[The World’s Shortest Scheduled Airline Flight](The World’s Shortest Scheduled Airline Flight)
Surely some of the passengers are commuters…
Thanks.
What’s the mileage like for 1 or 2 seat helicopters?
I’m thinking that a lot of short air commute would have to be done by chopper rather than plane unless the departure and arrival points both happen to be near surfaces that a plane can use to land. I can definitely see people in the woods travelling from lake to lake by plane.
When I said ‘low fuel burn’, I was speaking in terms of aircraft fuel economy. Airplane engines are pretty much 1930s technology.
As you are aware, mileage varies with conditions. If you’re flying 100 knots into a 100 knot headwind, you’ll burn an infinite amount of fuel to go 100 miles; so airplanes use gallons per hour. GPH depends on how fast you’re flying, how high you’re flying, etc. I think a Continental O-320 burns between six and eight GPH. Let’s say you’re flying 110 mph and you’re burning 6 GPH. Assuming still air, blahblahblah, that’s about 18 mpg. That’s for a typical factory-built two-seater.
The Quickie Q200 used an O-320, and it could do about 200 mph. Since that’s flat out, let’s assume it’s burning 8 GPH. Even at the higher burn rate, that’s still 25 mpg. razncain flies an RV-6. I don’t know what engine he uses, and while I like Van’s airplanes, I haven’t looked into them for fear I may try to build one. I’m going to guess it uses a Lycoming O-360 of 150 hp. razncain claims 23-28 mpg, and 180 mph. Homebuilts often have an advantage over factory-built planes when it comes to efficiency.
It’s always about compromise. In a car you trade fuel for performance (some of which can be used, and some of which can’t), or fuel for payload/towing capacity, etc. Same in an airplane, though you can usually use most of the performance. Helicopters can do things airplanes can’t, but they’re more expensive to maintain and operate. They’re good for short-distance and confined area operations. I’ve read of a doctor who had a Robinson R22 (the cheapest factory-built helicopter) that he kept at his house, and he would use it to visit various rural clinics. He had a specific need that was best filled by a helicopter. For people whose time is very precious, a helicopter might make sense. But for the typical owner/operator, I think heli commuting would be difficult to justify unless it’s a homebuilt.
I think I’m having some difficulty explaining what I’m trying to get at. As I said, I drive a long way when I go to the office. Let’s assume I have a Cessna 172 that gets about 15 mpg. My car averages 46-47 mpg and burns cheaper fuel. When you consider all of the costs that go into flying (hangar/tie-down, maintenance, fuel, insurance, etc.) a Cessna 172 costs over $100/hour to fly. There’s no way it would ever make economic sense to commute by private plane. My time, limited as it is, is not ‘very precious’; so time savings are not worth the expenditure.
But here’s the thing. Assuming I owned a plane, I’d want to fly it. The expenditure would happen whether I flew it to the office, or if I spent my time poking holes in the sky on weekends. If the money is being spent anyway, then commuting adds practical value. More than money though, the main thing is that flying is fun. ‘God does not count against one’s time on Earth, the time he spends in the sky.’ Even then, there’s a trade-off. As I said, you don’t just hop in your crate and take off. There are things you must do that take time. If I have a one-hour flight, then spending the preflight time is a bargain. A half-hour flight? Sure, why not? It’s fun. But if I only have to go 25 or 30 miles, then for me it would be easier to drive – unless I wanted to tool around after work instead of flying straight home.
That’s what I’m trying to get at in this thread. What’s the shortest distance an owner/operator would consider for commuting? At what point does flying cease to be a quasi-justifyable option, and become merely an extravagance? Not being an owner, I think 30 minutes of flying time is the cut-off. It would take as long to check the weather, get to the airport, get the plane out, and fly to the destination as it would to simply drive the distance. Unless a bridge falls down or something. 
Fun is fun, but ‘is the game worth the candle?’ If I had an R22 that I could operate from my property and land in the parking lot of my destination, shorter flights might be worth it.
I don’t know about single-seat helicopters. This one is nice. I don’t know the fuel burn of the most popular two-seat homebuilt, the Rotorway Exec. A Robinson R22 uses a Lycoming O-320 of 124 hp, so it’s going to burn about 8 GPH. IIRC, best economy is achieved at around 82 knots (94 mph). A Schweizer 300CB uses a Lycoming O-360 (180 hp) and burns around 10 GPH. I don’t recall its best-economy airspeed, but it’s probably similar to the R22’s.
Adding all the operating costs, when I was doing aerial mapping in a Turbo Cessna 310Q, if I was 45 minutes from home base & I had an airport withing in gliding distance below me, it was cheaper for the pilot & cameraman to stay at the work site in a motel + food than to fly back & forth to the work area no matter if we were working at 1500 feet or 15,000 feet.
My engine is a fuel injected Lycoming 320 (160 hp, maybe 166 with the FI) with a Hartzel constant speed prop. The CS prop saves another half a gallon to a gallon fuel burn less an hour. One cross country trip from Wichita Falls, TX to Tulsa, OK, I cruised 220 mph at 23 squared burning just a little over 7 gph. The winds were light on the ground, but gosh, just 3,000’ up, there was quite a bit of a tailwind.
Dave Anders gets over 40 mpg in a RV-4 cruising 190 at 14,000’. He shattered all previous CAFÉ score records with his RV-4 including a 265 mph top speed. Seen his plane at Oshkosh back in ’09. What a great attention to detail! A search engine at VAF has more info.
I too, try to find practical reasons to own my plane, because truthfully they are usually just a big expensive toy that can’t really be justified. But taking trips to visit relatives and friends starts to make them a bit more practical. Might possibly get some land in CO, to get away from these TX summers, and that would be a nice quick trip and would also help justifying it more. Often, I fly to lakes or campgrounds near-by while other relatives or friends are already there, and they come pick me up. If I had to drive, I wouldn’t be going to many such places.
I took a long absence from flying before getting back into it a few years ago. One, it truly is a buyers market, after decades of being a sellers market. Two, the technology makes navigation a breeze these days. And three, collision avoidance that interfaces with your gps is also just super. Four, I kind of got bored with the semi-retired life, and this certainly has filled that void.
Navigation has never been easier, and no more huge paper maps. As long as you don’t have a system failure or lose a signal (hasn’t happened yet), there is no excuse for ever getting lost again. Just type in an airport, and follow the straight line. Having access to WX while up there is also great.
I usually set my auto-pilot on my two to three hour flights, and that way can set my alarm clock about 15 minutes before destination, which gets me a good nap in, and still leaves me with a fairly good safety margin. They way, I’m rested and ready to go when I arrive. Okay, I just made up this whole paragraph, nor do I have auto-pilot, but many RV’s have that now. $4,000 will buy you a complete two axis system, that can be interfaced with your other devices.
:smack:
I’ve noticed that more than once over the years I’ve mentioned an O-360 of 150 hp. The O-360 is, of course, typically 180 hp. The O-320 is the 150 hp one.
In my defence, I’ve always flown four-seat airplanes and never flew behind an O-200 or O-235.
Please pardon my blind spot.
:smack:
That’s correct with the Lycoming 0-320’s coming in at 150 HP with the lower compression pistons, and with higher compression the other 0-320’s have the 160 HP rating. I’ve been told fuel injection gives a few more, but they normally don’t include that in the HP rating.
You wouldn’t think the 0-360’s with just twenty extra horsepower would be noticeable, but it truly is on take off, you can really feel some g forces putting you back in the seat for a brief second or two. With my 0-320, not so much.