We get interrupted a LOT with ours. One of our mitigations for that is to back up a good 5 or 10 steps to where it’s 100% obvious we’re hitting items we already remember saying/doing. Trying to pick up right where you left off invites exactly what happened to you.
All lessons learned the hard way.
I remember back shortly after Reagan deregulated the airlines seeing the very young co-pilot outside turning the prop while the plane was being loaded/offloaded. I think the planes were called “Shorts”; basically a freight container with a wing slapped across the top and two turboprops on the struts attaching the wing to the body. I think the explanation was that you didn’t want heat cooking the lubricant and fusing the shaft and bearings.
Funny enough, but the latest whiz-bang engines from Pratt & Whitney, the GTF series, and the latest from their main competitor CFM’s LEAP have a vaguely related problem. But with a higher tech solution that ties back into starting and hence the OP.
Once shut down & the lubrication and cooling airflow stops then the residual heat soaks unevenly through the engine. Which has the effect of putting a warp or “bow” into the main shaft of the engine. Much of the efficiency gains of the last umpteen years in turbine engines is down to making the tolerances between moving parts ever tighter. So anything that’s bent out of alignment due to uneven thermal expansion tends to collide with other nearby parts. That’s bad.
This bowing and the attendant scraping of parts didn’t come to light until after the products were in service. Oops.
In both products the solution was simple. During the start process, just spin the engine for an extra minute or two while the cooling airflow and pumped oil lubrication work to redistribute the accumulated heat and let everything relax towards normal alignment before you light the fire and put everything under some serious stress. And so the computerized start logic incorporates a delay timer midway through the startup cycle.
Which really pisses off the airlines because every second spent between commencing pushback and taxiing away is very precious because of the congestion on the ramps. We can park airplanes or taxi airplanes far more densely than we can push them back and start them. The delay timer added delay at the most adversely impactful moment of the entire flight.
OTOH, the airlines love the fact the new-fangled engines burn 15% less fuel. Everything’s a trade-off.
The wiki on the GTF has some explanation of this issue. The CFM article isn’t as complete on this point but their engine is equally subject to the problem and has the same resolution.
So, hypothetically, let’s imagine you are being chased by a doomsday cult that wants the gizmo you have that will destroy the whole world if they get it. You can not destroy the gizmo or hide it or throw it out because reasons. You MUST get away!
You get to an airport. Screw ATC and any other niceties you do at an airport. You need to jump into a plane, turn it on as fast as you can and fly out of there. Once wheels up you are safe. I totally get doing this at a major airport presents a lot of dangers so let’s say you are in Washington at Boeing’s test field. Mostly no traffic.
You have available:
I am curious about all of them. I assume the fastest to turn on and get moving would be the smallest and simplest, the Cessna 152, in this case. Feel free to add in any other plane if you want.
I also get you may well be taking shortcuts that you usually would not for safety reasons. For this you need to be as safe as you can be to get away while minimizing time it takes to get in the air safely(ish). So, if skipping a step means a 75% chance the plane blows up (or breaks) then you should probably not take that chance and do that step.
If I forgot any other random restrictions let me know. 
Basically, we all know you can hope in a car, turn the key and be off within 10 seconds. I get planes are a different beast (e.g. jet engines take time to spool up…your car does not). Just trying to get a sense of it.
EDIT to add: If any plane needs a power cart to start then assume the power cart is there. I assume they can all start on their own but I do not know.
OT, but I note that the Short brothers started making manned aircraft (balloons) in 1897 and are the world’s oldest manufacturer of airplanes. They were an original licensee of the Wright Brothers.
*hop in a car
Did we lose the smack forehead emoji?
This is a bit off-topic, but in 2018 Boeing Field had 183,268 aircraft operations, which is an average of 502 per day. 79% of those were general aviation.
Here’s a whole thread from 2014 on mostly the same topic as this thread that quickly morphs into your specific question.
Short answer would be the C-152 or equivalent is far faster. One switch on, turn the key, waggle a lever or two while the stater is cranking and she fires. Once the engine is running push the throttle to full bore and be airborne in another 30ish seconds.
Pretty much any non-fighter jet will be about the same total overhead, plus the same time interval per engine. Which adds up to 3-5 minutes total. So any 2-engine jet will be about the same as any other, and any will be faster than any 4-engine jet by the time it takes to start the 2 extra engines. SO of your examples, a generic pre-MAX 737 and the Gulfstream would be effectively a dead heat.
Modulo the extra start delay built into the MAX and some Airbus NEOs that I mentioned in my previous post. So the MAX specifically will lose to the G550 for that reason.
Another advantage of the Cessna is it uses a much shorter takeoff roll and so could use darn near any taxiway, even a stubby little “side street”, on an airport. The jets can certainly use a taxiway as a runway too, but it would need to be one of the longer straight runs, typically one that parallels a runway. Airports don’t generally have long straight ones running in other directions. So the odds favor the Cessna being able to more quickly get aligned to a long enough stretch of pavement.
You said once wheels up you’re safe. If we alter the game a little, the answer changes …
If the goal is to get out of walkie-talkie range of the bad guys because they have the remote detonator for the gizmo (or out of cannon range so you’re not shot down), then you need to factor in the flight speed.
The Cessna might be airborne 4 minutes before the jet. And in those 4 minutes will cover about 5 miles. Once the jet’s airborne it’ll cover those same 5 miles in barely another minute and still be accelerating. In a drag race to 10 miles away from the airport the jet will win every time.
Boeing’s flight test field is Moses Lake, not Boeing Field. Yes, a lot of jets make their first flight way from the factory at Boeing Field and that’s a test of sorts. But when they’re testing a new design while seeking initial certification that’ done at Moses Lake.
We did.
They’ve got two useless gendered facepalms now: 
As commented in another thread lamenting the lack of :smack:, these look more like adults playing peek-a-boo.
I jump into the AStar parked over by the pumps. I know I can get that airborne in under 30 seconds. I know this because we had a pissed off mama black bear try to get into our ride home while we were out in the field at a remote site. It chased the crew into our shelter and then saw the A Star with pilot inside. In the time it took for her to see him, turn, and charge 150 yds he was in the seat, spooling up and airborne with her grabbing the skids. Total time was probably 20 seconds. He seriously ditched the normal start up procedures but had no issues afterwards. Failing that I go for the C-152 as I learned to fly in them.
I’ve gotten a standard 2-seat Cessna airborne in 600 feet - granted, a cold day with a short-field take-off technique and not fully loaded so all that helps. Of course, that’s just wheels off the pavement, you need a little more distance to clear any obstacles that might be in your way but 600 feet ain’t much and with imminent death as an incentive I might be able to hone my technique further.
No it won’t.
Or rather, it depends.
Are you trying to get vertical height as quickly as possible? Then a C-15x airspeed would be 66mph, and the ground track shorter than 5 miles in four minutes. Best rate of climb? that’s 78 mph which initially seems to fit the bill but again, not all of that will be horizontal distance, a significant amount goes into climbing vertically. I suppose if you’re looking for just groundtrack distance you can say screw climb and pour it mostly into the horizontal vector but Og help you if there are any obstacles in your path.
The Cessna (though I love the little whippersnappers) lose even worse in a race against the jet than you initially might think. At take-off, no, it’s not going to cover 5 miles in 4 minutes unless you’re flying solely in ground effect, and maybe not even then. You MIGHT get away with that on the Great Plains but all it would take is one barbed wire fence, bush, or other hard to see obstacle to ruin your day, and not even a very tall one at that.
But yes, the Cessna can be started and off the ground sooner than a jet. If you’re goal is to get out of arm’s reach of people (or bears) on the ground the Cessna works just fine. If you only have a short area in which to take off yes, they’ll beat a lot of other aircraft. Trying to outrun just about anything… not so much. Forward motion during climb is not particularly impressive even with expert technique and low payload.
[/nitpick]
CookingWithGas, this exact same thing happened to me too, years ago.
I also threw a valve stem, which broke the crankcase cover.
I first learned to fly in a C-150. I can certainly recall cruising across the desert southwest and looking down to see myself being passed by semi-trucks when westbound into the wind.
As you rightly say I was being a smidgen optimistic. Mostly I was just rounding / ballparking since this was an aside to the OP. I rounded off a bunch of details in the jet’s performance too.
75mph true would get you 5 3D air miles in 4 minutes. Yes, there’s be a 2-5% decrement in 2D air distance after you factor out the altitude gain. Near sea level near standard day the difference between IAS & TAS is pretty negligible. If no-wind then TAS = GS. Dealing with whichever way the wind is blowing is the largest wildcard in that deck.
My home base has some amount of light piston twin traffic, 402s, Navajos, etc. And a few PT6 powered Caravan-equivalents. They launch off the adjacent parallel, turn aside 45+ degrees then we launch off our runway straight out or with a 30 degree same way turn. It doesn’t take long to leave them behind or below.
Does the B737 MAX have a dual cooling function? On the A320 NEOs, after the start circuit is energized, a message appears on the engine display showing the cooling time required (if any) on each engine. If cooling appears on both engines then you can select the “dual cooling” switch and both engines will motor during the cooling sequence instead of just one at a time. It can save a minute or two.
No. The Jurrasic Jet is not nearly that smart. There isn’t even a countdown timer, so you have no official way to know whether cooling will happen or how long each will take. Each start is a surprise.
Once you’ve manually configured the APU air supply to the correct engine, you turn the relevant engine’s start/ignition knob to the ground start position. The N2 spools up to about 80% of the normal add-fuel value then stagnates there while “MOTORING” appears across the N2 gauge. And there it sits for 15 to 90 seconds. Then whenever the engine gets happy enough, the “MOTORING” disappears, you see and hear the starter crank it up those last few percent to the add-fuel point then you raise the fuel switch & from there the rest of the start cycle is turbine-typical.
Once it’s stabilized at idle, you manually reconfigure the APU air to the other engine, manually start the a/c pack on the now-running engine, and repeat the procedure. Including repeating whatever that delay turns out to be. They’re usually pretty similar, but aren’t identical.
From experience you get an idea of whether & how much the system will MOTOR. IIRC from 18 months ago when we were last flying them, generally it’s worst ~=90 seconds after a ~2-hour turn around and is nil for first flight of day or after a 5+ hour sit. Pre-COVID our usual gate times are around 1h10 so a typical motor on the next start was about 45 seconds per engine. Feels like an eternity.
Historically our 737 fleet had not been big on single engine taxi. Management always wanted it, but the pilots not so much. Between the MAX’s slow start and the much higher idle thrust which makes controlling taxi speed a definite problem, more and more pilots were becoming converts to single engine taxi in the MAX. Which was slowly spreading into the NG as well.
With any luck we’ll get them flying again soon and see how that settles out.
Whaaaat!? Why are there so many steps to starting your plane? You’d think it was a 1960s design or something .
Starting a Cessna 150 shouldn’t take much longer than starting a car, if you are in a life threatening situation and aren’t worried about checklists. Jump in, turn the key to both mags, push in the mixture, push the throttle in a half inch, and fire it up. If you’re already pointing down a straight and din’t care about engine life, push the throttle in and off you go. Total time should be no more than 10 seconds to engine start, and maybe another 20 seconds to be wheels-up.
If you have a decent headwind, you might get that Cessna off the ground in a couple hundred feet, or even less. I once landed a C-150 into a 30kt headwind straight down the runway. It felt like I was hovering. I touched down on the button, rolled maybe 10-20 ft, and turned off onto the taxiway. It happened so fast the controller lost sight of me, as he was expecting to see me at least a few hundred feet down the runway. He was amazed when I told him I was down and on the taxiway at the beginning of the runway.
I always assumed that it’s an issue of security, but not like this. If it’s hard to start it’s a lot harder for a 14-year-old kid or a drunk to steal it and go joy-flying.
Having a car stolen and driven by an incompetent driver is bad enough, having them take off in a plane is almost guaranteed to be catastrophic if the plane leaves the ground, which isn’t entirely outside the realm of possibility given how close some video games are to a flight simulator.