The Matter of Passengers.
These deductions are based on each machine carrying
one passenger, which is admittedly the limit at present
of the monoplanes like those operated for record-making
purposes by Santos-Dumont and Bleriot. The biplanes,
however, have a two-passenger capacity, and this adds
materially to the proportion of their weight-sustaining
power as compared with the surface area. In the following
statement all the machines are figured on the
one-passenger basis. Curtiss and Wright have carried
two passengers on numerous occasions, and an extra 170
pounds should therefore be added to the total weight
carried, which would materially increase the capacity.
Even with the two-passenger load the limit is by no
means reached, but as experiments have gone no further
it is impossible to make more accurate figures.
