Is there something attached to the top of the rudder? It looks like a tiny drogue chute.
Possibly a trailing portion of a stall-recovery chute? Sooner or later the pilots will test the plane’s angle of attack and stall characteristics, and if something fucks up, deploying a chute on the aircraft could pull the tail up long enough to get lift on the wings again.
A 747 can take off on three engines, climb on two, and can maintain level flight and land on only one. This came up on another message board a while back, and when I looked into it I found a quote from a 747 pilot who said that they do train for single engine landings in the simulator, and often they train with the only operating engine being one of the most outboard ones. The pilot did mention however that you only get one shot at the landing. There’s no go-around if you’ve only got one engine.
Of course, a simulator isn’t the real world. However, in May of 1988, a 747 landed in Tokyo on one engine. So it can be done.
Reminds me of
I wouldn’t go as far as to say that two engines are better than four, but the difference between them in terms of safety is slight. Engine failures are rare and historically the cause of multiple engine failures are things such as fuel starvation and volcanic ash ingestion. These are things that would shut down all engines on any aeroplane regardless of how many it has. Add to this the fact that aircraft need to be certified for take off with just one engine failed you’ll see that a twin engine aircraft has double the engine power required when both engines are operating where as a four engine aircraft only has a 33% excess of power with four engines operating. So when all engines are operating a twin will generally perform a lot better than aircraft with four engines.
So to summarise, twins perform better in normal operations, the type of failure that would take out both engines on a twin would likely take out four engines on a quad and as mentioned above the quad has double the chance of a single failure as a twin. Therefore the safety difference between a properly certified twin and an aircraft with more engines is slight and IMO not worth worrying about, certainly not worth choosing a particular flight just because of the aircraft type.
The t-33s are cool, but Boeing used to have a Sabre Jet they used as a chase plane. Now that’s really cool.
Back in the late '90’s there was actually something of an internal contest to see what the next major Boeing plane would be. It was between the Sonic Cruiser and the 7E7, which won and became the 787. They were a decent way along in the design process for the Sonic Cruiser before it got cancelled. They had patents, models, wind tunnel tests, etc… it wasn’t just purely speculative. One of the main reasons it got cancelled was how long and expensive it would have been to build such a new design.
Enlighten me: What is so cool about a T-33?
ETA: No sarcasm intended. I just want to understand what might be one of the nuances of certain aircraft that make them so special.
I love the flex of the wings, it makes it looks almost bird like when in the air. Might freak me a out a bit the first time I am on the thing though and see the wings do that.
It just looks cool. 
It’s also got the cachet of being a chase plane for a whole lot of test flights over the decades. ‘The Right Stuff’ and all that.
T-33s are moderately ‘affordable’. Not many people can scrape up the $2 million or more for a T-38 Talon or F-104 Starfighter, but here’s a T-33 for sale for €100,000 ($145,000). That’s half the price of a new Cessna, and only two or three times the price of a used one. (Of course operating expenses are a little higher. 
)
A T-33 is kind of like a classic car. (And it is a classic.) Some people totally dig 'em.
(Personally, I’d rather have a T-38. But a T-33 is my second choice when it comes to jets.)
I believe they are the preferred craft for taking out womp rats.
Or, maybe that was an earlier model…
Fine! Bump my serious answer to the previous page! :mad:
But that was a long, long time ago.
This was very helpful and surely is more informative than some womp rat reference.
May the Force be with you.
Something else to keep in mind is that an F1 component is optimized to the edge of stresses and tolerances to only need to last a handful of hours before replacing a part. F1 teams aren’t concerned about the aftermarket used car value of their suspension
A commercial airframe is designed to last for 30 years, and needs to be rated much higher than any stress it would typically encounter in operation.
How would one go about getting type rated for what is essentially a fighter jet, I wonder?
Thanks for the info… most interesting! I keep forgetting that a Boeing 747 is unlikely to encounter Ack-Ack fire in the course of its daily operational life and thus having lots of engines isn’t automatically the best option for a large aircraft nowadays.
Here’s the first option I found.
1,000 total hours in type, 500 hours PIC. $2,400/hr.
I wouldn’t say it was a long, long time ago. One long would do, but it was far, far away.
Enjoy,
Steven
I used to work for a company that was involved with warbirds. For some time they were seriously considering buying an Aero L-39. I think they were being sold by the Czech Air Force, anyway the purchase included training. So we would have sent an instructor out to get the initial rating and then he would have trained any other pilots who were going to fly it. Talking to other pilots who had flown the L-39 I gathered a few things, for one light jet trainers like that are relatively easy to fly compared to a piston engine fighter like a Mustang, and one of the guys who was an ex RAF Phantom pilot said it was pretty exciting, and still gave him a thrill when he piled on the power and set off down the runway. I was really looking forward to that :).
On the odd occasion when you have an aeroplane and there is no one around who has flown one before, which happens sometimes with rare warbirds, you just get someone with suitable experience to jump in and teach themselves. This is kind of necessary for all the single seaters anyway, you basically just have to brief the new guy and then let him have a go.
Technically, the cables are tethers to keep the wheels from flying off the car into the stands in the event of an accident…killing people. They don’t keep the wheels in an “operable” location.