healthy America although red-eye coast to coast flights 6 hours long would be a real bitch.
“…and the bad news is; the Captain wants to do aerobatics after lunch.”
Then get a thin guy to pound the drum.
If they gave the stewardesses whips to encourage the slackers, I could see a certain subset of men really piling up the frequent flyer miles…
I don’t know how useful this information is, but I believe row teams traditionally chant “STROKE! STROKE! STROKE!”
That is a bad way to put it on an airliner with a diverse passenger list. You may not get the desired results.
If chickens can do it, so can we!
Clearly none of you lot have ever flown Ryanair, on whose airplanes the enhancements proposed by the OP have already been implemented.
There have been human-powered aircraft. But a look at the extremes they had to go to to make it work should make it clear that a 747 is out of the question.
I remember seeing a commercial once where the viewpoint started off with first-class passengers living like kings and dining on caviar, then it pans down through the deck to economy class with people jammed in, then down to steerage class with people rowing amongst the luggage…
What if the passengers were on treadmills?
(I can’t believe it took 14 replies to get here.)
Well, that’s because it takes 14 kinds of guesses in a forum post, dude.
I congratulate you, Cervaise, on the most meta post on the SDMB in, well, a long while anyway.
[Golf Clap]clap clap clap[/Golf Clap]
:: sniff ::
That was beautiful, man.
I don’t get it
Me neither.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris