Yeah. The markdown formatting language can do a lot once you learn it. Tables are one thing I’ve not needed to date, so haven’t bothered to learn.
But if we read the article it says that the issue has been resolved and the airplanes can in fact take off.
In all this is a tale of standard regulations being slavishly = foolishly applied to non-standard circumstances. With perhaps a nice topping of corrupt shenanigans where local government tries (just coincidentally of course) to benefit local business.
But yeah, there are situations in actual aviation where you can get into a place you can’t easily get back out of. Sucks when that happens.
Once in a great while you can’t get back out at all. That really sucks. It’s not too hard to pull the wings off a Cessna and load the pieces on a flatbed for the drive to a better airport. Doing that with a Boeing, even a small one, is … problematic as the kids would say.
The article made it sound like they were being sold for scrap. It’s almost certain they will be converted to freighters. I agree on airport shenanigans. They would have known ahead of time what they intended to do with the planes and would never had allowed them to file a flight plan if it was a legitimate operation. The airport burned down any credibility it had for future business ventures.
100% no clue…real question:
I thought flight plans were things for ATC to help route planes about and (in a pinch) help find planes if they crash.
Is every flight plan assessed by someone for legality and assess a legitimate purpose? It seems that would be a near impossible task. I was under the impression that not all flights even need a flight plan (VFR).
From my super limited understanding a pilot puts their flight plan in and ATC just kinda goes with it and tries to route the pilot to their flight plan (with exceptions for weather and traffic).
Why can’t GA planes get enough oxygen from the atmosphere at high altitudes?
I see many videos of unpressurized planes carrying oxygen bottles and the pilot/passengers needing to use tubes they stick in their nose for extra oxygen when flying at high altitudes (IIRC above 12,500 feet).
I 100% get the issue with thinner atmosphere at higher altitudes and oxygen deprivation becoming an issue but why the need for oxygen tanks? Why can’t the plane scoop air from outside, compress it a bit and feed the people the extra air they need?
I get this is a difference between unpressurized and pressurized planes and I get that in an unpressurized plane the people in it need those tubes feeding them air. I am not getting why they need a special tank of oxygen to do it. Clearly pressurized planes manage to scoop outside air and keep everyone conscious. Why not for unpressurized planes if you use the nose-tube-things?
And before anyone says it I get that the people building these planes know waaaay more than I do and have good reasons for doing things as they did. I am merely asking why.
You’re right. ATC flight plans have diddly to do with airport restrictions. I’d say @Magiver was speaking metaphorically. There’s a lot more that goes into planning a flight than just filing an ATC flight plan.
A professional operation like Lufthansa is not going to fly an airplane to Bumfücke, Netherlands until after they’ve made arrangements with the airport management and any local vendors on where it will park, who will watch over it, what that will cost, etc. And there will be a check of the airfield itself for the runway length, pavement weight bearing capacity, fire fighting / rescue facilities, and a half-dozen other factors that affect where you can and can’t bring a big airplane. The larger the airplane, and the more of them you’re moving, the more restrictive the situation.
The quotes in the article are a little suspicious since they’re unlikely to have originally been in English. But it does sound like either Lufthansa assumed they could what they’d done in the past and they missed that the regulations or airport facilities had changed since last time. Or else the national government changed something about the regs during the time the airplanes were sitting there. Or some worker in the bowels of Lufthansa just made an oversight.
It seems practicality has prevailed and the airplanes will leave to be scrapped in Mojave, California instead.
Anecdote time:
I recall a minor but similar near SNAFU I was involved in one morning at dawn. I was ferrying a 737 to a small GA airport that had a contract jet maintenance facility. That facility was going to remove my jet’s interior, do some other functional mods while it was out, then install a shiny new interior in the latest style. Other than this one big hangar and apron at one end of the airport it was pretty much just one long runway, one parallel taxiway, and a bunch of bizjet and Cessna parking along the sides. One of the notes in the airport info said the maintenance area was not visible from the control tower.
I land and the controller says I’m cleared to taxi to the maintenance apron. I’m just about to nose around the corner into the apron throat when we see a 747 emerge from behind the hangar coming the other way. If I’d made another 20 feet of progress we’d have been trapped face to face with no way to solve it. I stop, he squeaks by me at 1mph while we’re talking to each other the whole time and 5 minutes later the problem is over. Had I happened to choose a different turnoff from the runway we’d have been trapped even before we saw him since he’s so heavy he can only use a very limited set of taxiways. If I’d been on that one and only, we’d have already been screwed before we saw each other.
Had worst come to worst the fix would’ve been simple, if time consuming. One or the other of us (probably me) would have to shut down and be pushed backwards out of the way of the other. But getting in contact with the maintenance facility and having them rustle up a tug and crew could easily have been a 45 minute process. Thank goodness for mobile phones.
“Stuff,” both large and small, is far more likely to happen out around the edges of our operations, not so much in the day-to-day humdrum stuff.
Here’s several considerations; I don’t know enough to rank order them.
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Absent cabin pressurization, you cannot achieve adequate blood oxygenation above about 12,500 feet. The regs specify that GA planes can fly at and below 12,500 indefinitely. But between 12,500 & 14,000 for no more than 30 minutes without oxygen for the crew and not above 15,000 for even a moment without oxygen for everyone.
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A nasal canula or loose-fitting mask that pushed plain air would do nothing to improve that situation since it could not push the air under any pressure greater than ambient. IOW, it would not met the regulations and it would not work as a matter of physics and biology. Gas exchange works on partial pressure differentials between whatever gasses are in the lungs and whatever are entrained in the blood.
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Absent cabin pressurization by breathing pure oxygen it is possible to maintain normal blood oxygenation up to about 25,000 feet. The greater percentage of oxygen gas in the lungs offsets the decreasing pressures involved as we ascend. But that requires a tight fitting mask a la the military that excludes all ambient air. Those require custom fitting and are uncomfortable for extended wear.
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Above 25,000 even breathing pure oxygen will not give adequate oxygenation. Military & high altitude civil systems on airliners & bizjets switch to a force-feed approach where it rams the pure oxygen into your lungs. Unlike normal life, you relax your chest and the hose inhales for you. You have to strain against the pressure to exhale. That’s very tiring. It’s also hard to talk while doing. It’s an acceptable solution for a few minutes while doing an emergency descent but you would not want to cruise that way.
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Compressed air comes essentially for free from jet engines. Not so from pistons. You’d need a compressor powered by either a shaft geared off the engine, electricity, or hydraulics.
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The military experimented with a system sort of as you suggest: it separated pure oxygen from the ambient atmosphere and compressed that before feeding it to the crew. That promised essentially indefinite duration, unlike tanks that can only hold so much. Google [OBOGS] for more. IIRC the F-22 & F-35 (& maybe later variant F/A-18s) have these systems.
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There are now medical devices called portable oxygen concentrators ("POC"s). Many people with lung problems have them. Many airline passengers carry them. AFAIK nobody has made one yet that is certificated as a supply for the airplane itself. Note that such a system requires electricity to work. Meeting the reliability hurdles may be hard. They’re also fairly bulky per person.
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Any system, be that pressurization, OBOGS, POCs, etc., which let you climb higher than 25,000 indefinitely would require by reg that you have a backup oxygen supply to survive an emergency descent after the other system failed.
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Once you’ve got that backup system, enlarging the tank(s) to make it a full time system is probably lighter & cheaper than building the rest of the other gizmos you’re suggesting.
I suppose the bottom line is that canulas delivering bottled pure oxygen are comfortable, cheap, mature tech, and mechanically simple. An air compressor would be expensive, complicated, and ineffective. An oxygen separator / concentrator is a plausible halfway house once the regulatory hurdles are jumped. Whether they’d be cost effective enough to compete with bottled oxygen is a big question. The market is not large so the amortized costs of R&D & certification would be large per unit.
I was tired when I wrote that. It was multiple thoughts poorly and inaccurately written as one.
If there were airport restrictions for 747-400’s or other large aircraft it would have been in the NOTAMS ( Notice to Airman). This is a daily update on any information relevant to pilots. It could be runway restrictions or noise abatement or some other reason. This information is reviewed by the people who file the flight plans. They would not have filed the flight plan.
Had a flight plan been filed and the planes flew to the airport then any relevant restrictions would have been broadcast to the pilots in ATIS. It’s unusual that a plane could land but not take off. The start of runway construction limiting runway length would be such a condition. This would be known ahead of time and would be listed in the NOTAMS and ATIS. Approach Control and the Control Tower would have advised the crew of this as a last warning.
And finally, what LSL said. You need to make arrangements to park a large aircraft ahead of time. It’s not the same as a half dozen small planes that can park at a general aviation ramp specifically set up to handle it.
In an emergency, airports handling diversions due to weather or other natural disasters will accept aircraft beyond their capacity and use taxiways as emergency ramp space.
Oxygen density is a function of pressure. You can breath on the ground because the air has weight and that weight creates pressure. You’re not sucking in air, it’s being pushed into your lungs. At sea level it’s 14,6 lbs per square inch of pressure. Take away that pressure and nothing happens. You can’t breath. volume.
As you go higher in the atmosphere there is less pressure. As the pressure decreases the number of oxygen molecules spread out. That’s why airplanes that fly at high altitudes are pressurized. The pressure is needed to fill your lungs with enough oxygen molecules to survive.
But they’re not pressurized to sea level pressures. That is structurally difficult to do and would increase the weight of the plane because of heavier materials required. They’re normally pressurized to 8,000. That means there’s a loss of oxygen available to passengers. People who have respiratory problems may need additional oxygen to feel comfortable.
So to answer your question, it’s much simpler to just add more oxygen per cubic volume than it is to seal up a plane and add pressurization apparatus. Simpler means cheaper and also a better payload which in a small plane is a big deal. they’re greatly under-powered compared to an airliner. Many small planes can’t take a full passenger load and max fuel.
How easy (or difficult if you prefer) is it to switch from flying one plane to another? I hear about type-ratings which I assume is for professional pilots. For this let’s assume GA aircraft, single-engine, private planes that can be flown with only one pilot.
Does a pilot need to be checked out in any plane they will fly or can a pilot go from (say) a Cessna 172 (aka Skyhawk) to a Cessna Caravan to a Cessna Denali with little fuss?
Big picture there are 3 entities you have to satisfy before you can fly any airplane large or small, fancy or simple: 1) the FAA (or other national authority); 3) the airplane’s insurer; 2) The airplane’s owner (who might or might not be you).
Hereafter I’ll assume US = FAA; other countries are conceptually similar, but the details vary wildly.
Peeling the onion:
Simplifying a bit, licenses come in 3 levels from hobbyist to pro: Private, Commercial, and Airline Transport. Excepting the “recreational” license that’s almost not a license at all, nothing about license level directly bears on how fancy an airplane you can fly. Two very rich private pilots can fly their Boeing 777 wherever they want if they fill all the other squares.
Beyond the license level pilots gather ratings (not “type ratings”) based on the so-called category & class. Category is groups like airplane vs helicopter vs blimp vs glider: fundamental differences in their basic method of staying airborne. Class is a subdivision of category whose details differ between each category. For airplanes the fundamental distinction is between the 4 combinations of single- vs. multi-engine and land-based vs. water-based.
So to fly a single-engine landplane you need a single-engine land (“SEL”) rating, and to fly a multi-engine landplane you need a multi-engine land (“MEL”) rating. Each of these require a certain amount of documented ground & flight training, and a checkride with an FAA inspector or a non-FAA employee designated as an inspector. But once rated for e.g. MEL using some particular airplane, you can legally fly any other MEL airplane subject to the rest of the mumbo jumbo below.
The requirement for type ratings is based on aircraft size and complexity, not whether the pilot is a pro or a hobbyist. Though those two things are strongly correlated except for folks wealthy enough to buy themselves real fancy airplanes. Here’s wiki’s summary on type ratings that almost raises more questions than it answers.
In general if it’s a) turbine powered including turboprop but not a turboprop single or b) heavier than 12,500# it requires a type rating. Here’s an example of the same basic aircraft where the change in engines produces a need for a type rating. The turboprop version is also bigger and heavier, but doesn’t break the 12,500# ceiling: piston Cheyenne versus turboprop Cheyenne.
In addition to class and type ratings there are other subdivisions of airplanes. This gets closer to the meat of your question.
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Airplanes are divided into high performance or non-high performance, with 200HP being the cutoff. A pilot needs specific documented instruction (but not checking) in some high performance airplane to legally fly any high performance airplane. AFAIK, there are no multi-engine airplanes with less than 200HP total (setting aside ultralights which aren’t legally “airplanes”.) So as a practical matter this is a subdivision of single-engine (land or sea). Generally somewhere below 200HP is also where the engine begins to benefit from a controllable pitch prop. So it would be rare to have a high performance airplane with a fixed pitch prop.
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Airplanes are divided into complex and non-complex, with having a controllable pitch prop, and retractable gear, (and flaps, a leftover from ye Olden Dayes) being the dividing line. As with high performance, a pilot needs specific documented instruction (but not checking) in some complex airplane to legally fly any complex airplane. There are vanishingly few multiengine airplanes that are non-complex. So as a practical matter this is also a subdivision of single-engine (land or sea).
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Airplanes are divided into tailwheel and non-tailwheel equipped. In the Dayes of Yore tailwheel was the default and documented training was required for nosewheels. That changed a looong time ago and now as with complex, a pilot needs specific documented instruction (but not checking) in some tailwheel airplane to legally fly any tailwheel airplane. There are vanishingly few surviving multiengine airplanes that are tailwheel and not type-rating required. So as a practical matter this too is becomes a subdivision of single-engine (land or sea).
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Airplanes are divided into pressurized and non-pressurized. Same ideas as above. Although there are pressurized airplanes of both single- and multi-engine below the type rating threshold, so this is equally or more applicable to multis as it is to singles.
So finally we have the skeleton of your answer as to the FAA:
Starting from a Cessna 172, graduating to a Cessna 182 or 206 family requires high performance training. Graduating to a 180 requires tailwheel training (plus high performance), while graduating to a 210 requires complex (plus high performance) training.
The 182 & 206 have a controllable pitch prop, unlike the 172, but since they don’t have retractable gear, they aren’t complex. Jumping to the (rare) pressurized 210 would also require the pressurized training.
Jumping to the Cessna 208 Caravan surprisingly requires nothing from the FAA beyond the high performance endorsement. Despite the turboprop engine, it’s just a high performance but non-complex single.
The Cessna Denali you asked about isn’t flying yet, so we don’t know exactly how it’ll be treated by FAA. But the similar Pilatus PC-12 or Piper Malibu series are simply high performance, complex, and pressurized without a type rating.
Now to the real obstacle: The insurer.
There is no way in heck your insurer is going to let you jump in a 208 or a PC-12 (or equivalent) without aircraft specific training. If you’re buying the airplane new from the factory, they probably won’t even sell it to you until / unless you go through their aircraft-specific course. The fact that course doesn’t result in an FAA type rating doesn’t mean it’s not de facto mandatory.
Aside: The insurance company will also require a certain amount of recency of experience, periodic refresher training, etc.
Finally, it comes down to the aircraft's owner (if that's not you).
Assume you routinely rent a C-172 from some local flying school and now you want to rent a Piper Cherokee 180 which is all but equivalent. The two airplanes are about like comparing a Nissan Sentra vs. a Toyota Camry: same vanilla feature set, same vanilla mission. Actually, considering their mid-1960s vintage, it’s more like comparing a Chevy Impala with a Ford Fairlane. 
The flight school will still demand you fly the Cherokee around the pattern for an hour with their instructor and pass a quiz on speeds, power settings, basic emergencies, etc.
Which also means there’s nothing (but maybe your insurance company and good judgment on your part) from stopping you as a regular C-172 pilot from buying your own used Cherokee & hopping in cold turkey, never having even looked at the manual, and flying away.
Bottom line thoughts:
It is surprising to me that FAA has not moved more aggressively into regulating training for these turboprop singles. So FAA-wise a pilot could jump from his pressurized 210 into a Denali-equivalent with no further FAA-mandated training. In effect FAA is delegating this oversight to the insurance companies.
As newfangled electric or hybrid airplanes, drone-like multicopters, etc., begin to appear on the scene all this will need a thoroughgoing updating for the new situation. How FAA squares this circle remains to be seen. I suspect insurers will once again be in the driver’s seat for who gets what training to do what.
Great answer. Thanks!
How pilots keep just all that straight is beyond me. I suppose they just have to check the specifics before they consider jumping behind the wheel of a new airplane.
I am kind of amazed at no mention of having to cope with different avionics from one plane to the next. With steam gauges I suppose most of it is familiar and maybe just a different layout but with electronic avionics and very different levels of those avionics I would think you’d need a few days of instruction just trying to get those straight. Or are they all super-standardized so all the menus and knobs and buttons work identically one to the next? (I’d be shocked if that were the case but it would make some sense.)
Rest assured I had to consult the regs to write that missive. I certainly remembered the broad outlines, but that’s from having gone through each of those steps in turn. Folks who’ve only climbed a couple of rungs can be forgiven for not having studied the rungs 3 and 6 steps above where they are. It’s also telling that substantially none of this stuff has changed since about the 1970s. I was verifying my now-fuzzy memories, not learning new things.
With your second paragraph you’ve prefigured what I would have said as my third “bottom lines” paragraph if I’d had more time / inclination to continue.
Back in the 1950 & 60s avionics and instruments were very standardized. If you could operate one VOR or compass or horizon your could operate them all. About like one 1960s 5-button AM car radio is about like another; no instruction manual or cross-training needed. As a result, the FAA’s training program standards for instrument flying implicitly assume, like the high performance and complex standards, that if you can operate one set of avionics in one aircraft you can operate any other set in any other aircraft with equal facility.
Nowadays there is very little standardization among computerized avionics. It’s the polar opposite of your suggested “all knobs & menus the same”. Equal facility my ass. Increasingly the FAA regs I laid out above do NOT do a good job of emphasizing or regulating the kinds of things that matter to modern instrument flying. Yet none of the training for those differences is regulated in any detail.
Up in type-rating land I have to pass a bunch of written tests & demonstrate a bunch of hands-on proficiency to operate the 737’s nav systems which have only nuance differences in mission or era from the 757/7676’s. Yet there are a couple dozen idiosyncratic differences to each that will bite your butt if you’re not using one but thinking about the other.
None of that is captured in the current FAA training regulations for airplanes below those needing a type rating. Lots of Bonanzas, etc., today have panels far more advanced than the 727 I flew throughout the 1990s. Yet the formal training standards would have a 1990s Cessna pilot far more comfortable in that aged 727 than in today’s modernized glass panel GPS Bonanza. Even in a low-speed airplane there isn’t time to be fumbling around in the menus or guessing at the details of what any given button does.
This is a real gap. How or when they’re going to address it is a mystery to me. Though I admit I don’t follow GA-related news all that closely.
In general the FARs say a pilot must be fully 100% skilled at any/everything that might happen in flight. I suppose that’s their catch-all to let themselves off the hook and to hang the pilot who fumbles their way into the side of a hill because this airplane’s Garmin doesn’t work like the last airplane’s Acme Avionics.
I do not know whether other national authorities or the EU do this any better. But IMO FAA is behind the times here and getting behinder by the day as ever newer gizmos come out. They totally regulate the design & construction, but they are not managing the user training aspect at all. As stuff gets more complex that’s a widening safety chasm.
A Civil Air Patrol aircraft crashed just short of the runway at Whiteman Airport in Pacoima, CA.
On the news here in Washington this morning, they had footage of the crash, which I didn’t see in the video in the linked article. The aircraft (a Cessna 182 Skylane) suffered engine failure and was attempting an emergency landing at the airport. He ran out of altitude. The footage I saw shows the aircraft hitting powerlines, which caused it to cartwheel into the ground. The aircraft burst into flames immediately.
(I was a 2LT in the CAP in California in the '80s and '90s.)
Video of the actual crash:
IIRC I’ve flown through Whiteman a time or two back in the 1970s. Even then, as with most suburban airports, there was nowhere to safely land following an engine failure. The main boulevards look like decent choices except for the incessant power lines. Collectively they amount to a pretty thorough installation of
Here’s a GoogleMap:
Ref our earlier back-and-forth about displaced thresholds, this is an example of an airport where the runway is as long as physically possible within the real estate available and using displaced landing thresholds at both ends to raise the approach path for noise and to restrict the size (and number) of airplanes using the field.
My ex-wife and I used to argue a lot about airports in residential areas (that had nothing to do with why she is my ex now…this was a polite argument usually over some drinks in a bar kinda thing).
She grew up near O’Hare Airport in Chicago. A flightpath went over their house. Something her whole family complained about.
My perspective is they chose to buy a house under a flight path to an airport. Likely it was less expensive so her parents could get a better place for the money…just with planes flying overhead.
The Chicago airport baggage tag is ORD (not CHI like you might expect). This is because Ohare’ Airport in Chicago was built in an apple orchard. When they built the airport is was in farmland deliberately away from the city (you can see it in the top left corner of the city in the map below):
Much later everyone built around it. That’s fine but no room to bitch about the airport next to you it seems to me. That doesn’t stop them though and the bitching was incessant for a long time. That has mostly stopped now since it has all run its course and there is little left to change or be done.
I get it if someone puts a landing route over your house that never existed before but if you buy a place knowing it is there that is your own lookout.
The people there never saw it that way though and, as mentioned, there were lots of fights about it for a long time.
Same thing with SMO. This page has historical pictures of Clover Field (as Santa Monica Municipal Airport was known), showing how sparsely populated it was.
Actually, the open warfare at OHare is alive and well. And has been for the last 20 years.
They are in the process of totally rearranging most of the runways at O’Hare. In prior years it was a 1940s style set of overlapping pickup-sticks pointing every which way. When they are done it’ll be like ATL or DFW: 6 runways abreast spread out across a 2-3 miles of width all pointing the very same way.
Which means that now the planes are flying over just as many houses as before, but they’re different houses. The homeowners who are no longer being overflown every couple minutes are very grateful. The ones whose houses used to be miles from the arrival stream and now have airplanes directly overhead every 2 minutes are … less than overjoyed about the changes.
One of the reasons we can’t build new major airports very well these days is we need a blob of land about 2x3 miles and ideally 3x4 miles to put under the airport with (ideally) zero houses within about 6 miles in any direction from the 3x4 mile box. But with lots of freeways already nearby so we don’t have to extend them too far to connect them to the future airport. That’s a tall order.