I would think that most aircraft of that type make poor gliders.
Injuries kept me out, but I’m from a Navy family. I remember when the Blue Angels flew the A-4. (And I also saw them perform in Phantoms.) I loved (and still love) the looks of the A-4. I wished I could own my own TA-4J. But I also worked at Edwards AFB, and have always been a huge fan of NASA (hence, my wanting a T-34B in NASA livery instead of they typical authentic military or ‘aggressor’ scheme), and astronauts flew around in T-38s. And the Talon is a super-pretty airplane. (And as I mentioned, I also like the T-37.) It would be a tough call for me today if I suddenly found myself with an extra ten megabucks to spend on a jet toy and the money to fly it. I’m kind of leaning toward the Talon.
Incidentally, I have the tail end of a T-38 engine in the storage unit. It was part of a ‘lot’ of items I bought at an auction at EAFB in the '80s. I can’t remember what the part is actually called, so if you know, please tell me. It was fun seeing Neelix using one as a stove burner in Star Trek: Voyager.
Progressive Aerodyne, the Tavares, Florida, company that manufactures the SeaRey amphibious light sport aircraft in kit and factory-built versions, has shut down production while it negotiates the possible sale of the company to an investor group, according to people familiar with the situation including the former chief executive.
“The doors are closed until there is a new owner or other resolution,” said Geoffrey Nicholson, Progressive Aerodyne’s CEO from 2017 to 2023. Nicholson declined to provide additional details regarding the company’s disposition. Its website is not operating and displays the message “Account Suspended,” and attempts to reach the company by phone were unsuccessful.
Right after my comment about jet fuel burn and gliders, that was a masterstroke of timing to post that. Well done!
The dark gray corrugated component beneath the stove flame and larger in diameter than the flame is the afterburner liner. That complicated shape gives the flame something to hang onto as the primary turbine exit exhaust is coming up the middle. It also provides enough cooling turbulence to keep the afterburner fire from simply melting the ass end off the engine.
Agree that T-38s are one of the prettiest fast jets ever built.
Yeah.
The layout of DCA / Washington National really promotes these kinds of errors. FAA KDCA Airfield Diagram. Piecing together the scenario from the article the JB airplane (almost certainly an RJ) was using a semi-unusual overflow runway (Rwy 4), while SWA was doing the usual taxi route to the primary runway (Rwy 36), which entails crossing the other less-used runway directly along taxiway J or more likely taxiways J to P to C for the actual crossing.
JB had evidently barely begun moving, because they stopped before, and turned off at, taxiway A real close to the start of their runway.
Still the process error that led to conflicting instructions could easily have been a multi-hundred fatality event had the timing been different, the visibility worse, or either set of pilots looking more at the wrong thing at the critical moment versus whatever they actually were looking at and thinking about when it really mattered.
In baseball terms, I’d call this an unforced error for United. Doesn’t matter that it was a charter flight - I’m sure their GOM doesn’t permit a passenger sitting in a pilot seat.
At least where I worked, they couldn’t be in the cockpit, period. Door closed and locked, period. All the normal passenger flight security precautions. Which rule I suspect comes straight from TSA regs and is therefore industry-wide.
That’s a very severe fuckup and somebody (perhaps multiple somebodies) is/are gonna lose a job over this one. Deservedly so.
At least in the world of charter aircraft with accessible cockpits (meaning, there’s no door) that rule was always in our GOM - a passenger could not occupy a pilot seat. Not sure if it originated with TSA or an OpSpec though.
But it’s incidents like this one that make us realize why those rules are there. Pretty incredible in this day and age that people at United could invite this sort of s**tstorm.
Yeah. Two utterly separate and severe violations. First, letting the passenger get past the flight deck door with the airplane off the gate, much less in cruise. Second, letting them get in a pilot seat. Obviously the former is a precondition for the latter to even be possible.
When I flew a lot of charters back in the early 90s, leaving the cockpit door open from gate to gate and having our own charter liaison worker in the cockpit or various managers from the chartering entity (usually but not always a sports team) in the cockpit was not prohibited procedurally and was common culturally.
But the idea of letting one of those folks occupy a pilot seat would not have flown (heh) even when I was a newbie in the late 1980s.
My bottom line:
As Charles Babbage almost said ~150 years ago in a very different context:
I am not able rightly to apprehend the confusion of ideas that could provoke such a decision.
The TSA has no jurisdiction for flight deck doors.
The rules in question are operational, and vary depending on aircraft age, size (number of passengers) and type of flight (the same physical plane may operate under different operational regimes at different times).
For the airlines we all know and love, in the United States, they are operating under 14 CFR PART 121 and there are a few regulatory standards requiring a door, defining the type of door and who has access.
If interest in this case is 14 CFR 121.547 Admission to Flight Deck.
I suspect the person in question does not meet any of the allowed criteria.
If the aircraft was a part 135 operation, there may be more latitude.
I’m too tired to try to figure it all out on my phone right now. I’m not an operations person, I’m airworthiness, and this question feels like work.
I am sure the memory of that flight where the kid in the pilot seat inadvertently switched off the autopilot leading to a death spiral dive which ended up killing everyone on board was foremost in everyone’s minds here.
In my family, “eldar” has become a verb, meaning to “operate a delicate machine clumsily” or otherwise be overly enthusiastic with your hands.
Example: “Don’t eldar the seedlings when we put them into the flower bed — transfer them gently.”
(Of course this kids shouldn’t have been in the cockpit, let alone handling the controls. But the sister was cautious — she might have made a good pilot someday. The older brother Eldar, on the other hand, was an oaf, and old enough to know better. Well, at least he was the first to notice that something was amiss.)
Active-duty USAF and the ANG both operate KC-135 tankers. Back in my era it was commonplace that units would arrange a “family flight” every few months so spouses and kids could go on an otherwise normal productive training flight and see what Dad (or Mom) did for a living.
A KC-135 family flight crashed. It was being flown by two (male) QC pilots, the elite of the elite, one notch above instructors, who are in turn one notch above ordinary aircraft commanders. This was long before cellphones and electronic cameras and such. The KCs, in common with most USAF airplanes back then, had very rudimentary voice and flight data recorders.
Anyhow, working from scant objective data the accident investigation pieced together the scenario that at some point in the flight, one of the pilot’s wives was in one seat, with the other pilot in his seat like normal. So hubby got out of his seat and his wife replaced him there. Something [mumble mumble] happened, control of the plane was lost, and it came apart during a spiral dive, killing everyone.
Of course the brass reiterated that although family flight events could / should continue, non-pilots had never been never allowed to, and should never again, occupy one of the crew seats.
There was also a persistent rumor that the truth was a wee bit worse. And was known to the investigative board but was white-washed. Namely that both pilots had vacated their seats and both wives were driving at the time control was lost.
I know I don’t know. But it was an interesting and remarkably persistent speculation.
Just today I learned of another exception to this rule. The Cessna 408 SkyCourier is a high-wing twin, roughly equivalent to a Twin Otter. It was only introduced two years ago.
