Most aircraft engines have no provisions for “3D gravity”.
In properly flown non-aerobatic flight, “down” as felt by the engines & occupants is always directly from vertical tail tip to landing gear, just as it is when the airplane is parked. During e.g. turbulence the amount of felt gravity may oscillate a bit around the default 1.0 we’re used to on the ground, but even then not by much. What most folks call “bad turbulence” is experiencing 0.8 to 1.2 positive Gs. In other words, jittering a bit around Earth’s normal +1.0 value.
Airplanes intended for aerobatics have what are called “inverted systems” to ensure a steady supply of engine oil, engine fuel, and perhaps hydraulic fluid to hydraulic pumps regardless of positive or negative felt Gs in the airplane’s reference frame. And even those have time limits on them, generally 30 seconds or so.
There are lots of reasons not to put a modern car engine in an airplane, but most of them are legal, not engineering. The engineering obstacles are mostly weight. Lightplane piston engines are waay out at the tip of an evolutionary dead end for high power output per mass and high reliability. The rest of ICE technology (95% cars, 4% motorcycles, 1% anything else) went a very different direction. So here in 2024 the two evolutionary tips are now very far apart.
With the advent of electric cars we have a chance to re-converge propulsion technology in light planes. E-lightplanes are the story of the future. Not car-style ICE engines.
I think Rotax and other engine manufacturers are putting a dent in the old regime of ice engines and I agree it’s a legal problem and not engineering. But Hell will freeze over before I fly with the current Li battery. You can pull over a car that spontaneously combusts but it’s not possible in a plane without a parachute.
I agree that E planes are the future because they offer the potential for a twin with both motors under a single cowl. No need for a twin engine rating and it’s way safer than a twin that loses 1 engine. Annuals will be greatly reduced. No mags to time, compression to check, plugs to clean, gaskets to replace, carbs to rebuild etc…
I think many people will accept a speedy twin with a reduced range if batteries are a weight restriction.
I am terrified of Janitrol cabin heaters. You’re one fuel leak away from a raging gasoline-fed fire in the nose compartment of your light twin (their usual application). Which gasoline you have no shut-off valve for, and which compartment you have no extinguishment system for. Nor inflight access to. But the good news is the compartment vents directly into the cockpit. No thank you.
A Li-ion lightplane doesn’t faze me at all.
As to SWA in Portland ME, it sounds like somebody was a) in a big hurry, b) not thinking defensively, and c) on the wrong radio frequency.
Or d) mistakenly believed the tower was closed. The tower officially begins operations at 0600, which is 15 minutes after this occurred. Trying to hurry to launch before ATC “wakes up” is a common enough example of a haste-first mentality that SWA has promulgated since Day One and has been trying to dial back for the last 10-ish years to some, but evidently not nearly enough, success.
The smarter non-hasty thing is to call on the radio before leaving the gate to see if “anyone is home”. Ditto before taking the runway. Prior to official opening time they may not offer control instructions, but they’ll tend to offer useful information and then say “you’re on your own”.
Runways being closed for a FOD inspection by an airport vehicle are a bog standard feature of big aviation. Every runway at every airport gets that treatment first thing as part of the tower opening the airport for controlled business. It’s hard enough to see those vehicles when you’re looking for them, but if you’re “head up and locked” as we say, well they simply won’t be seen.
Point taken but I thought they were powered by a fuel pump which should have a breaker. I’ve had multiple Li batteries swell up on me. I’ll wait until something safer comes along.
For many years Cessna and Piper products were equipped with breakers that the pilot could reset, but not pull. They were a flush button when on, and a sticking out button when popped. So an auxiliary on-switch, but not an auxiliary off-switch.
To be sure you can always kill the whole electrical system, but you may already have enough loose fuel in there that it still stays real ugly. And electricity-off IMC gets dicey in its own way.
To each their own.
The airline industry certainly has problems with consumer batteries in carry-ons and occasionally in checked baggage. passenger jets all now carry laptop fire containment bags. And they get used. But not every day despite the jillions of cheapass consumer products people carry. Aviation certifiable batteries are a whole different level of quality. Yes, it’s still a maturing tech, and lessons are still being (expensively) learned, such as the B787 battery problems of now 11(!) years ago.
Yeah, I thought about the gender thing. The cartoonist could have used a 170-pound male athlete. (Male, because a 350-pound woman would really be offensive.) Obviously airlines can’t allot a certain weight for passengers and their baggage (actually now that I think about it, they probably do), and then weigh each passenger. But it does seem unfair that passengers should be charged for ‘excess baggage’ if they don’t exceed the weight and balance standard the airline uses.
The regs are the regs and human vanity is human vanity.
If I was king we’d weigh all of the people and all of the carry-ons as well as all the hold baggage which is weighed now. That’s legitimately for W&B purposes.
Whether and how excess poundage charges for luggage should be set is a marketing matter.
An oversized person charge, or the “buy two seats if you can’t fit in one” idea would be nice. But obviously not gonna happen except if mandated by law. Which law would almost certainly be part of a compromise solution which mandated that seats be sized to accommodate e.g. 80% of actual Americans, with the biggest 20% having to either upgrade to bigger seats in a higher class of service, or buy two.
@LSLGuy Thanks for your thoughts on the Oklahoma City near-accident. I hadn’t considered that, possibly, ATC could have been more helpful than they were during the approach. Maybe.
I think Boeing would do well to bring the executives, management, engineers, and as much manufacturing as practical back to the Seattle area. In theory, you can create a design, send it to a subcontractor, and get back exactly what you ordered. In practice, there is no substitute for meeting with people face-to-face, and seeing what they do. I suppose buying Spirit does bring more of their manufacturing in-house, in a corporate sense, but they’re still more scattered than they should be. Bosses in Virginia, fuselages in Kansas, assembly in Seattle and South Carolina. Every little missed communication is a chance to make a mistake.
Spirit was spun off from Boeing in a spate of corporate cost cutting and shareholder-pleasing shenangians 20 years ago. Boeing or its corporate predecessors has been making major structures in Wichita since the dawn of aviation. Perhaps surprisingly, Wichita is one of the Meccas of US aviation and always has been.
IMO:
The issue isn’t subcontractors per se. It isn’t geography per se. It’s a management culture that says we’re in the business of making money, not making e.g. airplanes.
For simple retailers and websites, and perhaps for real estate agents or social media influencers, paying no attention to anything but delivering the shoddiest possible product at the cheapest possible price with no corner left uncut works great.
For businesses who actually have consequential products with consequences in the real world, not so much. And the more complex your products are, the bigger a mess you can create with the wrong management attitude.
That’s what needs fixing, and Boeing is far from the only such large corporation. But right now they seem to be one of the worst offenders. Perhaps if e.g. Wells Fargo can arrange for some securities trading mistake to trigger the next great Depression, perhaps Boeing will be dethroned. But right now the dunce cap is their crown to be worn.
