Hacker News Reader

Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

According to the video, 2/3rds of that range is for loiter and divert capability. It's illegal to fly a route without the capability to loiter and divert. You need 30-60 minutes of loiter + 100 miles of divert. This plane cannot be used on any route longer than about ~200 miles. Which can be driven in 2 hours, although obviously the OP was referring to the 120 mile electric range.

View on HN

> This plane cannot be used on any route longer than about ~200 miles. Which can be driven in 2 hours.

Huh, perhaps then it wouldn’t be suited to places where people drive at that speed. In the US I doubt people drive 200 miles routinely in 2 hours. It would be closer to 3.5 h I think going by the routine 6 h it takes SF to LA which is about 350 mi.

I think if you have very high speed road/rail transportation that dominates this across fixed routes. Road at 100 mph average definitely wins for flexibility.

There's a small but real market for < 120mile flights where geography makes a road between the two destinations impossible. "Puddle jumpers" is the standard term.

However, the real market is for connecting flights to nearby small cities. For a transfer, you're already at the airport, you're already through security and you don't have your car. I'd never fly from Ottawa to Montreal (200km), but I do that flight quite regularly when I'm going to Europe.

Probably half the people in this thread imagine LAX to SFO vs taking the 5 when thinking about long trips.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com