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ssgodderidge

Any flight buffs know the estimated cost of doing something like that?

I’m all for having fun, and I love that they spent the money to do it

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Not a flight buff, but...

- Jet fuel from NYC to LAX seems to cost ~$10k.[1]

- You pay a pilot $50 / hour salary. (+100% more with benefits?)[2]

- Double all of that for a bunch of random things I can't think of (airport fees?)

My napkin math seems to indicate this couldn't possibly cost Boeing more than $10-20k? Pretty small potatoes to such a large company.

[1] https://simpleflying.com/commercial-airliner-fuel-cost/ [2] https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Commercial-Pilot-Salar...

Then count the fame you get for it... and it actually _increases_ value!

> My napkin math seems to indicate this couldn't possibly cost Boeing more than $10-20k? Pretty small potatoes to such a large company.

Yeah they were losing billions through criminal negligence and delayed deliveries of the 737 Max, so a couple of tens of thousands for some well needed good PR is nothing. This is probably the first bit of it for multiple years now, with all the delays in the 777X, assembly quality issues of 787, etc.

It feels to me like a final swan song for the era, both corporate and economic, in which a project like the 747 was possible.

Yeah but they are also a major contributor to our breakaway UAP program with Lockheed - and also, the Horse fucking industry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enumclaw_horse_sex_case

That link was... an interesting read. I'd say it merits a NSFW tag but it's kind of obvious from the title.

> Pinyan had previously lost the ability to experience certain sensations after a motorcycle accident, and he had begun to seek out increasingly extreme sexual acts

Almost feel bad for the guy if it weren't for the animal cruelty.

You pay a 747 pilot way more than $50/hour.

https://www.aviationinterviews.com/pilot/payrates/united-par...

Seems weird.. you get payed $39/hour in your first year.. then jump all the way up to $239/hour in your second year and never really get a raise beyond that?

The link there is specifically UPS, which is union.

I guess it is probably the case that guys with a couple years experience are doing about the same work as guys with 10 years (plane smoothly and safely goes from A to B).

I had assumed it was an error.

They more than $20k's worth of publicity from the stunt. Totally worth it.

Does that napkin math subtract the cost of the same delivery flight but without the stunt?

I didn't read about the flight but I assume that delivery was happening anyway, with or without the stunt. I am guessing it took an hour or two extra, so the fuel and pilot salary cost should only be what was extra in addition to the regular flight amount?

There isn't a 747 pilot on the planet making only $50/hr

Wisdom of crowds and all that, i’m guessing around $30k ?

My working was:

+2 hours (a path that should take 0.5 hours took 2.5h according to flight radar)

According to a random aviation site, an unspecified 747 revision at unspecified altitude with unspecified engines burns 4 litres per second, so take that with a bag of salt!

Jet A1 fuel at $1/litre-ish

$30k-ish ?

Back of envelope ... 1 gallon of fuel per second [0], 2.5 hrs, $2.5 per gallon = $22,500

That's uh...pretty rough and I'm not a flight buff, but wanted to do the bare minimum for the exercise.

[0] https://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/modern/qu...

* edited the ppg

I don't know anything about flight deliveries. But, including a set of basic flight maneuvers makes sense to me. In which case they would be maneuvering anyway and they decided to go out in style. Big salutes to them who set it up.

By the time the plane is delivered, it has already been fully flight tested.

Yeah, you don't want to find the problems on the delivery flight.

Better then than on the first passenger filled flight. Don't think of it as the delivery flight. Think of it is final test flight

This is a cargo plane, though, I don't think a passenger 747 has been built in a while.

same difference

You can tell nobody from Nascar was involved as there are both left AND right turns.

Fun fact: not all nascar tracks are left turn only.

Yeah when you race them backwards they're right turn only.

Someone in a different thread estimated 2.4 tons of fuel, equating to 16.8 tons of CO2 emissions

For comparison the average US household produces ~7.5 tons of CO2 emissions every year so that's ~2.24 years of the average household's emissions

I'm guessing it is in the range of 50..60k. The sibling posts come up with lower values, including only fuel, ignoring the cost of the required regular (flight hours in this case) maintenance.

(ignore)

Decommissioned? It's brand new.

There's cost and opportunity cost and marketing, so who knows? But it looks like it doubled the leg length, I'd guess cost and opportunity cost into the 100k+.

Do it as part of a flight that needs to happen anyway (such as this one, which was a delivery)? Probably not much more than the fuel and overtime the pilots needed to fly a few extra turns.

Costs them $0 if they just bill the customer who the delivery was for.

Only if the customer wants to pay extra for the stunt

Former pilot here: $3-4 million easy. FAA regulations alone require $500k per sky-number drawn by any aircraft [1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKOFTEN

You might have the wrong link there.

Citation needed?

Your link is for an old covert drug research program?

i think you either linked to the wrong article or i misunderstood a joke

I think the link you are looking for is https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/PEBCAK.

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