Bob Lutz (onetime big kahuna at GM, may still be) owns a Dassault Alpha Jet, a French jet trainer/light strike aircraft. It’s not particularly fast even in military trim, though - something like a 600-700mph maximum speed.
Yep. I believe the speed limit it 250MPH below a 18,000’ I’ll have to double check that though.
Above the altitude limit, the speed limit is mach 1 over land.
Given the Second Amendment, why shouldn’t the plane be armed?
Um… given the Second Amendment, why can’t my office have first-strike capability?
Or in less snarky terms, even the most gun-friendly reading of the Second Amendment would understand “the right to bear arms” as the right to hand-operated firearms.
That’s exactly who I was thinking of, actually. I heard him on the NPR show Wait Wait… not that long ago, and he’s actually back at the helm of GM after retiring a while back. I thought they had said he owned two fighter jets, but I may have misheard.
I’m pretty sure he also owns a Korean War-era MiG. I’m also pretty sure he occasionally buzzes the small airport across the street from where I work in that MiG. Either that, or someone else in SE Michigan has a MiG and several grand per hour in fuel costs to burn for their own amusement.
I thought JP-8 cost about $1 a gallon…
How much could running a MiG cost?
The cost of jet-a at the airport across the street (where I"ve seen his alpha getting fueled, but not his MiG, so he may buy it elsewhere for cheaper) is $4.50/gallon.
Fuel burn for the MiG: somewhere between 250-300 gph.
Possible fuel cost for one hour (unless I’ve gone tragically wrong with my facts somewhere…): $1100 - $1400
:eek:
(you mentioned JP-8…I’m not sure what formulation of fuel a MiG of that era would run on, so it’s very possible that using cost of standard jet fuel is a bad assumption)
For comparison’s sake, how much fuel does a typical commercial airliner burn in an hour at cruising altitude?
Hmm - it varies a lot. Larger airliners burn more, of course (sorry for stating the obvious) but are probably more efficient on a per-passenger basis. Selected speed and altitude are factors, as are the weather conditions and the aircraft’s load of passengers and cargo.
An approximate figure for a 747-400 at cruise might be around 3300 gallons per hour. Smaller planes, probably a lot less. Further complicating matters is that pilots will often think of fuel in terms of weight, not volume. That’s because the fuel will, in many cases, be a significant factor in the overall weight of the plane.
Below 10,000 feet, aircraft are typically limited to 250 mph in controlled airspace, mostly to keep them from crashing into each other (since controlled airspace is typically somewhere within maybe a hundred miles of an airport, and there’re kind of a lot of planes in the air around airports).
The Cessna Citation X business jet is the fastest civilian aircraft - it tops out at Mach .92. Marginally faster than commercial airlines.
Apparently not – I know people who own “fighter jets” of various sorts (de-militarized, i.e. weapons removed) and I’ve yet to hear mention of special procedures. Some of them have restricted registrations, meaning that, depending on the paperwork, they can’t fly them for hire and various other things but those don’t affect flight plans or speed limits. In fact, assuming they are flying VFR in VFR conditions, in many circumstances they aren’t required to file a flight plan at all in the US. (Long, boring dissertation on regulations omitted)
The one for under 18,000 feet (it is 18,000 feet, right? Sheesh, what I fly can’t got higher than about 14k so I’m not up on the higher altitude regs), there’s another of 200 for certain types of airspace near larger airports, and you need to keep it under Mach 1. You are, however, permitted to exceed the 200 and 250 limits for “safety reasons” (although you may need to explain yourself to the FAA – don’t worry, they’ll bring their own rubber gloves and Vaseline and other accoutrements) and if you really want to bust the sound barrier you can write a very polite letter to the FAA asking for an exemption as long as you state when and where and how you’ll keep the groundlings from griping about their windows being rattled. Seriously, yes, you can apply for such a waiver, but generally you won’t get it unless you’re planning to create sonic booms over uninhabited non-noise restricted areas.
Because it give YOU the right to be armed, not your aircraft the right to be armed. Private pilots are allowed to carry their own guns on board (I believe in some parts of Alaska it’s recommended as survival gear in the event of unexpected landings) although if the airport you eventually at land at has pesky anti-firearm rules you may wind up getting to know the nice security people a little too well. Once you’re back on the ground local laws apply, which has tripped up more than one pilot.
David Hardesty in Tulsa has an F-5 he got from South America from some air force the US sold it to. $$$$ will get you anything… LOL Must be nice.
Another advantage is that if it is VFR, and you can stand the fuel burn you can drop out of the IFR system near your destination and land at the little airport nearest your actual destination. This makes the time savings go way up compared to the big boys that only go to the big airports and all the time delays inherent in those places. No long lines of airliners to be in. Most all except the littlest airports that are suitable for small business jets, Cessna Citation-1, etc., usually have IFR approaches …
DFW direct non stop to Sidney AU would be hard to do faster without a very large and expensive jet but … point to point in the continental US, it is not that hard to beat the airlines in travel time.
Just to illustrate how hard up against the barriers of practicality modern aircraft are, max cruise for the much-touted Cessna Citation X, high-speed superstar, is a staggering Mach 0.03 faster than the 1961 Convair 990 airliner (0.92 versus 0.89). According to Google, that’s a little less than 23 mph. Granted, modern planes smoke less and have countless other benefits, but in terms of sheer speed there’s been very little progress in the last 45 years.
I was going to put ‘in the subsonic regime’ in that last sentence, but then I remembered how old Concorde was and took it out.
Well, that’s because very few R&D dollars are going into making jetliners faster. Remember, the whole problem with Concorde is that the sonic boom severely restricted the airports it could operate from and the flight paths available. Well, that and the fact that it drank so much fuel it wasn’t profitable. Supersonic commercial jets just aren’t feasible on a large scale basis.
I suppose you could argue that modern fighter jets aren’t significantly faster than 1960s-era ones, but again, less research is being done on pure speed and a lot more on weapons systems, electronic warfare, stealth, and survivability.
Us military guys are subject to the same FAA regs as everyone else! We have exceptions here and there, but Capt. Schmukatellee flying his F-15 from Air Force Base X to Air Force Base Y is following the same rules as everyone else. Even in MOAs, IIRC, we’re only exempt from the aerobatics regs.
Also, LSL Guy, that was an excellent post.
Thanks.
Actually, 250 below 10,000 doesn’t apply if your aircraft requires higher. A 747 when heavy just will not climb at 250 & so they often climb out at 280 below 10,000 in US airspace. Gotta tell ATC, but it’s a demand by the pilot, not a request.
Most fighters do 300 or 350 below 10,000 unless in miltary airpace where we can get some serious speed on. IIRC we did 350 going out & 300 coming back. On properly published low level routes across mostly uninhabited desert I have done 540 knots at 100 feet, as did everybody else in the squadron on a daily basis. All perfectly legal. Except for that unfortunate incident involving the tents, some unhappy campers, & their stampeded horses.
The vast majority of military airspace in the US is not approved for Mach 1 or better. The Navy has it easy once they get out to sea.
Yeah, but then you don’t have time to go to AJ’s for dinner and get the traditional-style bouillabaisse. I hate going to Wallops (it’s a three day trip from the Wests Coast) but that almost makes it worthless.
The number of business jets which have sufficient range to cross the Mid-Atlantic without refueling stops is pretty limited, and I don’t think any (save for the Airbus 319 and the Gulfstream V perhaps) could make Los Angeles to London in a single hop. Speeds are pretty similiar, and the normal cruising speed of most modern aircraft is within 10% of their rated top speed, which is actually more efficient than flying at lower altitudes and speeds. As brewha notes, you start to enter the transonic regime at slightly more than 0.7 Mach (0.72-0.80 depending on the reference) and you start to get substantial parasitic drag (i.e. drag from the body form of the aircraft, drag from interference between post-boundary vortices, and so-called “skin friction” on the “wetted surface” of the fuselage and wings). At higher Mach speeds (close to or in excess of the critical Mach number of the aircraft) you’ll get wave or shock drag, where local velocity exceeds the speed of sound in the surrounding fluid and the body creates standing shock waves. All of this is energy that is lost instead of contributing to lift or forward motion. Modern airliners have what are called anti-shock bodies or K-carrots (little flanges or spurs which prevent the formation of standing shock waves) to allow them to operate in the 0.75-0.85 Mach range efficiently and prevent shock-induced vibration.
Not Really All That Bright, although you are correct about the fuel consumption of the Concorde, British Airways and Air France both claimed that the service was economically viable; however, operating and maintenance costs were high and demand was insufficient to justify building replacements to the aging fleet, along with reduced demand after the Air France 4590 crash and the September 11, 2001 attacks. Whether the service would be fiscally viable with today’s elevated fuel costs is questionable. It is, I think, a bit precipitous to say that supersonic commercial jets are infeasible, insofar as very little development has been done and only two designs have been fielded in operational capacity (the Soviet Tupelov Tu-144 being the other), both of which suffered from design issues which could have been rectified by further development. Advances in the art and science of aeronautical engineering could make supersonic transports viable and capable of muffling the shock and otherwise landing at a wide variety of commercial airports; however, the cost and risk of doing so–both for carriers and the very limited number of commercial aircraft manufacturers–are not justified for the current market. The tube-and-wing design of commercial aircraft is well established even though the advent of digital avionics and software reliability offers the potential for more efficient and capable delta wing and blended wing body designs.
Stranger
I’ve read a few articles over the years (sorry, no links – these were in such publications as Flying) that say it’s often more time-efficient to fly a piston-engine aircraft on shorter trips. The typical scenario involves two people leaving their homes at the same time. One catches a commercial flight, and the other goes to the local airport to fly a Mooney or something. The commercial flier has to drive to the airport, often fighting congested traffic, getting there early to go through the security checkpoint, waiting until the flight boards, flying to the destination, obtaining ground transportation, and then going from the airport to his destination.
The private flier goes to his local field, gets a weather briefing and files a flight plan, preflights the aircraft, flies to his destination, and then travels the shorter distance (in these articles) to the destination.
The conclusions I’ve read say that on trips of 400 miles or less, the private flier saves time vs. flying on a scheduled airliner. And there’s no security checkpoint with its removal of belts and shoes, no carry-on limits, no waiting by the carrousel for the checked baggage, the flight can leave when it’s ready, and the private flier gets to perform the most enjoyable activity that exists.