Drive time ≈ 8hrs
Flight time ≈ 1:30, but you need to add to that
travel to/from the airport,
security screening time,
plane load,
pushback & taxiing time.
waiting for luggage (?)
Rental car line (?)
With long security lines & flight delays you may not be saving much time over driving & be able to take things like your normal shampoo bottle & a full-sized tube of toothpaste, plus be on your own schedule & have more comfortable seating & less stress over will you/won’t you make it there.
I’m taking the position of planning as close to normal as possible and if connecting have it be somewhere where there are multiple flights per day to and from, book refundable/changeable tickets, and adapt as things come up. In my current location I simply have no choice but to fly to/through one of those cities to go anywhere in CONUS.
Of course, none of this is news to us. And 8 hours is possible (maybe) if you leave after 10 pm and drive through the night without stopping. And at 65 and 70 years old, neither of these options is practical for us.
In the real world, with daytime traffic, even leaving at the best times to avoid traffic in major cities, 10 hours with stops is about the best that can be expected. So there’s no question that flying is faster, door-to-door.
Amtrak? It is to laugh! The cheapest fare is about $50 one-way for an 11-hour overnight trip. No thanks. The regional trains (7.5 hours, if they’re on time) are more than $400 round-trip per person. You can save about $50 if you’re willing to leave at 5 am. Acela (6.5 hours, if they’re on time) is $700 - $1,100 RT PP!!!
Our SWA fares are $325 RT for two.
Anyway, this is besides the point. The reason for my question was not to debate flying versus driving, but to ask what the chances are that ATC slowdowns or shutdowns are going to cancel my flights.
Yeah, we’ll wait to hear how things develop, and hope for the best, but I’m pretty much thinking we’ll be driving.
The good news is that this is the first Thanksgiving since my wife retired, so we can leave at any time we want. When she was still a teacher, we could only leave after about 2:30 pm on the Tuesday. Now we can set out at 6 am on Monday, which should avoid a lot of the traffic, especially around NYC.
Yeah, that’s what I was planning, except the Tappan Zee bridge has been replaced by the Mario Cuomo Bridge. Unless you’re one of the ones who don’t like that name.
As someone suggested they are likely to shut down the least profitable flights first. So I think it likely they will shut down the smaller airplanes first as they sell fewer tickets on these. What can you find out about the airplane you are flying on?
The left side engine cowling for the UPS plane that crashed ended up next to the PAPI lights which would be on the right side of the plane taking off. That’s about 2500 feet from the end of the runway.
Question for airline pilots. Approximately where on the runway would V1 occur on a fully loaded MD-11?
Sorta. The FAA may not simply reduce traffic by X% everywhere. Odds are they’ll reduce traffic where they’re having the worst problems with understaffing and overwork and now growing absenteeism.
So maybe the northeast corridor takes a big hit while the intermountain west is wholly unaffected. Or vice versa.
You’re right that each airline will be trying to do the most profitable thing. Which is enormously complicated because the profitability of the whole is not simply the sum of the parts. e.g. if they have 6 flights a day to Tampa and 6 to Miami, they’d do better collectively to cancel 3 of each than pull out of e.g. Tampa entirely. Even if individually, each Tampa flight is a bit less profitable than each Miami flight.
Aircraft routing, crew routing, maintaining network integrity (both as to destinations and as to hub connection times), feeding hubs and gateways, etc., are all macro issues that impinge on the micro question of how many empty or bargain seats are on flight X.
Typically when you’re performance limited and making a max effort takeoff V1 ends up happening 3000-3500 feet from the far end.
That does depend on the particular airplane, as some have better stopping capability than others.
But … They took off on 17R which is not quite 12,000 feet long. For a runway that long the runway length is probably not the limiting factor to their performance. So the V1 would occur earlier, maybe 5000 feet from then end.
Note that the worst-case certification standard is that you can fail an engine just at V1, continue accelerating on the remaining engine(s) to VR, lift off, and clear the end of the runway at 35 feet (!) of altitude. So not much taller than a standard tilt-up warehouse type building. And then maintain a very shallow net climb from there until attaining V2 then steepen the climb to hold V2 to 1000 feet AFL.
Those calcs assume the airplane’s drag isn’t much affected by whatever caused the engine failure. We see these guys came off the end of the runway not even at 35 feet. At least not for the ass end; the cockpit was higher, but that’s not much help if your rump gets dragged through buildings and fences and stuff.
Thanks LSL Guy. It appears the cowling departed after that point. They didn’t have much to work with. I wonder how soon they’ll release engine performance on all the engines. If that was in fact, a compressor stall of engine # 2 seen in the video, then the thrust data of that engine should be publicly available. Not sure how much will come out in the preliminary report.
I couldn’t see anything in any of the vids that looked like a compressor stall, but maybe I didn’t look at the vid you did. Assuming there was compressor stalling on #2 …
While compressor stalling, thrust is greatly reduced. If the stall clears, thrust is quickly restored.
But healthy engines don’t compressor stall. Which means the next question is why #2 was having problems right after #1 did? Was the whole thing triggered by a bird flock ingestion that wrecked #1 badly enough that it shook itself off the jet in two big pieces, while #2 was just slightly damaged by the birds it ate? Did #2 ingest some debris from #1? etc.
My bet is, per the usual, we’ll get an NTSB preliminary in a couple weeks saying almost nothing we don’t already know or strongly surmise, followed by dead silence for 18 months, followed by the detailed final report. About the only exception would be if they quickly uncovered something that would trigger an emergency grounding order. But those are real rare.
I’m wondering about UPS Flight 2976, the cargo plane that crashed in Louisville, killing at least fourteen people. Apparently the left engine detached prior to or during takeoff and there were flames on that wing. So was the flight crew aware of this? Were they beyond the point that they could abort the takeoff? Did they call a mayday?
I believe this is the original video. There is the briefest of flash that could be a reflection of the lens. It captures how quickly it all took.
If it was a compressor stall I think any metallic FOD would have occurred prior to the video so that leaves the possibility of fuel ingested from the wing.
They had nothing to work with past the runway. It’s 1200 feet to the warehouse. If they used the Chevron area of the runway then it was only 800 feet.
Is there “emergency power” available in modern engines?
