Private jets are an ecological disaster.
On a per-person basis yes absolutely.
But the total amount of bizjet emissions are a drop in the bucket compared to all people who drive pickup trucks they don’t need and/or who live an extra 50 miles from work so they can have a large yard & lower house payments.
Yes, but the millionaires and billionaires who fly private jets can easily afford the tax 9x increase on jet fuel Sen Markey is proposing to offset their emissions.
Now, in our democracy, will the voices of a few hundred ultra-rich people outweigh those of millions of regular Joes? Hmmmm…
In a democracy, no. In a plutocracy, yes – the fat cats generally get their way.
Agreed, but environmental impacts inherently consist of billions of drops that pretty soon overflow the bucket, and each one needs to be addressed. In this case, a fuel tax that reflects environmental cost in addition to just production cost would help mitigate both problems. What Sen Markey proposes is separate from that and simply provides for bizjet users to pay their fair share of the taxpayer-funded infrastructure they use. There is no “drop in bucket” argument here about infrastructure; it would directly improve funding for ATC and airports.
Oh yeah. The whole current economic system, not just aviation, is full of counterproductive costs and fees and subsidies that distort behavior and stuff that exists only as a special favor to one entity over another. Plus plenty of plain old historical accident.
Like any thicket, it grew into that tangled mess via one locally logical (or at least profitable to somebody) decision at a time. And like any thicket, it can be disassembled by careful surgery or with a bulldozer. The bulldozer is far more intellectually satisfying, but really upsets all the wildlife that has built their home in the thicket.
In our case, “the wildlife” is most residents of modern semi-rich countries. The thicket shall not be bulldozed except by Mother Nature or a war. No matter how much better the world might be if it was gone and something rational for current circumstances installed in its place.
Sure. And some things that do make you legitimately disabled won’t automatically stop you from flying, certainly as a private pilot but also with room for commercial pilot activities if you disclose them. I am and always have been colorblind, which is technically disqualifying for a bunch of stuff, but once that was ascertained I had the opportunity establish it wasn’t a problem and get those restrictions removed. Thank goodness that wasn’t an expensive test. Actually, I’ve heard these days that they no longer make people with deuteranomalous trichromacy like myself take light gun tests anymore because we were passing them so consistently, which if true is a sign of enlightenment on someone’s part.
So I wonder if some of those disabling conditions are situations where if you disclosed the problem it would be something surmountable, but the sin here was not disclosing them. You might have someone who had an impaired function of their hand due to war-wounds but the impairment wouldn’t necessarily be a problem as far as manipulating the controls, as an example. Or someone with reduced vision in one eye but who was able to compensate for it so, again, it would not be a problem in the real world.
Of course, just because the FAA is OK with something does not mean the airlines are - many of them impose more stringent requirements than the FAA. In which it’s not just the problem of disclosing a problem to the FAA (which may only be bump in the road rather than the end of the road) but now it’s on your record and future employers will hold it against you.
Here’s an actual, real life example of this sort of thing: United Airlines has not and likely never will employ a former space shuttle pilot. Other airlines have hired these guys, and universally say they are fantastic pilots. Why won’t UA hire them? Because UA demands that pilots have uncorrected 20/20 vision at the time of hiring with absolutely no need of any sort of corrective lens. Well, former shuttle pilots are pretty much into “needs bifocals” territory just based on their ages (mid-40’s and up), and spending time in space can, for reasons we don’t fully understand yet, have a detrimental effect on your vision. No one has gone blind, but spending time in space does increase the odds of you needing “corrective lenses”. So UA won’t even consider hiring any of those excellent pilots - despite all the airlines screaming about pilot shortages. Here’s the stupid thing - a pilot hired with perfect vision at 30 by UA who, in his 40’s, needs reading glasses will often be retained by UA. So they do, in fact, allow pilots who need “corrective lenses” in at least some circumstances, but refuse to hire any unless they have absolutely perfect vision despite that not actually being a factor for safe operation of airliners.
As I mentioned, there’s much talk of a pilot shortage. I don’t think the medical requirements are the sole factor, here, but it seems to me that we really should review the current system and revamp it, and also try to knock some sense into airline hiring people. This isn’t 1947 with a crapload of young guys feeding into the airlines after a major war where they all got training, the typical US pilot these days has always been a civilian, and they tend to be older when they finally get to the airlines than in the past. Regulations that were set down 50, 60, or 70 years ago are due to be reviewed thoroughly.
We also need, as mentioned up thread, some mechanism where people can discuss/reveal medical (including mental health) issues without having their tickets summarily yanked and their careers ended before a review of some sort. You’re not going to get honesty if the result of being honest is personal ruin.
Yeah. A lot to unpack there.
In a funny coincidence, one of my late wife’s best pals from her USAF days was then a USAF flight surgeon who eventually retired from USAF as a bigwig in USAF’s aeromedical bureaucracy. She’s now the head honcho of the department at FAA which sets the medical standards for what is disqualifying, what can be done with waivers, etc., and what is no big deal.
Big picture, they’re trying to keep up with medical progress and not disqualify folks for problems that proper medical care can work with. 30 years ago diabetes was absolutely disqualifying. Now well-controlled (without insulin) is a minor deal approvable by your local AME. They’re slowly getting into letting folks with CGM and an insulin pump fly, but right now it’s quite an approval circus to jump through all the hoops. In 10 years it ought to be routine.
At the same time they have zero patience for lying liars and the lies they put down. By omission or commission. A lot of people I know have the general attitude that a medical history form that says you haven’t seen a doc in 25 years is “playing it safe”. My view is that’s a total red flag once they start looking.
As you say, the big jet airlines are a whole different animal. And as the elite employers of folks in their craft they can afford to be picky.
There are eras where the supply of applicants far exceeds the demand and times the opposite was true. When I was applying, Delta had a 20/20 vision requirement but United did not. AA had what was called the “astronaut physical” and they turned away a lot of people who made the mistake of admitting on their family history form that one of their ancestors had died of a heart attack. Even if that was back in 1910 when there was no such thing as a cardiologist.
When applicants are plentiful, something like the 20/20 vision requirement are simply an objective (read "lawsuit-proof) way to reduce the pile of resumes per job opening from insanely huge to merely “too damn many”.
Right now we are hiring a lot of 40yos. Bu they’re not new to aviation. They’ve been flying and having a medical since age 20.
Gotta run, so if this sounds disjointed, so be it.
A Piper Pawnee’s wing folded at a gender reveal party in Mexico. I’m not an ag pilot, but it didn’t look like the aircraft was pulling excessive gees.
The pull-up seemed pretty aggressive to me. He didn’t get very far before the wing failed though, so it’s hard to be sure. Looked to me like it was a bit of a snatch, where the G-onset rate was higher than normal, which is a set-up to a G-overshoot.
Or I may be seeing the beginnings of the wing fold which itself can apply a lot of pitch moment to the fuselage as stuff is bending and tearing. Or maybe I’m imagining it all.
OTOH, ag pilots do that low run, spray, and pull off all day every day, and you’d expect this guy made his standard pull-off. Then again if this guy made a habit of overly aggressive pull-offs, he may have slowly but surely broken his airplane. Which picked this particular run to fail.
A damn shame either way. And worse that the poor dude lay there fatally broken for awhile before they got him out and to the hospital. That had to have hurt a lot for a long time.
If it was a g-load failure I’d expect the wing to fold down, not up. That’s just structural failure and the aerodynamic lift of the wing just kept lifting it up. I’d guess it failed at the wing root or the strut broke.
This is not the first gender reveal plane crash in Mexico. There was one in Cancun that killed 2 people.
And there was one in the US in Texas.
Pilots should have 2 decals on the window of the their plane. No Musicians and No Gender Reveals.
I don’t think that’s correct. It’s the wings that are lifting the plane into the air. If you ask them to do too much and something breaks, the part of the plane with lift is gonna go up, and the part with no lift is gonna go down.
Structural failure is just a g-load failure. The only difference being the amount of G required to induce the failure. In any case the wing will fold in the direction it’s creating lift, normally “up” as seen in this video (and the C130 fire bomber from a few years back).
Somewhat related, Neil Williams, an aerobatic pilot in the 1970s, had a gentle failure of a wing spar in a Zlin aircraft that he was practicing aerobatics in. He discovered that the wing would be held in place if he flew inverted, so he flew an inverted circuit, rolled upright in the appropriate direction to keep the wing firm, and successfully crashed on the airfield.
His own account here in PDF: http://www.orlita.net/hangar/GAWAR.pdf
No way to know the maintenance/accident history of that Piper. It could have been too abrupt of a pull-up or it could have been cumulative damage finally making itself known or… well, I dunno, maybe something else?
A couple of weeks ago one of the more promising eVTOL prototypes crashed during an unpiloted test flight. Some details have now come out:
Short version the computers tried to compensate for a prop/rotor blade loss but shortcomings in the rest of the electrical design meant the control bus was damaged and the machine crashed.
Figuring out how to route all the critical wires in places where they can’t be disrupted by mechanical damage is a tall order. By comparison, a lot of the software is rather easy.
I bought a raffle ticket. Not a 1970, 172K model (my favourite), and it still has the Johnson bar-actuated flaps instead of electric ones. But since I’m not going to win it anyway, it doesn’t matter.
(This is not a call to action, nor a solicitation for donations.)
I wonder what the fixed cost of ownership of that thing is? Insurance, an annual, and tiedown / hangar space? The first two should be nearly the same US-wide while the latter is highly local. Any guesses? Plus the variable = hourly cost for fuel & engine / maintenance reserve?
I need a 172 like I need, well, a 172. Might be fun. Would be expensive even if it is free. I don’t care enough to start researching those costs but if anyone has even a WAG of current costs that’d be useful.
I understand they are trying to monetize this thing soon after paying all the costs to update it, but the fact it’s still being put together and pix of the finished product are not available gives this would-be ticket buyer some slight pause.
Somewhere or another I have a spreadsheet that was made by someone with more time than me. Allows you to plug in local data and spits out fixed vs variable costs for a number of common GA aircraft. I have a habit of buying into these raffles (the Alaska Airmen one really has my number) and generally have discovered from the data that if I ever actually won, my best plan would be to sell immediately or take the cash option if there was one. The immediate tax due is just the beginning of the fun.
I do recall that in general, relative to the local flying club I would join if I were serious, I’d need to fly 150 hours a year or more to make ownership make sense. Hangar space is exorbitantly expensive here, and tiedown spots are just mostly unaffordable with the added fun of watching your plane rot into the ground.
It’s real easy to add up the numbers. The hard part is gathering the numbers.
The really harder part, as you say, is that once you add them up you need to write checks to cover them. Aye, there’s the rub.
Just for an example, hangar rent in North/Central Utah is costing me $3500/year with liability only insurance $500/year. Tiedowns are cheaper, but I don’t know a number. Probably much higher in more crowded parts of the country. Insurance might be a bit less on a 172 (more of a standard/low risk plane, but two more seats to take down in a crash).
A 172 burns maybe 8gal/hr, gas at the cheaper of the nearby airports is $6.79/gal. In the previous partnership I was in we used $10/hr for maintenance reserve. That covered the regular stuff (on a homebuilt where we could do everything but the annual ourselves), but wasn’t enough to leave any for overhaul. Though at only 100 SMOH that one shouldn’t need an overhaul very soon. Could let the next owner worry about that part?
Using those numbers 30 hrs/year (more than most private owners get) will be $6000/year or $200/hr. Just checking where I do my biennial and the 172 goes for $190/hr. Makes no financial sense. But back when I was renting too many times I made my reservation 6 weeks out (any closer and weekends were booked) only to find the weather was bad that day. Hard to put a number on that.
The operating costs are pretty simple. Take your disposable income and multiply it by 2.