This is an illustration of one of the greatest failings of the U.S. system of primary education, where the emphasis is on packing an increasingly large number of facts to be regurigated (on simplistic, multiple guess, standardized tests) into the curriculum, and not providing deep analysis of HOW we know these facts, and WHY they suggest our most current theories. For instance, try the following experiment one day; ask people you know - Is the Earth round? How do we know?
There will be a quick regurgiation of what they read, or were told, or "it's obvious!".... and when you press them, most of them have no clue, other than that's what they were told. It's not too hard (although after 9-11, I think the security standards may have changed) to go to the top of the Empire State Building with a theodolite, and measure the angle below flat the horizion makes from that height, and then calculate the ratio of the size of the earth to the E.S.B. If you don't trust the height of the E.S.B. as published, you can use the exact same technique from the ground to measure ITS height, and the size of the earth follows. Instead, we waste large amounts of time teaching the periodicity of the cosine function as a number to be memorized, vs. where you might actually bother to USE a cosine, or similiar triangles, or other such topics.
The key is, we don't teach "how we know something" - the numerous "it's just a theory" comments illustrate how rarely known basic scientific reasoning methods are.
Don't be too envious - the most fun flying I have ever had was actually in the turboprops; particularly the ATR-42. Somehow, they get all the performance you wish you had in the smaller planes, combined with the flexibility to still operate into and out of just about any airfield. And, they generally fly low enough so you can appreciate the land you are flying over. Of course, you don't appreciate the CB you can't get over, and have to dodge and weave around... Jets are cool - but the reality is, for the most part, they fly so high that you almost never get to see anything! There are some exceptional days, esp. out west, when the air is so clear that you really can see hundreds of miles, and see the vast panorama out there... but most of the time, it's too hazy/cloudy/mucked up to really see much. That's why I miss low and slow flying so much. I always loved flying for the view...
As for being optimists, I must say my opinions are colored by being dependent (well, mostly dependent - I'm working on changing that) on commercial aviation for a living! So I tend to be rather edgy - every day you read the newspaper, you read about some new calamity for commercial aviation. You are right - I should try to be more optimistic that I might be able to AFFORD an airplane of my own someday; all the really innovative and exciting stuff seems to come from the kit market, where the cost of entry is not so prohibitively high, and ideas like being able to put a motorcycle in the back are coming to fruition...
Cheers, (and here's to hoping you get to fly a jet for fun at some point)
If you are going to crack down on a common method of dissemination of information, make sure you replace it with one of your own that repeats what you want to be heard, ad nauseam. Right out of Goebbel's playbook. For a guy who doesn't think the Holocaust happened, he sure seems comfortable using the same rhetoric and early tactics.
I generally assume fuel weighs 5.9-6.2 pounds per gallon, depending on the temp. Jet A weighs 6.8 pounds per gallon, though. I don't know where you're flying from, but most of the places I hang out, the difference in price between Jet A and 100LL is not very much, and less if I have an engine that can burn automobile gasoline.
Oops - you're right - I forgot, I've been using Jet A for the last 9 years... But as to the prices, perhaps it's an airline thing, but when I compare what we pay per lb vs. what general aviation pays for 100LL, it's about 50% of the price. If more engines get certificated that run AUTO gas, well, that changes things quite a bit...
Yeah, the payload is pretty poor. I got interested in that plane because the designer put a ramp in the back of his and would fly from airport to airport with a Honda motorcycle in the back, which is pretty cool, but not very efficient from a passenger seat/mile/gallon standpoint. Also, yes, his numbers reflect that all 6 passengers want to go somewhere, rather than just 'paying' passengers (even though of course you can't use a homebuilt for commercial operations.)
I missed the ramp part. That IS cool. I've always thought that one of the biggest problems with small airplanes for personal transport is, what do you do when you get to your destination airport? Walk? If you have to rent a car, that kills a lot of the time and independent ops advantage. If this could carry a small motorbike that you roll into the rear.... Yes, that would be VERY cool.
My point being: this thing rivals a 747 for efficiency, and it costs about 1/1000 as much, and that wasn't even what it was designed for. Building a plane that is actually usable for commercial operations will probably cost 10x what this does (and puts it right in the range of the VLJs) but for short-hop flights, that still might be viable, *especially* if you start looking at time savings on the ground. Many people will forgive a slower cruise if they don't spend as much time waiting in line. (Witness people driving on surface streets to avoid a traffic jam: they'd rather feel like they're still progressing, just slowly.)
Perhaps... I think you overestimate the size of the market where it would make sense - although, I agree, the PITA factor makes an extra hour or dollar seem worth it to avoid the monstrosity that is a modern hub airport, between traffic, parking, security, lousy service, delayed flights, lost luggage, etc. I totally relate to the driving longer with less traffic and stops - it IS FAR less frustrating...
I think it's fairly likely that within ten years we won't be carrying passenger baggage on commercial aircraft: laws will be passed and most/all personal baggage will be shipped via cargo carriers. I may be wrong. But if that happened it would speed up the security lines, helping airlines process people faster (which is one reason I think it might happen.) It would also boost VLJ/lightplane operations.
But sadly, I think if we got to that level of silliness, general aviation would be banned altogether. You know what sucks about an aviation career? You can't afford to buy your own airplane for decades!! I really aspire to get a Piper Cub one day, and take a lesiurely trip through the 48 contg. states one day. I hope it's still legal to fly one by the time I can afford it.... (although you got me thinking with the whole 'cycle in the back of the plane thing.... must....resist... large purchase.... on credit!!!!)
...this is a KITPLANE. I don't mean that to suggest that it is not good, but their predictions & calculations are frequently... optimistic. Even going by their own numbers, those 6 seats are virtually worthless:
Gross landing weight: 3,800 lbs (interestingly, they never state the most important number; max gross TAKEOFF weight, which leads me to believe it is the same) Empty weight: 2,200 lbs
That means only 1,600 lbs. is available for payload AND fuel, which weighs about 6.7 lbs/gal. Since the payload is further restricted to 1,100 lbs., assuming 180 lb. pax, you have 180 * 6 = 1,080 lbs. - so much for baggage. Taking a more realistic number of 5 pax & bags, you also really should deduct 1 pax - the pilot, unless you assume everybody is going to get their own licence. So, four pax + bags is a more real number.
That leaves 500 lbs. for fuel - at 6.7 lbs. per gal, that's 74 gallons. 20 gals for climb and reserve leaves you 54 for range, which at 14.5 gal/hr, is 3.7 hrs of cruise. Forgetting winds (which always, on average, slow flight down - if you doubt this, ask yourself how long a plane that flies at 100 kts. will take for a round trip through a 95 kt. wind - his upwind ground speed will be 1/20 normal, but his downwind ground speed will only be 2 x normal), that's a range of 190 knots * 3.7 = 700 miles. 3.7 hours in a tiny cabin is probably the practical maximum anyway, considering there is no bathroom! This also ignores the substantial number of times flight will not be possible because of icing or thunderstorms or other wx. But with 4 people, 190 kts * 4 pax / 14.5 gph = 52 pax-miles/gal. That is the same as the 747, according to this guy's website. If you look at Boeing's website (or just consult some fuel burn numbers), for an all coach config of 500 pax, you get a figure of 100 pax-miles per gallon. This also completely ignores the fact that fuel for piston engine a/c (100LL) is substiantially more expensive than jet-A (basically kerosine) because of the extra refining involved. Also, you have to amortize the initial costs of purchasing the airplane, mx, the fact you are going about 1/3 the cruise speed, etc., etc.,....
Would it be a beautiful way to travel, to see the country, and to have fun? I sure think so - but as for anything resembling the mass-transportation system that airline flying is, I really don't think it is close to realistic. Too few people and too much cost. The physics favors the larger a/c, at least from an efficency standpoint. From a PITA standpoint? Well, let's just say I prefer driving for anything under 400 miles, and I love it when I get the chance to fly a small airplane again... Thanks for the link on the book, though - I'll look it up.
These are not the fastest kayaks, but it's fun doing it yourself (as well as cheaper!) - the owner of the business is a friend of mine, and used to be a professional sailor for 15 years...
6. As Fear Quotient decreases, Intellegence Quotient increases....
Sounds good to me! I just think the linkage between 1, 2, 3, and 4 is a bit weak... if only we could start with step 6, that might help the others along....
You are suggesting a "point-to-point" model vs. the traditional "hub-and-spoke" model of air transportation. It's got much to be recommended for it, but the only way to make it economic is generally lots of short "point-to-point" flights, so if you want to go any distance, you still have to transfer flights at least once; often several times. Southwest does it in exactly that fashion. The problem is this - consider the following fictional scenario: 20 cities, each with 380 pax a day, 20 of whom want to fly to one of the other 19 cities. If you ran point to point service once a day to get all 380 * 20 = 7600 pax to their destinations, that's 20 departure cities * 19 arrivial cities = 380 flights!! If you chose one city as a hub, you could run 19 flights into it, and 19 flights out, and that's 38 flights - 1/10th the number of flights to move the same number of people to their destinations. Of course, as you note, that hub city would have 38 flights a day and all 7800 people move through it (congestion), and the failure of any one flight to go (mechanical, wx, etc.) would cause far more pax not to reach their destination (200 vs 20), etc. Also, assuming these 20 cities are in a four by five grid (the computations start getting interesting here), with one side = 100 miles, the total airframe miles flown by the point to point system would be...(whips out Python) 914,000 miles. The hub and spoke system (taking one of the four center-most points as the hub) would only need 35,000 air-miles (less by a factor of 30). The majority of the cost of running an airline is/are HOURLY costs, so moving the maximum number of pax with the fewest number of air-miles is paramount.
This model, though, ignores the fact that some cities have a LOT more traffic than others - these larger cities make the most sense to locate hubs at, since people who live at a hub city only need to take one flight rather than two to get to their destination. That is pretty much the situation today.
The problem is the number of point-point combination scales with the square of the number of cities, whereas the hub-and-spoke is linear with it. Ultimately, there are just not enough people who wish to fly at the present pricepoint to make point-to-point viable for all except the largest cities. As costs go up, the point to point model becomes even LESS competitive as pax traffic goes down. This only begins to change when there are SO few people flying that scheduled service no longer makes sense, and you begin to go to a charter/air-taxi model, where (obviously) point to point is the way to go.
Yes, I do feel that this is an example of where government needs to set up the rules of the game so that maximizing profits doesn't lead to such awful service. I've always felt that there should be much stricter limits on how many aircraft are allowed into and out of hub cities and into the ATC system, so there is more slack - right now, it's like a glass of water that is just about to overflow the rim - it just takes the slightest disturbance or one extra drop of water to cause a large number of problems. All of these suggestions would have the effect of raising airfares dramatically, though, and that is politically unacceptable right now.
I think it WILL wind up that way one day - air transportation will again be only for the quite well off - but the transition will be very messy.
I'm in the right seat of a 737 for a major that has a golden meatball on its tails;) - from the day I took my first flying lesson, it took 18 years to get to a major. It IS really risky to devote a career to aviation, a lot more now than 20 years ago when I started - if I was starting today, I would probably pick something else! On the other hand, oceans are still a pretty big obstacle to get over for anything but airplanes, and since there is such massive petrolium infrastructure in the world, even if oil output from traditional sources declines, there is a lot of motivation to get it from oil shale, coal gassification, etc. It will just be 4 x as expensive as today. That is really not that outrageous a cost increase compared to the cost of transportation throughout human history - I think the total amount of air travel will shrink back to something like the prederegulation days. Of course, the ensuing chaos in the transition will NOT be fun - and whether I'll be able to keep a job throughout it or not is a lot of luck, I still think the odds are better than 50/50. So I'm still here!
Good luck getting your CFI - that is probably the hardest licence you will ever get; I don't know if it's still true, but I think you have to take your CFI ride with an FAA examiner, not a Designated Examiner. When you start to teach flying is when you really start to learn about it! As to which regionals I would recommend - I really don't know too much about them any more, but I can tell you that the pilots we get from Mesa always look like they just got out of a bad prison experience. And ExpressJet is one of the nicest ones to work at, with bases in Houston and Newark, NJ (very near the NY area) - but nothing West Coast. In the NE in general, there are a few Beech 1900 operators like Colgan. Action Airlines, out of Groton-New London, does charter and air-taxi ops.... Cape Air does lots of island to island hops out around Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. As to the majors vs. corp flying, there is no contest. In most corp flying, you live on a pager, you have no set schedule, and that's just the way it is, unless you move up into management. With the majors, once you are off reserve, you pretty much know your schedule a month at a time, and it tends to get better with time as well as you get more senior. Unless you have a lot of connections with friends or bosses in various corp flight departments, it is a more difficult route to go. Just remember the most important thing if you choose to stay with flying as a career? Have FUN with it - it's already a risky career, so use it to go places, fly different/new kinds of a/c when the chance occurs, and so on - no one else will keep it fun but you! It's worth noting that many pilots consider a regional as more fun to fly for - and that is worth enough for them to make a career out of a regional...
I'm just in the 'incorporation' stage myself - it's important to protect your personal assets from (hopefully few?) angry clients. Try to move beyond just PC repair and other stuff billable by the hour. As your skill increases, when you bill by the hour, you just start making less money as you do things quicker! Move up to things that you can charge a flat rate for, like designing a database or a dynamic webpage, so as you get better and faster at doing something, you make more money from your increased skill, not less. Business in general is a "ripoff" until you start to place a value on the time you spent getting the experience and knowledge you have that allows you to "do the business" so easily. You just don't count that time because it's fun time for you! If you logged every time you fiddled with a computer in a logbook, I think you would be shocked at how much time you spend on them - and that experience is what gives you value as a PC guy.
Anyway... TONS of advice here - and it all might just be worth what you paid for it;) - nice to see there are a few other geek pilots out there - all the best,
Smaller, lighter, more fuel-efficient jets - sorry, but smaller, lighter jets are more INEFFICENT on a cost per pax-mile basis. See my post: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=193740&cid=158 86935 If smaller jets were more efficent, the airlines would be buying them in droves. But the general jist of your argument is quite valid. The term you were getting near is "Security Theatre" - the appearance of security vs. the actual thing. Bruce Schnier popularized the phrase. http://www.schneier.com/
I was a math major in college, because I wasn't sure if I wanted to be a programmer, a physicist, or a vulcanologist. In the end, I became an airline pilot. It was, at the beginning, thrilling, exciting, interesting, different, and I used to look forward to going to work.
Fast forward about 15 years, and I'll tell you that the things I thought little of, like career stability, retirement funding, long term mental stimulation, etc., are a lot more important to me now then they were in my teens.
I just earned more this past month, in doing network consulting and database development than from my "career". It was exciting all over again, that I had a mental challenge, people appreciated my work, and I had some independence from the Mother Company.
I'm 35, and slowly building up what used to be a hobby fiddling with computers into a side business. And if (or, as I suspect, when) the airline industry really tanks, I can just pick up the pace a bit on my second career. Perhaps I wouldn't enjoy it so much if I didn't have career A to start with, and perhaps I would have advanced far more in career B if I had started there, but who cares? I DID do career A, and I am now really ENJOYING career B.
I have an aunt who just retired from senior management one of the largest corporations in the world after 38 years. She scratched through college with a 2.01 GPA. The secret to her success? Don't let yourself get faked out by people who seem to know what they are doing. Ask questions until you understand, or research on your own until you understand, and you will be surprised how many people get by on 90% air and 10% knowledge. If you want to understand and learn, you will get far.
It is pretty unlikely that charter companies will be able to compete with major airlines for the low cost end of things, more due to physics than business. Turbofan engines tend to be more efficent the larger they are, and the LARGEST aircraft tend to be the most efficent per seat mile, with an execption being for ultra-hi bypass jets (otherwise known as turboprops) in the 50 seat (give or take 20) category. For illustration, the cost per seat-mile for various aircraft is about (on average) $0.06/seat-mile in 777's (about 350 seats), $0.09/seat-mile in 737's (about 130 seats), and about $0.14/seat-mile in EMB-145's (50 seats). Of this, usually 30 - 50 % is fuel costs. When you get to charter size aircraft, the numbers get even worse. Look at a typical charter outfit: http://www.wisconsinaviation.com/charter/intro.htm l - let's do some basic math on the numbers listed there to get an idea of seat mile costs - I'll neglect anything less than a turboprop, because of their far slower speed and ability to handle weather. Based on their numbers, here are the costs per seat-mile, only taking into account aircraft rental and fuel - i.e. ignoring fees, repo flights, and pilot expenses.
Cessna 340: 0.66 Piper Navajo 0.41 Cessna 414 0.51 King Air 0.40 Cessna Conquest II 0.36 Cessna Citation 500 0.59 Cessna Citation I 0.72 Cessna Citation S/II 0.53
All these, even the cheapest, is more than TRIPLE the airliners. And I also made the calculation assuming that every seat was taken, an unlikely assumption given than the person was interested in charter (i.e. non regularly scheduled) ops. It's just not a viable idea. Sadly, from a long-term cost and energy consumption standpoint, rail beats air hands down for most overland travel. Oceans still give planes somewhere worthwhile to fly over....:)
You seem to have a good grasp of the situation. Been there - let me tell you, after 20 years in the industry, sadly, unless you get a sweetheart corporate deal, working for a major is the best way to get money out of a pilot's licence. I've seen several startups, with similar ideas to yours, come, and go. The usual killer, as you noticed, is reliability. CB in the summer, icing in the winter, and just a good bank of fog with 0/0 other times, and fuel prices probably rising faster than inflation for the rest of our lives.
Warren Buffet said it best: "...if a capitalist had been present at Kittyhawk back in the early 1900s, he should have shot Orville Wright. He would have saved his progeny money." Sorry to be a downer - but take that energy and entrepeneural spirit you seem to have and put it into something that's more likely to give you a return, and keep your flying for fun. Trust me on this.
PopSci has been throwing out articles regarding this topic for quite a while now, I think they've had at least two major articles on the subject. One of the key innovations is a "highway in the sky" setup for these new small jets which will make it dramatically easier to fly this sort of aircraft. Implied is that qualifications for flying these "air taxies" will be far less restrictive than current commercial aircraft. The result, hopefully, will be more pilot jobs as the industry expands, which would be lower paying jobs than what current pilots make due to less required experience. Both of these are critical, as more pilots would be required to support it and lower pilot salaries for these flights would be required to keep it affordable.
I for one, very much hope this new air taxi industry will get underway as I'm waiting for a flight right now that is delayed 1.5 hours.
I think you'll be waiting a long time. The number one pusher of increases in efficiency in the sky has been the major airlines, because they are the ones who suffer the most from delays. Burning your entire profit on a flight into jet smoke because of a taxi time 1.5 hours more than expected is not good for business. If anyone had the wish to make flying easier so as to pay pilots less, it would be the airlines. It's just been proven consistenly through time that low-time pilots (both in total hours and time in type) tend to have an accident rate many times what more experienced ones do, despite increases in automation, reliablity of the aircraft, and the like. The reason probably is because with any major jump in ease-of-use/safety, the airlines tend to "push" that benefit to safety to eliminate other ones. Examples include reducing the crew in air transport aircraft from 3 to 2 in the 70's, extending the range of twin engine aircraft over inhospitable terrain (look up ETOPS for more details - and remember, pilots say it stands for "Engines Turn Or People Swim", reducing average rest periods, etc. In order to really INCREASE the capacity of the federal aviation system, major money and resources have to be invested - like tens of billions more a year for a while. I'd love it - I think airplanes are wonderful - but I don't think it's likely to happen.
And besides, there is something you haven't considered. Why take over an airliner with lots of irritable passengers, a solid door to the cockpit, and two pissed off pilots, when you can buy your own? Google B-727 for sale. For about $1 mil, you can have one, pack it with explosives at your leisure, and even file a flight plan on your way to fly it into something. This is where the next attack is more likely to come. And then general aviation in this country will be legislated out of existence.
Enjoy private flying while you can - I don't think we'll have it too much longer. *sigh*
Getting your own pilot's license is a bit of work but easily do-able on your average geek's salary. Then go in on a Cessna with a few friends or join a flying rental club and you've got something that can do the shorter hops easily. It won't be cheaper, but it's not as insanely expensive as most think, and no one will search you or even ask you where you're going (unless you fly through class B or C airspace, and then only in general terms).
Just remember that there is no such thing as non-destructive testing of bugs in the air. Your plan has to work the first time, or you had better have plans B and C waiting and feasable. Advice from someone who has instructed programmers before. It requires a substantially different way of thinking. Those who incline toward the paranoid are usually better, because they tend to assume bad things will happen, and plan for them. It's the ones who fling themselves into the air and hope a plan will come together that the NTSB usually writes the reports up on.
I agree, it actually is not that expensive to learn to fly and rent/buy an airplane, and it is very liberating and fun. The high level of self-imposed responsibility and discipline is usually what trips up prospective private pilots.
I actually see a valid point in taking stuff away from the pilot. It's not the fact the pilot is going to do anything bad with it, but by being in the cabin, someone may somehow get access to it, which is what the FAA is trying to avoid (I presume). Maybe I'm giving them too much credit.
I also understand that the pilot has the cockpit that's locked, but imagine if you allow stewards and stewardess to also bring stuff like that onto a plane.
Thanks for trusting us so much. Perhaps you should also make sure we don't have access to this http://www.firesafetyusa.com/cart/shop/category.as p?catid=45 any more. It's the third one down, with the serrated edge. We have one in every airline cockpit behind the F/O's seat. If you don't trust us to be responsible with our personal possesions, why do you trust us at the controls?
Actually, while turboprops make economic sense for short flights, and were thus extensively used to feed hubs for majors, passenger surveys indicated that passengers HATED them. Something about a prop on a airplane scares the crap out of them (despite the fact that you add a bunch more blades and shroud it in a teflon shell and *presto!* you have a modern high-bypass turbofan). So, the majors bought out feeder carriers in the late 90's for control, and then replaced the turboprop planes with RJ's (Embraer 145's and Canadairs), since that what people wanted to see associated with the major airline logo. Now, with fuel becoming the number one expense for airlines nowadays, turboprops make more sense despite passenger "nervousness". They will be reintroduced in time...
I'm not an EE - but wouldn't some variation of a Faraday cage keep the unwanted B field oscillations from escaping and erasing credit cards and other magnetically encoded data? Or would the cage severly damp the B-field within to make it useless for charging a device? A pad in a cage is not quite as convenient as a pad, but still not too bad...
Now, I'm not implying that the police shouldn't use force when necessary. I'm also not denying that they're human too, that it's a nasty, dirty job and I'm sure it's really rough on them. But you know what? Working at McDonald's is in many was rougher (if you doubt this, I could tell you some more horror stories... absolutely the worst 4 months of my life, period.), and yet their workers are held to a much higher standard than the police. Why is that? Why do so many of us make allowances for the police to exercise HUGE leaps of personal discretion, to bend the law whenever it suits them? It's a tough job, but they chose it and we shouldn't let them bend the rules (or ignore them) whenever they feel like it. I saw a TON of asshole customers at McDonalds, yet I didn't say a foul word to any of them. I didn't spit in their food either (no one did--they would've been fired on the spot.) I did my job as professionally as I could, regardless of how shitty I was treated.
And I was a fucking fry cook!
Please please please please PLEASE tell me we can hold our police officers up to the same standards as our burger flippers.
To some extent I agree with you. Sadly, the reason you are(were) held to a higher standard has nothing to do with standards. It has to do with making a buck off of ANYONE who isn't going to physically harm you or company property. A corporation has different priorities than a public institution. But consider the following - the customers who were rude to you at McDonald's were probably not just rude there. They were probably rude at the store next door, to the bus driver who took them there, to their neighbors, etc. If everyone is polite to an ass, what incentive does the ass have not to be one? Perhaps the problem is individuals at the various institutions we encounter in life are not given the authority to say, "Take your money and your business out of here, you rude SOB. Your business is not worth it." - if this was done commonly and routinely, perhaps there wouldn't be so many rude asses cruising through life and making others miserable. And perhaps cops would be more professional if they didn't have to deal with abusive people 95 times out of 100. Perhaps if it was only 30 out of 100, it would be far easier, as humans, to be professional with those 30, as they should be.
It's difficult to expect a large institution filled with humans, not to have one or two act like one from time to time.... Just my 2 bits.
I'm not sure why exactly, but being nice can never hurt.
I can answer that one. I have a good friend who is a detective in the 52 precinct in NYC - that's geographically about the middle of the Bronx. The amount of abuse that cops get regularly, every day, from people who are just walking by, is incredible. They are expected to solve every problem, know every answer, and then treated as below human if they don't know. He told me the most important quality to be on the job is patience, because there is so little you can really do compared to how much people seem to think you are responsible for. So when someone treats a cop nicely, politely, like another human being, a cop is far more likely to respond in kind, if nothing else, out of sheer surprise. Treat others like you like to be treated. Doesn't seem too mysterious.
Think about this. Picture the technology, world population, education and energy usage levels of 1906. Primitive times, compared to now.
Consider what another century or two of progress could bring. Allow for the idea that we can duplicate what happens in every one of our 6 billion skulls with electronic circuitry at least 10 million times faster. This is why AI or some other form of enhanced intelligence is so powerful...if we could replicate the processes going on in the heads of the brightest among us, but faster. 10 million times faster at least.
We have nothing to worry about. The human race will just have to last another couple centuries, tops, and it'll all be over.
Your post may be more prophetic than you realise.;)
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This is an illustration of one of the greatest failings of the U.S. system of primary education, where the emphasis is on packing an increasingly large number of facts to be regurigated (on simplistic, multiple guess, standardized tests) into the curriculum, and not providing deep analysis of HOW we know these facts, and WHY they suggest our most current theories. For instance, try the following experiment one day; ask people you know - Is the Earth round? How do we know?
.... and when you press them, most of them have no clue, other than that's what they were told. It's not too hard (although after 9-11, I think the security standards may have changed) to go to the top of the Empire State Building with a theodolite, and measure the angle below flat the horizion makes from that height, and then calculate the ratio of the size of the earth to the E.S.B. If you don't trust the height of the E.S.B. as published, you can use the exact same technique from the ground to measure ITS height, and the size of the earth follows. Instead, we waste large amounts of time teaching the periodicity of the cosine function as a number to be memorized, vs. where you might actually bother to USE a cosine, or similiar triangles, or other such topics.
There will be a quick regurgiation of what they read, or were told, or "it's obvious!"
The key is, we don't teach "how we know something" - the numerous "it's just a theory" comments illustrate how rarely known basic scientific reasoning methods are.
Don't be too envious - the most fun flying I have ever had was actually in the turboprops; particularly the ATR-42. Somehow, they get all the performance you wish you had in the smaller planes, combined with the flexibility to still operate into and out of just about any airfield. And, they generally fly low enough so you can appreciate the land you are flying over. Of course, you don't appreciate the CB you can't get over, and have to dodge and weave around... Jets are cool - but the reality is, for the most part, they fly so high that you almost never get to see anything! There are some exceptional days, esp. out west, when the air is so clear that you really can see hundreds of miles, and see the vast panorama out there... but most of the time, it's too hazy/cloudy/mucked up to really see much. That's why I miss low and slow flying so much. I always loved flying for the view...
As for being optimists, I must say my opinions are colored by being dependent (well, mostly dependent - I'm working on changing that) on commercial aviation for a living! So I tend to be rather edgy - every day you read the newspaper, you read about some new calamity for commercial aviation. You are right - I should try to be more optimistic that I might be able to AFFORD an airplane of my own someday; all the really innovative and exciting stuff seems to come from the kit market, where the cost of entry is not so prohibitively high, and ideas like being able to put a motorcycle in the back are coming to fruition...
Cheers, (and here's to hoping you get to fly a jet for fun at some point)
If you are going to crack down on a common method of dissemination of information, make sure you replace it with one of your own that repeats what you want to be heard, ad nauseam. Right out of Goebbel's playbook. For a guy who doesn't think the Holocaust happened, he sure seems comfortable using the same rhetoric and early tactics.
Oops - you're right - I forgot, I've been using Jet A for the last 9 years... But as to the prices, perhaps it's an airline thing, but when I compare what we pay per lb vs. what general aviation pays for 100LL, it's about 50% of the price. If more engines get certificated that run AUTO gas, well, that changes things quite a bit...
Yeah, the payload is pretty poor. I got interested in that plane because the designer put a ramp in the back of his and would fly from airport to airport with a Honda motorcycle in the back, which is pretty cool, but not very efficient from a passenger seat/mile/gallon standpoint. Also, yes, his numbers reflect that all 6 passengers want to go somewhere, rather than just 'paying' passengers (even though of course you can't use a homebuilt for commercial operations.)
I missed the ramp part. That IS cool. I've always thought that one of the biggest problems with small airplanes for personal transport is, what do you do when you get to your destination airport? Walk? If you have to rent a car, that kills a lot of the time and independent ops advantage. If this could carry a small motorbike that you roll into the rear.... Yes, that would be VERY cool.
My point being: this thing rivals a 747 for efficiency, and it costs about 1/1000 as much, and that wasn't even what it was designed for. Building a plane that is actually usable for commercial operations will probably cost 10x what this does (and puts it right in the range of the VLJs) but for short-hop flights, that still might be viable, *especially* if you start looking at time savings on the ground. Many people will forgive a slower cruise if they don't spend as much time waiting in line. (Witness people driving on surface streets to avoid a traffic jam: they'd rather feel like they're still progressing, just slowly.)
Perhaps... I think you overestimate the size of the market where it would make sense - although, I agree, the PITA factor makes an extra hour or dollar seem worth it to avoid the monstrosity that is a modern hub airport, between traffic, parking, security, lousy service, delayed flights, lost luggage, etc. I totally relate to the driving longer with less traffic and stops - it IS FAR less frustrating...
I think it's fairly likely that within ten years we won't be carrying passenger baggage on commercial aircraft: laws will be passed and most/all personal baggage will be shipped via cargo carriers. I may be wrong. But if that happened it would speed up the security lines, helping airlines process people faster (which is one reason I think it might happen.) It would also boost VLJ/lightplane operations.
But sadly, I think if we got to that level of silliness, general aviation would be banned altogether. You know what sucks about an aviation career? You can't afford to buy your own airplane for decades!! I really aspire to get a Piper Cub one day, and take a lesiurely trip through the 48 contg. states one day. I hope it's still legal to fly one by the time I can afford it.... (although you got me thinking with the whole 'cycle in the back of the plane thing.... must....resist... large purchase.... on credit!!!!)
Cheers,
...this is a KITPLANE. I don't mean that to suggest that it is not good, but their predictions & calculations are frequently... optimistic. Even going by their own numbers, those 6 seats are virtually worthless:
Gross landing weight: 3,800 lbs (interestingly, they never state the most important number; max gross TAKEOFF weight, which leads me to believe it is the same)
Empty weight: 2,200 lbs
That means only 1,600 lbs. is available for payload AND fuel, which weighs about 6.7 lbs/gal.
Since the payload is further restricted to 1,100 lbs., assuming 180 lb. pax, you have 180 * 6 = 1,080 lbs. - so much for baggage. Taking a more realistic number of 5 pax & bags, you also really should deduct 1 pax - the pilot, unless you assume everybody is going to get their own licence. So, four pax + bags is a more real number.
That leaves 500 lbs. for fuel - at 6.7 lbs. per gal, that's 74 gallons. 20 gals for climb and reserve leaves you 54 for range, which at 14.5 gal/hr, is 3.7 hrs of cruise. Forgetting winds (which always, on average, slow flight down - if you doubt this, ask yourself how long a plane that flies at 100 kts. will take for a round trip through a 95 kt. wind - his upwind ground speed will be 1/20 normal, but his downwind ground speed will only be 2 x normal), that's a range of 190 knots * 3.7 = 700 miles. 3.7 hours in a tiny cabin is probably the practical maximum anyway, considering there is no bathroom! This also ignores the substantial number of times flight will not be possible because of icing or thunderstorms or other wx. But with 4 people, 190 kts * 4 pax / 14.5 gph = 52 pax-miles/gal. That is the same as the 747, according to this guy's website. If you look at Boeing's website (or just consult some fuel burn numbers), for an all coach config of 500 pax, you get a figure of 100 pax-miles per gallon. This also completely ignores the fact that fuel for piston engine a/c (100LL) is substiantially more expensive than jet-A (basically kerosine) because of the extra refining involved. Also, you have to amortize the initial costs of purchasing the airplane, mx, the fact you are going about 1/3 the cruise speed, etc., etc.,....
Would it be a beautiful way to travel, to see the country, and to have fun? I sure think so - but as for anything resembling the mass-transportation system that airline flying is, I really don't think it is close to realistic. Too few people and too much cost. The physics favors the larger a/c, at least from an efficency standpoint. From a PITA standpoint? Well, let's just say I prefer driving for anything under 400 miles, and I love it when I get the chance to fly a small airplane again... Thanks for the link on the book, though - I'll look it up.
These are not the fastest kayaks, but it's fun doing it yourself (as well as cheaper!) - the owner of the business is a friend of mine, and used to be a professional sailor for 15 years...
http://www.unicornkayaks.com/
2. Plane and SUV use decreases dramamtically.
3. Fuel demand decreases.
4. America pulls out of the Middle East...
5. ...Terrorism ceases?
and even better:
6. As Fear Quotient decreases, Intellegence Quotient increases....
Sounds good to me! I just think the linkage between 1, 2, 3, and 4 is a bit weak... if only we could start with step 6, that might help the others along....
You are suggesting a "point-to-point" model vs. the traditional "hub-and-spoke" model of air transportation. It's got much to be recommended for it, but the only way to make it economic is generally lots of short "point-to-point" flights, so if you want to go any distance, you still have to transfer flights at least once; often several times. Southwest does it in exactly that fashion. The problem is this - consider the following fictional scenario: 20 cities, each with 380 pax a day, 20 of whom want to fly to one of the other 19 cities. If you ran point to point service once a day to get all 380 * 20 = 7600 pax to their destinations, that's 20 departure cities * 19 arrivial cities = 380 flights!! If you chose one city as a hub, you could run 19 flights into it, and 19 flights out, and that's 38 flights - 1/10th the number of flights to move the same number of people to their destinations. Of course, as you note, that hub city would have 38 flights a day and all 7800 people move through it (congestion), and the failure of any one flight to go (mechanical, wx, etc.) would cause far more pax not to reach their destination (200 vs 20), etc. Also, assuming these 20 cities are in a four by five grid (the computations start getting interesting here), with one side = 100 miles, the total airframe miles flown by the point to point system would be...(whips out Python) 914,000 miles. The hub and spoke system (taking one of the four center-most points as the hub) would only need 35,000 air-miles (less by a factor of 30). The majority of the cost of running an airline is/are HOURLY costs, so moving the maximum number of pax with the fewest number of air-miles is paramount.
This model, though, ignores the fact that some cities have a LOT more traffic than others - these larger cities make the most sense to locate hubs at, since people who live at a hub city only need to take one flight rather than two to get to their destination. That is pretty much the situation today.
The problem is the number of point-point combination scales with the square of the number of cities, whereas the hub-and-spoke is linear with it. Ultimately, there are just not enough people who wish to fly at the present pricepoint to make point-to-point viable for all except the largest cities. As costs go up, the point to point model becomes even LESS competitive as pax traffic goes down. This only begins to change when there are SO few people flying that scheduled service no longer makes sense, and you begin to go to a charter/air-taxi model, where (obviously) point to point is the way to go.
Yes, I do feel that this is an example of where government needs to set up the rules of the game so that maximizing profits doesn't lead to such awful service. I've always felt that there should be much stricter limits on how many aircraft are allowed into and out of hub cities and into the ATC system, so there is more slack - right now, it's like a glass of water that is just about to overflow the rim - it just takes the slightest disturbance or one extra drop of water to cause a large number of problems. All of these suggestions would have the effect of raising airfares dramatically, though, and that is politically unacceptable right now.
I think it WILL wind up that way one day - air transportation will again be only for the quite well off - but the transition will be very messy.
I'm in the right seat of a 737 for a major that has a golden meatball on its tails ;) - from the day I took my first flying lesson, it took 18 years to get to a major. It IS really risky to devote a career to aviation, a lot more now than 20 years ago when I started - if I was starting today, I would probably pick something else! On the other hand, oceans are still a pretty big obstacle to get over for anything but airplanes, and since there is such massive petrolium infrastructure in the world, even if oil output from traditional sources declines, there is a lot of motivation to get it from oil shale, coal gassification, etc. It will just be 4 x as expensive as today. That is really not that outrageous a cost increase compared to the cost of transportation throughout human history - I think the total amount of air travel will shrink back to something like the prederegulation days. Of course, the ensuing chaos in the transition will NOT be fun - and whether I'll be able to keep a job throughout it or not is a lot of luck, I still think the odds are better than 50/50. So I'm still here!
;) - nice to see there are a few other geek pilots out there - all the best,
Good luck getting your CFI - that is probably the hardest licence you will ever get; I don't know if it's still true, but I think you have to take your CFI ride with an FAA examiner, not a Designated Examiner. When you start to teach flying is when you really start to learn about it! As to which regionals I would recommend - I really don't know too much about them any more, but I can tell you that the pilots we get from Mesa always look like they just got out of a bad prison experience. And ExpressJet is one of the nicest ones to work at, with bases in Houston and Newark, NJ (very near the NY area) - but nothing West Coast. In the NE in general, there are a few Beech 1900 operators like Colgan. Action Airlines, out of Groton-New London, does charter and air-taxi ops.... Cape Air does lots of island to island hops out around Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. As to the majors vs. corp flying, there is no contest. In most corp flying, you live on a pager, you have no set schedule, and that's just the way it is, unless you move up into management. With the majors, once you are off reserve, you pretty much know your schedule a month at a time, and it tends to get better with time as well as you get more senior. Unless you have a lot of connections with friends or bosses in various corp flight departments, it is a more difficult route to go. Just remember the most important thing if you choose to stay with flying as a career? Have FUN with it - it's already a risky career, so use it to go places, fly different/new kinds of a/c when the chance occurs, and so on - no one else will keep it fun but you! It's worth noting that many pilots consider a regional as more fun to fly for - and that is worth enough for them to make a career out of a regional...
I'm just in the 'incorporation' stage myself - it's important to protect your personal assets from (hopefully few?) angry clients. Try to move beyond just PC repair and other stuff billable by the hour. As your skill increases, when you bill by the hour, you just start making less money as you do things quicker! Move up to things that you can charge a flat rate for, like designing a database or a dynamic webpage, so as you get better and faster at doing something, you make more money from your increased skill, not less. Business in general is a "ripoff" until you start to place a value on the time you spent getting the experience and knowledge you have that allows you to "do the business" so easily. You just don't count that time because it's fun time for you! If you logged every time you fiddled with a computer in a logbook, I think you would be shocked at how much time you spend on them - and that experience is what gives you value as a PC guy.
Anyway... TONS of advice here - and it all might just be worth what you paid for it
Nick
Smaller, lighter, more fuel-efficient jets - sorry, but smaller, lighter jets are more INEFFICENT on a cost per pax-mile basis. See my post: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=193740&cid=158 86935 If smaller jets were more efficent, the airlines would be buying them in droves. But the general jist of your argument is quite valid. The term you were getting near is "Security Theatre" - the appearance of security vs. the actual thing. Bruce Schnier popularized the phrase. http://www.schneier.com/
I was a math major in college, because I wasn't sure if I wanted to be a programmer, a physicist, or a vulcanologist. In the end, I became an airline pilot. It was, at the beginning, thrilling, exciting, interesting, different, and I used to look forward to going to work.
Fast forward about 15 years, and I'll tell you that the things I thought little of, like career stability, retirement funding, long term mental stimulation, etc., are a lot more important to me now then they were in my teens.
I just earned more this past month, in doing network consulting and database development than from my "career". It was exciting all over again, that I had a mental challenge, people appreciated my work, and I had some independence from the Mother Company.
I'm 35, and slowly building up what used to be a hobby fiddling with computers into a side business. And if (or, as I suspect, when) the airline industry really tanks, I can just pick up the pace a bit on my second career. Perhaps I wouldn't enjoy it so much if I didn't have career A to start with, and perhaps I would have advanced far more in career B if I had started there, but who cares? I DID do career A, and I am now really ENJOYING career B.
I have an aunt who just retired from senior management one of the largest corporations in the world after 38 years. She scratched through college with a 2.01 GPA. The secret to her success? Don't let yourself get faked out by people who seem to know what they are doing. Ask questions until you understand, or research on your own until you understand, and you will be surprised how many people get by on 90% air and 10% knowledge. If you want to understand and learn, you will get far.
Go for it - good luck!
It is pretty unlikely that charter companies will be able to compete with major airlines for the low cost end of things, more due to physics than business. Turbofan engines tend to be more efficent the larger they are, and the LARGEST aircraft tend to be the most efficent per seat mile, with an execption being for ultra-hi bypass jets (otherwise known as turboprops) in the 50 seat (give or take 20) category. For illustration, the cost per seat-mile for various aircraft is about (on average) $0.06/seat-mile in 777's (about 350 seats), $0.09/seat-mile in 737's (about 130 seats), and about $0.14/seat-mile in EMB-145's (50 seats). Of this, usually 30 - 50 % is fuel costs. When you get to charter size aircraft, the numbers get even worse. Look at a typical charter outfit: http://www.wisconsinaviation.com/charter/intro.htm l - let's do some basic math on the numbers listed there to get an idea of seat mile costs - I'll neglect anything less than a turboprop, because of their far slower speed and ability to handle weather. Based on their numbers, here are the costs per seat-mile, only taking into account aircraft rental and fuel - i.e. ignoring fees, repo flights, and pilot expenses.
:)
Cessna 340: 0.66
Piper Navajo 0.41
Cessna 414 0.51
King Air 0.40
Cessna Conquest II 0.36
Cessna Citation 500 0.59
Cessna Citation I 0.72
Cessna Citation S/II 0.53
All these, even the cheapest, is more than TRIPLE the airliners. And I also made the calculation assuming that every seat was taken, an unlikely assumption given than the person was interested in charter (i.e. non regularly scheduled) ops. It's just not a viable idea. Sadly, from a long-term cost and energy consumption standpoint, rail beats air hands down for most overland travel. Oceans still give planes somewhere worthwhile to fly over....
Warren Buffet said it best: "...if a capitalist had been present at Kittyhawk back in the early 1900s, he should have shot Orville Wright. He would have saved his progeny money." Sorry to be a downer - but take that energy and entrepeneural spirit you seem to have and put it into something that's more likely to give you a return, and keep your flying for fun. Trust me on this.
Good luck!
I for one, very much hope this new air taxi industry will get underway as I'm waiting for a flight right now that is delayed 1.5 hours.
I think you'll be waiting a long time. The number one pusher of increases in efficiency in the sky has been the major airlines, because they are the ones who suffer the most from delays. Burning your entire profit on a flight into jet smoke because of a taxi time 1.5 hours more than expected is not good for business. If anyone had the wish to make flying easier so as to pay pilots less, it would be the airlines. It's just been proven consistenly through time that low-time pilots (both in total hours and time in type) tend to have an accident rate many times what more experienced ones do, despite increases in automation, reliablity of the aircraft, and the like. The reason probably is because with any major jump in ease-of-use/safety, the airlines tend to "push" that benefit to safety to eliminate other ones. Examples include reducing the crew in air transport aircraft from 3 to 2 in the 70's, extending the range of twin engine aircraft over inhospitable terrain (look up ETOPS for more details - and remember, pilots say it stands for "Engines Turn Or People Swim", reducing average rest periods, etc. In order to really INCREASE the capacity of the federal aviation system, major money and resources have to be invested - like tens of billions more a year for a while. I'd love it - I think airplanes are wonderful - but I don't think it's likely to happen.
And besides, there is something you haven't considered. Why take over an airliner with lots of irritable passengers, a solid door to the cockpit, and two pissed off pilots, when you can buy your own? Google B-727 for sale. For about $1 mil, you can have one, pack it with explosives at your leisure, and even file a flight plan on your way to fly it into something. This is where the next attack is more likely to come. And then general aviation in this country will be legislated out of existence.
Enjoy private flying while you can - I don't think we'll have it too much longer. *sigh*
Just remember that there is no such thing as non-destructive testing of bugs in the air. Your plan has to work the first time, or you had better have plans B and C waiting and feasable. Advice from someone who has instructed programmers before. It requires a substantially different way of thinking. Those who incline toward the paranoid are usually better, because they tend to assume bad things will happen, and plan for them. It's the ones who fling themselves into the air and hope a plan will come together that the NTSB usually writes the reports up on.
I agree, it actually is not that expensive to learn to fly and rent/buy an airplane, and it is very liberating and fun. The high level of self-imposed responsibility and discipline is usually what trips up prospective private pilots.
I also understand that the pilot has the cockpit that's locked, but imagine if you allow stewards and stewardess to also bring stuff like that onto a plane.
Thanks for trusting us so much. Perhaps you should also make sure we don't have access to this http://www.firesafetyusa.com/cart/shop/category.as p?catid=45 any more. It's the third one down, with the serrated edge. We have one in every airline cockpit behind the F/O's seat. If you don't trust us to be responsible with our personal possesions, why do you trust us at the controls?
Actually, while turboprops make economic sense for short flights, and were thus extensively used to feed hubs for majors, passenger surveys indicated that passengers HATED them. Something about a prop on a airplane scares the crap out of them (despite the fact that you add a bunch more blades and shroud it in a teflon shell and *presto!* you have a modern high-bypass turbofan). So, the majors bought out feeder carriers in the late 90's for control, and then replaced the turboprop planes with RJ's (Embraer 145's and Canadairs), since that what people wanted to see associated with the major airline logo. Now, with fuel becoming the number one expense for airlines nowadays, turboprops make more sense despite passenger "nervousness". They will be reintroduced in time...
I'm not an EE - but wouldn't some variation of a Faraday cage keep the unwanted B field oscillations from escaping and erasing credit cards and other magnetically encoded data? Or would the cage severly damp the B-field within to make it useless for charging a device? A pad in a cage is not quite as convenient as a pad, but still not too bad...
(Dons tinfoil hat & earplugs and strides away into the sunset...)
And I was a fucking fry cook!
Please please please please PLEASE tell me we can hold our police officers up to the same standards as our burger flippers.
To some extent I agree with you. Sadly, the reason you are(were) held to a higher standard has nothing to do with standards. It has to do with making a buck off of ANYONE who isn't going to physically harm you or company property. A corporation has different priorities than a public institution. But consider the following - the customers who were rude to you at McDonald's were probably not just rude there. They were probably rude at the store next door, to the bus driver who took them there, to their neighbors, etc. If everyone is polite to an ass, what incentive does the ass have not to be one? Perhaps the problem is individuals at the various institutions we encounter in life are not given the authority to say, "Take your money and your business out of here, you rude SOB. Your business is not worth it." - if this was done commonly and routinely, perhaps there wouldn't be so many rude asses cruising through life and making others miserable. And perhaps cops would be more professional if they didn't have to deal with abusive people 95 times out of 100. Perhaps if it was only 30 out of 100, it would be far easier, as humans, to be professional with those 30, as they should be.
It's difficult to expect a large institution filled with humans, not to have one or two act like one from time to time.... Just my 2 bits.
I can answer that one. I have a good friend who is a detective in the 52 precinct in NYC - that's geographically about the middle of the Bronx. The amount of abuse that cops get regularly, every day, from people who are just walking by, is incredible. They are expected to solve every problem, know every answer, and then treated as below human if they don't know. He told me the most important quality to be on the job is patience, because there is so little you can really do compared to how much people seem to think you are responsible for. So when someone treats a cop nicely, politely, like another human being, a cop is far more likely to respond in kind, if nothing else, out of sheer surprise. Treat others like you like to be treated. Doesn't seem too mysterious.
At least they made it easier to demonstrate to your friends how microwaves and CDs interact...
http://qntm.org/destroy
Always good for some yuks!
Consider what another century or two of progress could bring. Allow for the idea that we can duplicate what happens in every one of our 6 billion skulls with electronic circuitry at least 10 million times faster. This is why AI or some other form of enhanced intelligence is so powerful...if we could replicate the processes going on in the heads of the brightest among us, but faster. 10 million times faster at least.
We have nothing to worry about. The human race will just have to last another couple centuries, tops, and it'll all be over.
Your post may be more prophetic than you realise. ;)