Questions People Ask When I Tell Them I Own an Airplane | Hacker News Reader

Questions People Ask When I Tell Them I Own an Airplane

fivezeromike.com

393 pointsjeiting245 comments

It's important to say that the general aviation population has gotten much smaller over the last few decades. It was a lot more popular 25 years ago when I flew much more than I do now. A number of aircraft manufacturers have stopped building small general-aviation planes for a number of reasons including liability and a reduction in public interest.

I started flying about 1980. By 1992, 12 years later, about half the pilots I knew in 1980 (instructors as well as students) had been killed in flying accidents. That's another reason for the decline in activity.

> about half the pilots I knew in 1980 (instructors as well as students) had been killed in flying accidents

Wow, that's certainly dissuasive.

By the way, are there some kind of autopilots on modern amateur planes? Or is that even possible to integrate any ?

> By the way, are there some kind of autopilots on modern amateur planes?

By "amateur planes" do you mean ultralights or experimental homebuilts? The answer depends on which -- an ultralight could hardly tolerate the extra weight that a decent autopilot would require. And most experimental homebuilt owners probably want the pleasure of actually flying their planes.

Autopilots are more attractive to people who fly long distances and not for pleasure. I had a Mooney 201 years ago that I would fly on business, and the flights tended to be long and a bit boring, so I had an autopilot installed.

Picture of me putting my bicycle in the backseat of my Mooney: http://i.imgur.com/R5qVo.jpg

>an ultralight could hardly tolerate the extra weight that a decent autopilot would require

Where does most of the weight come from in an autopilot?

Equipment to move the control surfaces automatically, I'm guessing. (I think the most common setup is to have a motor move the trim controls, and I'm not sure ultralights even have trim.)

I would assume the actuators to actually control the plane. I doubt ultralights are fly by wire.

Oh, that makes sense, although I guess I'm a bit surprised that FBW isn't common with ultralights, given its advantages.

I'm not aware of of any aircraft costing less than the 8 figures equipped with FBW. It's a LOT of added complexity/cost for very little gain in anything that isn't either dynamically unstable (e.g. modern military aircraft) or so large that the flight controls can't be comfortably operated by hand, and is rare even in the bizjet and smaller airliner market.

On all small aircraft (and some larger older ones, DC-3s for instance), muscle is the only thing that moves the control surfaces. They're very well designed and counterweighted so that the required effort is quite minimal.

In the US an ultralight has to be under 254 pounds and does not require any training or licensing to fly. In most other countries an ultralight is more like the sport class in the US.

At 254 pounds you want light and simple. FBW requires actuators. And controllers. And sensors. And power. And then you have to double up everything for redundancy. You would easily eat up 50 lbs or more making a reliable FBW system and it would cost 3-4x what the entire aircraft cost.

Even with normal light aircraft a FBW system is both unneeded and overly complex. Cables and pulleys are extremely reliable. They are inspected every year (along with the engine and various other pieces of the aircraft).

This is completely destroying my sense of living in the future. I have no choice but to delete this discussion from my memory.

My airplane has an autopilot which is connected to my GPS giving hands off enroute flying. Anything complicated, takeoffs, landings, etc is still done by hand. Really helps combat fatigue on my long trips.

From the makers of X-Plane: http://www.x-plane.com/x-world/hardware/seeker-avionics/

(I don't fly and know nothing about this but it sounds pretty cool)

Excellent link, thank you!

That's amazing, think of all the lives it will save!

Yes, there are autopilots. They vary in complexity from just keeping the wings level, to altitude, vertical speed, and heading holds, to fully-programmable routes.

I flew a Seneca V (twin engine, semi 'amateur' plane) during pilot training which was equiped with an autopilot.

Really helps when flying in congested airspace or while performing 'complex' arrivals.

You must be fantastically unlucky, by my research (I'm afraid I've lost the citation) the number of pilots who die in flying accidents is about 1/50.

How many pilots did you know?

A reasonable number, but many of them were stunt pilots -- or thought they were stunt pilots. I didn't mean to create a false impression. Also remember I mentioned that was a 12-year period.

Ah, the subset of stunt pilots will run a MUCH higher risk profile. That would explain a lot.

but many of them were stunt pilots

Lincoln Beachey thought it was a dream to go up to heaven in a flying machine The machine broke down and down he fell thought he'd go to heaven but he went to Lincoln Beachey thought it was a dream ...

RIP Lincoln Beachey, drowned in SF Bay 1915

[0] http://www.radiolab.org/story/159748-loop-loop/

This would have been key information in your original statement for sure.

That reminds me of something I heard once- "there are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots."

And then, there's Jurgis Kairys[1] doing things like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWaSgofuD6g at 60.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurgis_Kairys

2% of pilots _dying_ is still pretty high -- higher than I expected. Someone mentioned it being akin to motorcycling riding, but I can't imagine that 2% of motorcyclists die from it.

> Someone mentioned it being akin to motorcycling riding, but I can't imagine that 2% of motorcyclists die from it.

The rates for motorcycle accidents and deaths is really very high:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorcycle_safety#Accident_rate...

Quote: "According to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), in 2006, 13.10 cars out of 100,000 ended up in fatal crashes. The rate for motorcycles is 72.34 per 100,000 registered motorcycles."

That's about 5 1/2 times greater.

And still much less than 2%.

72.34 per year per 100,000 registered motorcycles * 30 years is 2.17%.

Worse plenty of people own more than one motorcycle so the rate is probably higher than that.

Those are not the same "motorcycles" each year, so you cannot multiply by 30.

How do you mean? The suggested calculation is: In any given year, a motorcycle owner has a 72/100000 chance of dying. So if you own a motorcycle for 30 years, the chance of dying is approximately 30*72/100000.

If you own a motorcycle for 30 years, your chances are not the same every year - your chances of dying on a bike are higher when you're younger and when you have less years on a bike. So every year I ride, my chance of dying that year on a bike gets smaller.

In other words, the bulk of deaths on bikes are young, inexperienced, and/or unlicensed riders.

Also, bike deaths are far more likely to involve alcohol than car deaths; so if you're like me and you don't drink before riding, you've just improved your chances.

Not really, your odds do change as a non drinker but age is far less important than you might think. Your hypotetical driver that owns a motorcycle for 30 years is more likely to die over 25 than under it.

http://www.cdc.gov/features/dsMotorcycleSafety/

A significant reason for this is your far less likely to survive an accident as an older rider than a young one.

Note: The death rate statistics they quote include non motorcycle owners.

"Your hypotetical driver that owns a motorcycle for 30 years is more likely to die over 25 than under it."

That's a very weird statistic. Sure, since those riders spend most of their 30 years riding time over 25yo.

From your link: "The highest death and injury rates were among 20-24 year-olds, followed by 25-29 year-olds."

Also, one other note - I was talking about riding experience, not absolute age - something the CDC doesn't track, but other large studies I've seen do. There's a strong correlation between experience - whether gauged by years of riding or, even better, raw mileage.

There's also a huge correlation between unlicensed riders and serious injuries. Motorcycle riders are far more likely to be unlicensed than car drivers - last I heard was something like 3-4 times as likely.

Unlicensed motorcycle riders are over twice as likely to be in fatal accidents than licensed motorcycle riders.

I ride 15,000-20,000 miles a year - I'm well trained, equipped, and experienced. A lot of bike owners ride weekends, occasional trips, etc. I actually don't ride much on the weekends - and when I do, I'm pretty shocked how bad (dangerous, rude, etc) the riders are compared to the commuters I mostly see.

That is not how a binomial probability is calculated. Consider the case where you flip a coin twice - do you have a 2 * 1/2, or 100% chance of getting a 'head'? Obviously not – you have a 75% chance.

The actual way you calculate the probability of an event with a binomial distribution is by taking the inverse probability and raising it to the power of the attempts, then subtracting from 1. So in the case of two coin flips, that is 1 - (1/2 ^ 2), or a 75% of getting a 'head'. That would mean, with a huge host of assumptions, that a motorcyclist's chance of dying over 30 years would be 1 - (99928/100000)^30, or (funnily enough), 2.13%.

edit: I said bimodal when I meant binomial.

You certainly deserve my upvote. :)

You set out to correct a naive statistical assumption, computed it properly, and the result was about the same (not at all common for such problems). But you posted it anyway, in the spirit of sharing useful information.

As the Australians say, "Good on you, mate."

I second the upvote. This is exactly the awesome part of HN.

That's why I said "approximately". :)

By the binomial series [1], the true value is 1-(1-p)^n = np - n(n-1)/2! p^2 + n(n-1)(n-2)/3! p^3 + ...

So approximating it to just np corresponds to taking just the leading term of the series. Of course, this is only valid when p is small enough. To see how good the approximation is, we can compare it to the two first terms of the series, which is np - n(n-1)/2 p^2, or approximately np - (np)^2 /2.

So the approximation np is about twice the percentage difference between the approximation and the true value. In this case, the approximation np is about 2%, and that guess is itself about 1% wrong.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_series

Rule 99732: When you can't admit you were wrong, argue on technicalities!

He wasn't wrong, he made an approximation.

That's on a per-vehicle basis. On a per-mile basis they're dramatically more dangerous: per mile travelled, motorcyclists are 37 times more likely to die in a crash than passenger car occupants:

http://www.aaos.org/news/aaosnow/jul12/clinical1.asp

I gave up my brief motorcycle career after having kids, which I'm rather glad of now, reading that.

Wow, you have had some extraordinarily bad luck. Not a single one of my flying acquaintances has ever been in an accident, and I've been flying since 1996. (I do have one non-pilot friend who was killed in a GA accident.)

> Wow, you have had some extraordinarily bad luck.

Yes -- all except the fact that I gave up the activity before getting killed myself. :)

This was my favorite airplane from my old flying club:

http://www.pbase.com/geary/image/120224799

That's my mom and me when I took her flying on September 3, 1977. I have the logbook right here that I carried on that flight.

Sadly, this plane was involved in a midair in 1982, and the instructor and student pilot died:

http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20020917X...

It's weird, if you sell a car and then it gets in a wreck and someone dies, you don't think about it much - or do you?

I guess you're not likely to find out it happened.

But it really shook me up that two people came to a tragic end in the same plane I used to fly.

R.I.P.

That is an amazing photo :) Sorry to hear about the fate of the plane, but thanks for sharing the memory.

Airplanes are also more instantly recognizable than cars due to their tail numbers. I remember the day I turned on the news and saw the airplane I had first soloed in years before, upside down in a field. Happily both instructor and student walked away.

> about half the pilots I knew in 1980 (instructors as well as students) had been killed in flying accidents.

That's extreme. Is there any pattern? Where are you located?

> That's extreme.

Yes, it is extreme, not the average. I should have added that the pilots I knew were largely instructors, stunt pilots and skydivers (and pilots who flew skydivers to altitude). So not a typical population.

Wow, I knew flying light aircrafts was dangerous, but this really surprised me. And people tell me I'm taking risks riding a motorcycle.

If you factor in all risks (the "as experienced" rate), GA flight is about as dangerous per mile as riding motorcycles.

I firmly believe that 2/3rds of the fatality risk in GA is pilot-controlled and readily avoidable: weather, fuel exhaustion and "ostentatious display" (buzzing, etc) are relatively easy to avoid with nothing more than basic knowledge and firm discipline.

On a motorcycle, many risks are rider-controlled but a lot of your safety is in the hands of people near you that you'll never meet. Less so in aviation, IMO.

^ What he said

IFR rated pilot here that's been flying for ~ 10 years. I agree with you 100% on the risks being largely under the pilots control.

However I also believe that there's something about aviation that attracts the type of people who are uniquely unsuited for it. Daredevils, non-detail minded, and just plain incompetent.

When you read the NTSB reports and such it's just not pretty.

Pilot after pilot runs out of fuel or manages to run a perfectly good airplane into the ground / side of a mountain because they weren't observant.

I'm not sure what the solution is though. We've had 30 years of the FAA and all the associations preaching safety to no effect. More regulation won't help either since all the main accident factors are already against some regulation or another.

Doing user studies and paying attention to my own behavior, I grow more and more aware how rare consistent, no-error performance of tasks is. Stupid mistakes now seem more the human norm than the exception.

What's especially sinister to me is how long it took me to really get that. And how much my self-perceived skill is more about my ability to recover from error than my ability to avoid error in the first place. Especially when it's over time periods long enough for fear to wear off.

I'd never take up flying, because I know my attention would wander during those long periods of apparent calm but actual risk.

Regarding why aviation attracts the wrong sort of people, if you haven't read about the Dunning-Kruger effect, I think it'll ring some bells for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

That's a great point.

As a programmer it's also taken me quite awhile to recognize that I'm not a perfect snowflake and am quite capable of writing code that contains horrendous bugs.

I've always recognized that while flying though, because I've always felt like a neophyte at it, and not a "real" pilot.

Statistically speaking, it's pretty safe to allow your attention to wander a bit while on a long uneventful flight. That's why there are auto-pilots. The real danger comes in whenever you're close to the ground or in bad weather.

Surprisingly the #1 thing you can do to avoid an accident is just make sure you have enough fuel. Which is a very low bar to clear.

Surprising, astonishing, disappointing, and sadly, it's absolutely true...

1) Riding motorcycles is very dangerous:)

2) What's the average mileage of a motorcyclist compared to a pilot?

Fuel is also a lot more expensive now. And that makes up quite a significant chunk of the flying costs.

On a quick look, the price of an hour of flying has gone up nearly 50% in the last ten years in the aviation club I used to belong to.

That's what 4.1% annual inflation compounded over 10 years will do.

In real dollar terms, that price is very close to what it was 10 years ago.

Euro area inflation has been way lower than that, it seems. Including negative % on some years

Have fuel costs and taxes also done the same, though? Fuel will make the majority of operating costs if you fly with any frequency, I suspect.

Where do you get 4.1% inflation from? CPI for the USD hasn't gone up by that much in a single year for the last decade, annualized inflation is closer to 2.5% over that period.

4.1% is the 10th root of 150% minus 1.

"OMG, this cost went up 50% over ten years!" sounds like a dire situation, when in fact it's a tiny margin over whatever inflation measure you prefer.

If you take 2.5% as the annualized inflation, that's 28% over that 10 year period, meaning the other 17% increase is 1.6% "real dollar increase" per year. Hardly frightening, IMO.

Ah. I interpreted your statement as "we had 4.1% inflation in the last decade". Your intent was "it's as if we 'd had 4.1% inflation, not much more than actual inflation".

I completely agree that nominal gas rates aren't the right measure, and the real price increase has indeed been tiny.

The private pilot is a dying breed. Skyrocketing costs make it all but impossible for most people to get into. Even getting your private pilot's license often costs $8k-$10k. And then you are looking at $150/hr to fly a 20-30 year old C172.

These skyrocketing costs make it so the fleet ages and becomes less reliable. So people get out. Or they die because they can't fly enough to get experience or the aircraft has a problem because it isn't flown enough.

And costs rise further because there is no market. It's a downward spiral. And it seems that the FAA is completely happy with the situation.

I've been out on beautiful days (low 80s, calm, 10 mi vis) and the CTAF is all but dead. Even 5 years ago there would have been 2-3 in the pattern and I would have heard a steady stream of traffic around the other 5 airports in the same frequency.

Most people I know who've done it are older and need a hobby and have spare money when their kids are gone and mortgage is paid off.

True. Or they bought the plane 20+ years ago and still own it.

When I go to EAA meetings I'm the youngest by 15-20 years and I'm in my 30s. I don't think I've ever seen a privately owned certified plane that was newer than 25 years old.

It's all around a bad situation for general aviation.

Same here. I'm in my late 30s and am by far the youngest at any pilot gathering I attend.

I really don't know where the airlines are going to get the next generation of pilots from. Of course with the horrible pay and hours, I can't blame anyone from not choosing that career path.

I've heard that starting pay for ATP or cargo is somewhere in the low $20s and schooling is in the mid $100s. Is there any truth to that?

Yep, that's about right. If you do it right, schooling can be quite a bit cheaper, but starting is sometimes even less than 20k.

Plus figure in "working" 60+ hours a week and only getting paid for 30-40 of them. It's not uncommon for airlines to fly pilots from city to city to stage them for flights. But they only pay them for the time they are actually touching the controls. So they get up at 3am to catch series of flights, then don't start getting paid until noon.

>I really don't know where the airlines are going to get the next generation of pilots from.

The military. As usual.

Eh, I'm not so sure that'll happen. Military pilots aren't getting as many hours as they used to, plus it's actually a pay drop for them to leave and work for an airliner the way it is right now.

Right now the airlines have managed to talk high school grads into taking out huge student loans and drop 100K+ on a for-profit school, then take a job making ~ 20. There's no way that's sustainable though.

When my neighbor retired from the airforce, he moved on to flying planes for FedEx. He is paid VERY well for that.

I've always heard that FedEx and Southwest are the absolute best employers for pilots, and the regional carriers (who I was primarily talking about earlier) are the absolute worst.

No real idea on how accurate that is, just stuff I've overheard in pilot lounges at airports :)

Actually, the air force is paying out the ass to get high-TiG o-3s/ low-TiG o-4s to reenlist. Like, a $20k to $30k reenlistment bonus (that's tax free and on top of their salary of roughly $70k, not counting their BAH, which can be another $10k to more than $40k (it's $2500/month if you're an o-3 getting a master's at the naval post graduate school in monterey), also tax free). The reason they're not able to keep those pilots without the bonuses is because the airlines are offering starting salaries for those pilots around $90 to $100k; the bonus is designed to make the military pay roughly commensurate after BAH is included.

Interestingly, though, the navy is has a glut of pilots right now.

Really, I hadn't heard that.

I was going off all the information that came out after the Colgate Air 3407 crash in regards to how feeder airlines treat their pilots.

I've talked to several CFI's who are moving into regional carriers and they report the same environments, i.e. high hours/low pay.

It sounds like maybe you're set if you can clear that hurdle and move directly to a "real" airline?

Basically. It's kind of like how if you go to the right college for CS you can go directly to software engineer without having to spend years in IT or QA or working on your own side projects for fun, before finding someone who will pay you to be a software engineer, let alone someone like google or apple.

The major airlines love, love, love military pilots, especially ones that muster out around o-3, o-4 because they are in their late 20s/early 30s (lots of years left before mandatory retirement), they are already completely trained, have tons of time flying planes (compared to civilian pilots of the same age), and they are almost overqualified for ferrying passengers in terms of abilities/skills.

Maybe I'm being a bit far fetched here, but what if someone up in management is banking on "phasing out the pilots." Autopilot has for a long time been "good at some things", and there's often debate here as to what purpose a human pilot increasingly does or doesn't have in the cockpit as the computerized solutions become more reliable. As there are fewer pilots, relegate the physical role to a babysitter; potentially cutting down on the initial educational costs and reopening the low wage employment doors without that first costly hurdle.

Pilots on todays big airline planes are pretty much babysitters to the autopilot. Still, it will be a long time untill the notion of flying a plane with no pilot is accepted by the public. Even though it will probably be safer, as you're taking a chunk of human errors out of the equation.

It's some combination of loss aversion and the associated guilt that comes from negative consequences of positive actions.

There is a trade off: fully automated transportation (planes or cars) will eliminate routine operator error, like falling asleep at the wheel. On the other hand, there will also be corner cases which humans could (sometimes) handle that the autopilot didn't.

And human psychology means that not only will we weight the losses more heavily than the gains, but when losses happen and people die, we will feel unimaginably guilty over the losses, no matter how many people were saved.

I can already see all the headlines when the first big accident happens involving a self driving car.

Unfortunately for a lot of the planes the cost of education isn't really any less. The reason you want that babysitter is for when something goes wrong and if the pilot doesn't know much then the only thing he's supplying is the comfort factor of a 'real' pilot. I'd draw a parallel to a sys admin. It's all well and good to have a comsci student fresh out of university as your sys admin when the system is set up and running correctly. However unless you have one with the right experience when an unexpected error pops up you may end up with significant losses and a much longer/no recovery.

Maybe from overseas (mainly developing countries?). I don't know for sure, but I know some pilots from here (Brazil), including my cousin, who went off to fly for chinese and mid-eastern airlines, because the demand was high over there. Maybe the US won't be so far off?

Maybe the air force? They have tons of experience and the pay is pretty low for pilots. I don't think we're in a drought.

Luckily there is an ample supply of unemployed CPL-holders dying to take that right seat in an airliner (and sometimes even paying to do so).

(Disclaimer: I have a frozen ATPL(A) myself, worked for one of the biggest airlines and know at least 100 of mentioned unemployed pilots)

I have a close friend who owns two new Cirus planes. There are tons of people who own jets as well. It all depends on your economic bracket. I think, though, that the private plane industry is going towards smaller, more expensive aircraft.

It is more of a microcosm of the economy than anything else.

People still fly Cesnas because they are very stable and were not built with planned obsolescence in mind.

One alternative is to go the LSA route (Light Sport Aircraft) they are substantially cheaper to buy and operate, plus the instruction requirements and Medical test are easier too.

"The private pilot is a dying breed."

Yes, literally.

Whoa! really? I never imagined that deaths were that frequent. What were most of the causes of the accidents? Operator error? Poor conditions? Equipment failure?

Has the rate of people dying off fallen as the equipment (planes and instruments) has improved?

I had always assumed the decline has more to do with the economics of the sport and the amount of upfront investment necessary to get to the point where you can fly on your own.

It is very rare that an aircraft falls out of the sky for any reason other than human stupidity. For decades, aircraft engineering has been well understood: the conditions for safe flight are known, staying in them is straightforward, and only very rarely does following the rules end badly. New technology has very little to do with this.

The thing is that it's easy to make stupid mistakes operating and maintaining an aircraft, and unlike many other areas of modern life, there aren't training wheels to make it idiot proof.

In the 1950s, test pilots were dying approximately once per week [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_pilot

There's a world of difference between the flying done by a test pilot, who's intentionally pushing the plane to its limits, and your average recreational pilot.

I don't like all this talk of risk and death. While it's true that more accidents happen with small GA aircraft, it isn't really the dangerous activity non-fliers make it out to be. When accidents do occur, it's almost always due to some very poor decisions made on the part of the pilot - taking off over wight, bad weather/icing, shoddy maintenance, etc.

I started out with GA flying and later became a flight instructor, then moved on to flying small turboprops (into some very treacherous airports), and now fly jets with an airline. I've never known anyone personally who has been killed or injured in an aircraft accident. Even flying for an airline, I'm baffled by the sense of danger some passengers feel by going up in a large jet.

Here's a startup that's trying to reverse the decline of GA flying - OpenAirplane.com. They launched last year and have caught on pretty quickly. It's a universal rental checkout for GA pilots, such as the OP. Get checked out in, say, a Cessna 172 in Detroit, and you're set to rent a similar Cessna 172 in Florida. The requirement for a checkout at each operator from which one wants to rent can be a roadblock for would-be renters, and this solves the problem. The company has the backing of most major aviation insurance providers and even Cessna Aircraft Company.

Very cool! Do you know if OpenAirplane.com also works with helicopter pilots?

Not yet... But we're working on it. We already have 2 Operators lined up to start offering rotorcraft rental via OpenAirplane. Stay tuned.

For those wondering how much it costs to get your private pilot's license...

You'll need to study and pass a written examine so you'll have to either purchase self-study books or take a ground school class. (This is relatively cheap, a few hundred dollars.)

You need to log 40 hours of flight training time. Depending on locale, anticipate paying $100-$150 per hour for a flight instructor and $100-$150 per hour for plane rental and fuel. So that's $200-$300 an hour times 40 hours so a ballpark estimation is $8000 to $12000 MINIMUM. Depending how quickly you get to flying solo (with your instructor on the ground) and how well you do will determine if your flight instructor will sign off after the minimum 40 hours.

EDIT: You'll need to pay for the examine and I forgot, you'll need to get an "FAA physical" and an okay from a physician which you'll also have to pay for (unless you can get your health insurance to pay for it as a yearly physical examine).

The FAA also created a new license class called 'Sport Pilot' about 10 years ago that only takes 20 hours of flight training, which makes it much easier and cheaper to get into flying [1]. However, this comes with limitations like only able to take one passenger, only able to fly during the day, in good weather, only in a small aircraft, etc.

[1] http://www.aopa.org/Advocacy/Regulatory-,-a-,-Certification-...

When I decided I was going to get my pilot license I planned to do so efficiently, without burning cash unnecessarily (yeah, right) -- I was prepared with my own plan for every flight... I'd heard numbers in the $8k to $10k ballpark and thought "I'll target that".

It still cost me $15k (in 2012 -- airplane $11k, instructor $4k) to get my Private Pilot License -- plus another $2k in optional expenses like a good home simulator set-up, iPad software, books etc. -- some of which arguably should have made my training more efficient.

While I don't know the costs of getting a Sport Pilot license, I have wondered if it would have been the better route for me.

The difference between the times I fly with a VFR Private Pilot license is virtually no different than I would with a Sport Pilot license. I rarely have more than one passenger (one is limit for Sport Pilot license), and I rarely fly at night ('engine out' at night is beyond the risk I'm willing to take), I've never been above 10k feet.

It's not quite that bad as quite a lot of those 40h will be flying solo.

True... found a good FAQ here: http://www.robinsonaviation.com/flight_faq.htm

Here's a question:

Tell me about single engine (what you appear to have) vs. multi engine (twin, I guess) ?

Should I be thinking about redundancy in plane engines the same way I think about redundancy in ... say ... kidneys ?

It seems to me that I would really, really want a twin engined plane...

edit: I found this [1] but I'm not sure I buy it. I am all about simplicity in systems, but redundancy in a critical component is a different thing. Further, Perrow speaks of fortuitous surpluses (or whatever) as an unalloyed good in [2]. This seems like just the kind of surplus I'd want...

[1] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AirplaneRule

[2] Normal Accidents (run, don't walk, to buy and read it)

A friend of mine owns an airplane, and his brother is a pilot in the USAF. I asked him this once and his opinion was that 2 engines makes the plane more complicated and increases the chance of pilot error. He had suffered 2 or 3 engine out incidents in his single engine plane, and landed all 3 with no issue. Obviously if your plane doesn't glide very well then the redundancy of a second engine is necessary (i.e a jet), but in your typical Cessna-esqe plane, gliding is a viable option.

I always assumed "gliding well" is a fundamental principle of an airplane.

Just about any can glide, but not necessarily well.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

I never knew about the glide ratio of large jets! And this story is amazing, mostly for the simultaneous levels of stupidity and competence involved.

Isn't one person's competence offsetting another person's stupidity what programmers and sysadmins do all day, every day anyway? ;)

Many military aircraft are designed to not glide well, because gliding well means that a plane is less agile. Most modern fighter jets go almost immediately into a tumble if they lose power, since they require constant computerized corrections to remain stable.

Its probably a bit more important in a hobbyist or even a commercial plane.

I read somewhere (pre internet, so it must be true!!!1!) that the wing loading of a fighter is roughly equivalent of using a manhole cover as a frisbee.

In other words, anything can fly if you give it enough afterburner.

It actually is - each plane as an ideal glide speed that you pitch the plane to match during an engine-out. 1 mile per 1k feed above ground level is a good rule of thumb for glide distance at this speed.

An engine failure in a twin can be difficult to handle during take-off; the plane can roll over, and there is not much time to react.

http://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Engine_Failure_After_Take...

This is one of the oldest debates in the pilot world. Single vs Multi and there is no one answer. Ignoring the cost of extra fuel and maintenance for an extra engine. The usual argument against multi is like this - The asymmetrical thrust developed when one engine dies. Basically if one of your engines quits, especially with a high angle of attack (takeoff), you have a very small window to compensate and keep the plane flying. Otherwise you get what is called a Vmc rollover. That is probably the biggest argument against a twin.

But of course if you fly over water to the Bahamas every weekend or the Rocky mountains the pros outweigh the cons right?

My point is it's all relative. Being a relatively low time pilot in NJ I see no need for a twin. Assuming I could afford one in the first place.

I think in the past, aircraft engines were relatively unreliable and would often quit midair for reasons other than fuel starvation so there'd be some chance of the other engine saving you. Now, however, almost all engine failures are the result of fuel starvation and two engines will die just as quick sans fuel as one so the added complexity isn't quite worth it, from a safety perspective for piston powered aircraft. The only real advantage now is that you get to go a faster (though not 2x) in a twin usually and get to earn lots of miles on your credit card since you'll be doubling your fuel bill.

The situation on turbine powered engines is completely different. The above only applies to piston engines.

Why do you say the turbine situation is completely different? Turbine engines are if anything more reliable than piston ones.

I think its because you can not go significantly faster by adding another turbine and if you got a jet plane, you probably don't care about fuel efficiency.

But as you say, you don't go significantly faster by adding another piston engine, either. Aerodynamic resistance at high speed goes as v^2, so adding twice the power increases your speed at most 70%. In practice, it will be less due to increased drag from engines in the wings, more weight, etc.

I pulled a comparison from Wikipedia:

Cessna 310 (twin): 2x240hp, max speed 220mph, range 1000mi.

Cessna 182 (single): 230hp, max speed 201mph, range 930mi.

I'm sure the twin has more useful load, but it sure doesn't go much faster or farther.

Aerodynamic drag (the force required) goes as the square of the velocity.

Power required is force times velocity, so power required goes as the cube of velocity. Twice the power adds only 26% to speed.

Sorry, I meant different in that I know very little about it. My language was imprecise.

With turbo{fan|jet}s I think there is an issue that its just difficult to construct aircraft with a single engine as opposed to wing or tail mounts.

I've been secretly lusting after one of these aerial SUVs for 10 years now:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilatus_PC-12

This comes down to 2 things.

1) How disciplined are you as a pilot, Are you going to insure your plane is ready to fly every single time to mitigate risk. Most fatalities in GA could of been avoided. You will have to make hard calls like. "I have a meeting tomorrow but the weather looks terrible, should I fly through it anyway to get there?" or "My oil pressure is low but I need to get home". You will get stranded and have to get a hotel room or car if you plan on using your aircraft for travel, I guarantee it.

2) Where are you flying? are you flying over water, mountains, cities? Are there roads where you could easily put down or nearby airports? One of the first things you learn as a pilot is what to do in an emergency. Step 1 when you lose engine power - Get the best glide speed and find a place to put down.

As an aside there are aircraft that have parachutes. Cirrus is the best known right now with the CAPS system. But, if you have a parachute are you going to try to fly through the storm to make it to that meeting above?

Think about it this way: have you ever had your car engine die on the road? For the vast majority of people, this just doesn't happen, even though people spend much, much more time driving than they would flying. Modern engines are remarkably reliable. And if it does quit, you can glide the plane to a forced landing.

Long flights over water, mountains, or in poor visibility is a different matter.

In addition, part of a private pilot license training is stall recovery, and engine loss scenarios.

I remember sitting in on a lesson while my brother was getting his private pilot's license. The instructor would randomly idle the engine in flight and have my brother practice the procedures for a engine loss in flight (put the plane into the ideal glide position, identify all possible landing spots, runway or field, etc...)

> have you ever had your car engine die on the road?

Yes, several times in the ten years I've been driving automobiles. Is that not common?

As far as I can recall, it hasn't ever happened to me in the 24 years I've been driving. Are you doing the required maintenance?

I suspect it is strongly correlated to how much you spend on cars (particularly, how old your cars are). I've had a car that liked to overheat, which took a couple of trips to the mechanic before they sorted it out. I also had a truck that had some sort of electrical problem (I don't remember what exactly, and I know nothing about automobiles).

Never happened to me, and I also asked my dad who was a professional driver for a while, and used to drive trucks in the old soviet union - all in all,he's got 30 years of driving experience - never happened to him, unless he ran out of fuel or the batteries failed.

Most common question I got when I flew: "What do you do if the engine stops?"

My answer: "Turn around go home and land"

It does help that I started out on gliders (sailplanes) first, of course... but losing the engine really isn't that big a deal in level flight in many small aircraft (or even big ones actually - a 747 has a surprisingly decent glide ratio (not actually surprising if you think about it, tbh)).

I've never flown twin engine, but as others have mentioned, losing one engine in a twin can be catastrophic - unless it's the Boomerang of course ;) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_Boomerang

In summary: I would choose zero engines, one engine, or four engines - but not two.

You forgot the LAQ: "Can someone who only 'trained' on a Flight Simulator be able to take-off and land in a real plane?'

The answer is yes. Someone actually did this experiment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJT_CACIZqs

But it's pretty challenging. Today's simulators are pretty good, but there's something about having your life actually on the line that can't be captured by a sim.

I had a ton of sim experience when I jumped in a trainer for the first time. It helped a ton with the systems and comms but pretty much nothing for my landing and takeoff ability.

> It helped a ton with the systems and comms but pretty much nothing for my landing and takeoff ability.

Yes, a common experience. Landing and taking off involve some subtle things that most simulators don't capture, like the fact that in a small propeller-drive plane, at slow speed, the propeller torque twists the body of the airplane, so you have to apply some counter-rudder to straighten out the fuselage and maximize climbing efficiency.

And landing has risks that simulators certainly don't capture, like the all-too-common stall-spin on final approach, which turns out to represent a high percentage of all GA accidents. Most simulators won't even imitate this common problem -- in most simulators you can't force the plane into a spin, either at altitude or while landing. That by itself might make a student overconfident about how much he's learned.

In reality, a student or new pilot turns too slow on final, realizes he's not lined up, so he banks too steeply and applies some aggressive rudder, which causes the inboard wing to stall, then unless the pilot knows exactly what to do and does it instantly, the plane will stall-spin, do a 1/4 turn and hit the ground before an inexperienced pilot can react. A very common accident scenario.

You must have flown crappy simulators. All flight sims I have flown incorporate this in the aerodynamics model. (I also fly gliders).

The biggest differnces I figure between real life and the simulator are the acceleraion, the sense of moving very fast and the fear of dying.

There's also the ground effect. It's impossible to get a feel for it on a simulator.

Do you think a 3-D image could enhance the 'feel'? Could a flight sim feel significantly more real w/ Oculus Rift?

I can see VR being a dramatic improvement for flight simulators, but you'll still need a good flight model.

A 3D simulation would represent a big improvement for formation flying or landing and taking off, but not so much for flying at altitude for obvious reasons.

But the absence of body accelerations in a simulator is a big obstacle standing in the way of realism. Big, expensive simulators have a cockpit mounted on hydraulic actuators to partially address this issue -- the cockpit moves around to provide some accelerations and try to improve the subjective sense of being in motion.

Perhaps you could integrate some type of death instrument into the simulator to increase the realism. Crash your plane, and a stack of exercise machine weights falls onto your head. Something like that.

Don't want to be beta testing that simulator.

I volunteer my ex-boss as victim..test candidate 1.

Take off is actually quite easy. On your first lesson, it's likely you'll be doing the takeoff. Just point it straight, compensate for the left turning tendency, and gently pull back.

Landing is a different story...

A friend of mine was given as a gift one of those "Discovery Flights" where you are taken up and get to fly the plane, which is supposed to entice you into signing up for lessons.

Not only did he get to do the takeoff, they let him do the landing.

He had a little trouble keeping it from turning on the takeoff, and a lot of trouble with that on the landing. Afterwards, they found out why. Something had punctured a tire before takeoff, and it was a little flat during takeoff, and a lot flat during landing.

Took off and landed on my very first time as well :-) (San Diego, Montgomery Field, March 2011).

The explanation my instructor gave me for the landing were perfect: Line up to the runway like this. Lower throttle and add flaps at these intervals. At the last checkpoint, point the nose of the plane at the numbers on the runway, like you were trying to collide with them, except that at the last moment you pull up and cut power to idle.

Worked like a charm. Maneuvering on the runway is harder than flying and landing. ($$@#!#$%! pedals working 2 ways and in the opposite direction from what I expected :-) )

I used to fly flight sim games. Takeoff is simple:

* FULL THROTTLE * AFTER BURNER ON * PULL BACK ON STICK * AAAAAAaaaAAAaa

Yup followed by destroying the SAM radar at Bandar Abbas, and shooting up a terrorist camp outside Baghdad. Hopefully not running out of fuel :-)

Baltic Aviation Academy has a lot of rather good and sometimes amusing videos on YouTube, including this one where they simulate talking a flight attendant through landing an Airbus A320:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkOT3fbc1O4

Obviously it's a bit unrealistic, but still pretty neat.

Actually I've heard it can be easier, since you get the real feedback from the plane/yoke

I would love an app that matches passengers to GA flights going between airfields, essentially a ride-sharing option for small aircraft. Pilots could offload a bit of the fuel cost and passengers could go between short range destinations very fast if they're lucky.

A private pilot license (PPL) does not allow for commercial flying (charging passengers). To charge passengers to pilot requires a commercial pilot license.

A PPL does allow for "cost sharing" for flights under Part 91.

It's a very grey area around ride-sharing boards, but as a pilot I wouldn't touch a ride-sharing board because of exactly what you say, that the FAA would likely look at that as a Part 135 (charter) operation, my insurance may not be valid, my certificate would be at risk, etc. all for a few hundred bucks in shared costs. No thanks.

It's perfectly legal for me to fly 3 buddies down to Atlantic City and have each of us pay 25% of the direct cost for the flight. Let's say that was $100pp. Perfectly legal by FAR 61.113(c). http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?c=ecfr&rgn=div8&view=te...

IMO, it's not OK for me to post on a ride board: "Fly to AC this weekend with me. $100 per person."

It's a grey area, I admit, but I wouldn't touch it, and I would recommend against someone building a startup to do just that without qualified legal counsel first. (and if they say "it's ok!", I'm not sure they're qualified... ;) )

It's a very thorny area, and not one that I'd want to get involved in either. The FAA also has the concept of a "Common Purpose" to the flight. By my non-lawyer reading of this, it would be illegal for a private pilot to even have a casual conversation with someone, discover that they're going to the same city, and split the expenses. They have to be say, all going on the same vacation together. I believe that the intention of this is to avoid people flying with private pilots that they don't personally know and have the opportunity to evaluate their general judgment.

Yes, it's a good idea to be wary. As with most regulations, you'll get by with it as long as nothing goes wrong. The problem is that there are a lot of things that can go wrong.

A few years ago, I read about a case involving a friendly fellow (private pilot) who received a call from his neighbor in the night about a sick relative. The two were friends, so the pilot offered to take the neighbor by plane to save time. The neighbor asked if he could pay to help offset the expenses, and the pilot said that the only thing legal would be to share fuel expenses (split 50/50). At this point everything seemed fine. However, the neighbor wasn't accustomed to the high cost of fuel in aviation and decided to check if the cost was reasonably calculated. Since he didn't want to appear accusatory, he called someone he thought would know, and this happened to be the FAA.

The FAA saw this as him asking about the cost of the flight, involved themselves, and ruled that this flight did not meet the "Common Purpose" criteria, and it ultimately ended in an enforcement action.

Here is a link to an FAA letter on the subject of ride boards. Unfortunately, it doesn't bring a lot of concrete clarity, but it definitely makes it clear that there it would be easy to cross the line with these:

http://www.pilotsofamerica.com/forum/showthread.php?t=20956

Well, these kind of problems have their own way of being solved. Look at uber.com - you would take your "buddy friend" you just get acquainted with over the Internet!

I would assume that the FAA is perceived to have a lot more power than a city's taxi licensing department. Especially given the amount of time that a pilot will have put into learning to fly, I doubt many would want to risk it.

Not only a CPL/ATPL but also an Air Operator's Certificate. Unfortunately it's not as easy as buying yourself a license, rent a plane and start making money.

I don't know of any app but there is a website that does just that: http://www.pilotsharetheride.com/

i am creating software for just this purpose. please see the software page at www.pilotride.com please like the facebook page if you think the idea is appropriate for your needs. facebook.com/pilotride

michael hamlett

13 MPG is surprisingly good, I always thought it was much, much less.

Yeah, its like an SUV but twice as fast.

Perhaps 3-5x as fast in terms of time because you don't have to stop at red lights and you can take the "as the crow flies" path instead of zig-zagging. Pretty sweet deal for $30k!

avgas is more expensive doe

Yeah, where I am, it's about 5/3 as expensive. The upper bound improvement factor you can get over driving due to flying in a straight line is 2/sqrt(2), so your best case cost-equivalent efficiency is about 11 mpg.

The upper bound is infinite if you fly a route with no road equivalent, for example to an island. Even sticking to a single landmass, you can get arbitrarily high, as roads can be extremely indirect in some cases.

This is why I'm excited about electric airplanes and driverless cars. A GA electric airplane has about 1/10th the energy cost of an avgas one. The cost of avgas is what discourages me from owning an airplane.

In most cases, avgas will be under half your total expenses for the year. You have to fly well over the average utilization for gas to dominate over maintenance, insurance, hangar, database updates/charts, etc.

Even at 100 flight hours/year in a thirsty airplane, you'll spend maybe $10K on fuel. It would take a very simple airplane, hangared very cheaply, and no abnormal maintenance events for the year, for those other costs to be under $10K.

Few privately owned planes fly even 100 hours per year, and most of the non-fuel costs are largely fixed, meaning you pay them all just to fly the "first hour" and then subsequent hours just cost fuel and a small wear-related maintenance allocation.

Airplanes are cheap to buy, but not cheap to fly. The cost of gas hurts, but doesn't dominate in my experience (owning three airplanes over 15 years, and flying my family on most of our domestic travel east of the Mississippi).

You're not taking into account the vastly simpler design of an electric aircraft. An electrically propelled aircraft will have maintenance requirements similar to a glider. Fewer engine overhauls and much simpler procedures means significantly reduced cost.

I don't think you're taking into account the vastly increased battery maintenance, inspection and capacity testing that will be required.

Yes, you'll save a lot on not maintaining a piston IC engine.

You'll give some of that back in inspection processes to ensure that you don't have 95% of the range that you think you have. If you run of out power in a Leaf or a Tesla, it's overwhelmingly likely that the car will come to rest on a piece of pavement and intact. If you run out of juice in an electric airplane, you turn into a glider, and it's far from assured that you'll end up at an airport or on pavement.

I'm not scare-mongering, but that's the point of view the FAA will take on inspection and testing requirements for electric storage systems to achieve equivalent level of safety.

I know when I add 40 gallons into my left tank (beyond the unusable fuel) that I have added 40 gallons of range. I need some similar assurance for battery capacity. (again, it's not me, but the FAA.)

Just have a look at the annual inspection requirements for ELT and starting batteries for piston airplanes. And those are not propulsion systems. The batteries that run the AHRS in the G1000 and Aspen systems are also onerous and those batteries are crazy expensive relative to their capacity.

I can see electrics working for flight school airplanes, especially if they can get the 80% recharge time down under 2 hours.

I don't see them as practical for cross-country travel anytime soon without advances in battery tech; those are inevitable, but I don't see them displacing liquid organic fuels in my flying career for 1000nm legs.

I would think inspecting & maintaining the actual capacity of the battery would be part of the automated charging system. It would be recorded to a fine a amount of detail. Most airplanes have a more predictable energy consumption model than a typical consumer car also, and since the typical pilot is more sophisticated, can afford to show a more complicated energy display for more accurate energy consumption and range assumptions.

Electric aircraft currently would be very useful for people who live on an island or island cluster or want to do frequent short hop flights. For example Hawaii, the Caribbean, Indonesia, the Philippines, Seattle and the near by gulf islands, etc. I can take a ferry boat for 3 hours at scheduled times or I can hop on my plane for 30 minutes at any practical time at the same cost really changes things for island dwellers. I could live on an island and theoretically commute to work every day for 45minutes of total travel time. Going to Tahoe every weekend wont be a big deal, etc.

It would be also useful for future automated air taxis, since the energy costs would soon dwarf the cost of everything else in those situations.

If it were my ass up in the air, I think I would prefer that the electric power to the drive motor(s) be provided by a very reliable Diesel-cycle or external combustion generator and not just a battery pack, at least with our current generation of battery technologies. #2 fuel oil is far more energy-dense than any battery that I can afford.

Agreed. Aviation diesels typically burn Jet-A (widely available at airports, obviously) which is similar in energy content to #2 (and about 50x the energy content of Li-ion batteries on a J/g basis).

As far as I know, the major difference between Jet-A and #2 is that is has a much lower gel point than even the northern winter diesel fuels, because higher = colder. If you already have electric motors, wouldn't electrically heated fuel tanks suddenly be more possible than trying to divert waste heat out of fuel-burning engines?

You could save a LOT of money on fuel if you could use off-road #2 oil instead of Jet-A.

Dry adiabatic lapse rate is approximately 3C per 1000'. I regularly fly at high VFR altitudes or low flight levels in my private (gas, piston IC) airplane.

Even confining yourself to 15K feet, you'd be ~45C or 81F lower than the sea-level temp (assuming the air was totally dry, so maybe call it 35C or 63*F). The wings are extremely effective radiators, and wet wing tanks have fuel right against the outer wing surface.

So, you're going to need to dump an enormous amount of energy into the fuel to keep it heated and non-gelled, which is why we have Jet-A, and in fact many jets need to add Prist anti-icing agent, and even some high-flying piston engine airplanes run their avgas through oil-to-fuel heat exchangers.

So, even if you're going to fly your diesel engine (or diesel generator) airplane in the mid-teens, you're probably still going to want to use Jet-A, both for its superior anti-gel properties but also because of the supply chain dedicated to getting Jet-A to a great many airports where you'd want to operate from.

Not really -- think "free like a puppy". Planes are like boats, except you die if you screw up. There are plenty of repairs, storage charges, etc that can get expensive pretty quickly.

General aviation is something you do out of love, not to save money.

> except you die if you screw up.

That happens with boats, too.

Perhaps not as often - boats don't fall out of the sky when they stop working - but it happens.

Planes don't really fall out of the sky either, especially modern commercial jets with high L/D ratios. There are some exceptions, e.g. fighter jets, but generally planes can glide down safely upon engine failure provided there is a nearby spot to land.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift-to-drag_ratio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift-to-drag_ratio

We're talking general aviation here. Small private planes crash frequently.

I live around Albany, NY. In the past 18 months, there have been at least 4 fatal crashes that I can recall as a casual newspaper reader. Usually it's related to tired/inexperienced pilots combined with some other factor (mechanical, weather, etc).

One that I remember as a kid growing up in farm country was a guy who had an engine failure. Like you said, he didn't just fall out of the sky... he tried to glide into a field, and just missed it. Wing clipped a tree.

> Planes don't really fall out of the sky either

I did not intend that metaphor to be literal.

The death rate for yatch sailing is way below that of general aviation.

It's reported at 5.4 deaths per 100.000.

I've been involved in some ugly accidents myself as a crew member (a broken mast off the coast) and the only thing I got from that is an anecdote :) .

Unless you're in a mid-Atlantic crossing or caught in a storm, most screwups are recoverable. That's not to say you don't have to respect the sea - you definitely do.

http://www.uscgboating.org/statistics/accident_statistics.as...

sailing.about.com/od/navigationseamanship/a/Why-Sailors-Die-The-Most-Important-Safety-Lesson.htm

> The death rate for yatch sailing is way below that of general aviation.

Oh, sure. I'm personally aware of only one yacht casualty, and that was sudden and unexpected. The boat jibed while the fellow was standing, the boom swept across ...

True, but it takes around 45 minutes to prepare a plane for flight and about 20 minutes to put it away. Also, you have to drive to and from the airport. Planes are incredible, but you have to fly pretty far before they're a timesaver.

and usually 30 min to drive to the airport.

Where did those numbers come from? Preflight and run-up can be done in 20 minutes once you've done it many times and securing after a flight is as simple as turning everything off and pushing the plane in the hanger or parking on the pad. That's maybe 10 minutes at most.

The only really time consuming part would be making and filing a flight plan. If you've done the route multiple times, you already have the flight plan and if you're operating under VFR (visual flight rules), you don't need to open/close it.

Source: I'm currently a student pilot and have done this process many times.

My parents are both pilots. The numbers are just my estimates from having flown with them a bunch. Maybe my numbers are a little high, but I think I'd stand by them.

There's always a bunch of dealing with cranking open the hanger door with the winch, dragging the plane out, checking that there is no water in the fuel (both tanks), transferring the stuff you're bringing with you from the car to the plane, getting into the seatbelt, plugging in the headsets and checking that they're all working, talking to the tower, taxiing out to the runway, waiting for a plane or two to take off, and then actually taking off.

Anyway, have fun flying.

I believe there's a town in California where everybody has their own hangar, instead of garage.

Breakaway Park Airport Community, near Austin, TX. (http://www.breakawayairport.net/).

I understand they get very cranky if you try to take off or land too close to sunrise or sunset.

Alaska is one state with many pilots. Distant towns and the road conditions make it quite normal to fly.

And 1/10th the capacity!

Well, I used to drive my Land Rover LR3 4.4 V8 on the german autobahn regularly and I would say 13MPG is exactly what I was getting while cruising at 120mph.

US or UK MPG?

UK gallons.

More like a sports car that takes ultra premium as the plane can't carry a lot of people, can't tow anything and generally can't fly in bad weather.

There are plenty of small aircraft that get 30-40mpg cruising at ~150mph. They are usually home built.

> I don't need to file a flight plan, I just go

Always (ALWAYS) file† a flight plan, and stick to it. If (when) something happens this will save you. Countless experienced pilots went on their own, had a trivial issue, landed at various vertical velocities and died because they were known to be missing but no clue where to be searched for. Also a proper flight plan includes timestamps, because it is not just a matter of position in space. Don't assume people will know, make sure of it.

BTW this is not just valid for airplanes but for any remote adventure you're undertaking, even on foot. A bruised ankle can mean death in remote areas.

† although preferable, it might not be to an official/local authority but to whoever cares enough for you to be trusted with your life.

There are a couple of websites for airplane pooling around: http://www.skypool.com/

Like ridesharing / carpooling, just with airplanes. They are clearly not as successful as the car variant, but when flight destinations / times match they might offer a little adventure on the route (and one could avoid some of the traffic jams around the Bay Area).

There are a lot of legal land mines with operations like this.

The FAA separates flight operations along a couple of subtle lines that make the difference between a commercial and private operation. As soon as a private pilot says to the general public "I am flying from here to there on this day and it will cost this much to come." you are now "holding out" as the FAA puts it. This requires you to be a commercial pilot flying under part 135 of the FARs as opposed to the more relaxed part 91 (general aviation).

> This requires you to be a commercial pilot flying under part 135 of the FARs as opposed to the more relaxed part 91 (general aviation).

This is something I plan to do if/when I burn out on programming. Though I guess there is always the saying: "how do you become a millionaire?" "become a billionaire and start an airline."

Is that true even if the passengers don't pay more than their fair share of the operating costs?

One instance I can think of are the EAA "young eagle" flights where kids can come to the airport and get a flight with a pilot. Those are definitely advertised, but since they aren't done for profit, my impression was that they are clearly part 91. (I don't know if those flights are completely free, though.)

EDIT: nm, saw the post above about "common purpose" rule.

Getting into a car which may or may not be well-maintained[1] with a driver whose competence I know nothing about is disturbing enough. Getting into a plane (where the failure mode on shoddy maintenance is falling out of the sky) with an unknown pilot seems like a very courageous move.

In the Yes, Prime Minister sense.

[1] I once had a boss that picked up $200 cars. He asked me to move it out of the company car park for him once, warning that the brakes didn't work and I'd need to use the handbrake to stop.

except they hand out driver's licenses like candy, but pilot's licenses take quite a bit of training. also, the vehicle inspections are much more stringent.

> also, the vehicle inspections are much more stringent.

Poor maintenance (including running out of fuel) is one of the biggest factors in GA crashes.

the software i am developing is called pilotride.com see the web site. its one big difference is the software is designed for flying clubs and FBO's that rent aircraft. this is NOT a public free for all where someone posts a flight and the world sees it. this software secures all rides and members data to the club or FBO.

michael pilotride.com

Hey, I own your plane's sister (N8550W).

I'm surprised you didn't mention "Can you fly at night?" That's one I always get.

And what's the answer? :)

The answer is, "Yup."

Opps, sorry.. guess it would have been good to actually answer the question.

Any private pilot can fly at night. There is a newer class of license called sport pilot that does impose restrictions on night flight (and quite a few other restrictions), but just about all pilots can fly at night.

I'm really confused by why people think it would not be ok to fly at night though. Just about everyone I've told that I'm a pilot asks about it though, so it's a big misconception somewhere. I always follow up with "Why do you think it wouldn't be ok?", but no-one's really been able to articulate why they thought that.

Because it's kind of like flying on instruments, which you need an instrument rating for? Because you are supposed to fly by visual reference to the horizon, which you can't see at night? I find it a bit weird myself.

Flying at night without an instrument rating in some areas is pretty sketchy to be fair. More than one person has died by losing track of where the ground is and where it isn't. In much of Europe you actually do need an instrument rating to fly at night.

"Never feel sorry for a man who owns a plane." -Charles Morse, "The Edge" (1997)

Charles Lindbergh, man. They STOLE and KILLED his BABY.

How much red tape is there if one wants to cross an international border?

Generally, not much.

You need to file a flight plan, which is essentially just telling the ATC where you're going, and where you're coming from. The flight plan is also useful in case you get into trouble, since it contains the identifying information for your plane, the number of people on board, and for instance the safety equipment on board. So if you crash, the search-and-rescue people know what to expect.

Depending on the system the place you're flying to uses, filing the plan might be filling a web form. At least in Finland you could also do that via a phone call or with radio.

If there are customs and passport formalities between the countries you travel to, you will need to taxi your plane to a 'customs control' parking lot on the airport so that the customs people can check it. On some small airports this may require alerting them ahead of time so that they'll actually be there.

You probably also have to have a radio and a transponder on the airplane.

Between some countries, like the EU/Schengen area, flying between countries is pretty much the same as flying inside a country. So the requirements mostly depend on airspace restrictions in the area you fly. Between other countries things may vary. For example, back then I was told that it is quite impossible to fly from Finland to Russia since there was essentially no GA in Russia.

(disclaimer: it has been nearly 10 years since I flew last time, so some of this may be incorrect or outdated)

> since there was essentially no GA in Russia.

Other than Mathias Rust?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust

I've done it US-Canada, and entering Canada was an absolute pleasure and smooth experience; coming back into the US has become much more hassle (and I'm a US citizen, flying an N-reg [US] airplane). That was before 9/11 and Homeland Security.

Now, entering the US is much more aggravating and "tense".

It's not so much that there's lots of red tape, but that the entire experience I perceive as unfriendly and waiting to spring a $5000 fine of you for missing some timing deadline by a few minutes or for having the paperwork innocently imperfectly filled out.

There's also a sense of discoordination. You have to file electronically, and then call the customs office on the phone, giving them a small window for your arrival. You used to just be able to have ATC advise customs of your ETA.

It's to the point where when I need to go to Windsor, Canada, I will often overfly the Windsor airport, cross back into the US, land at Detroit (either Metro or City airport) and rent a car to drive back into Canada. If I just overfly Canada but takeoff and land in the US, it's still a domestic flight and I avoid all the hassle.

I'm sure if I did it more often that it would become routine and seem less arcane and fraught with peril, but I only have occassion to do it a couple times per year, max, and Detroit is really close to Windsor anyway, so it'll stay a mystery for me until I go island hopping the Carribean. That's where a rental car from San Juan, PR or Miami doesn't work as a substitute for a border-crossing.

In the US- as far as the FAA and pilot & plane are concerned you need all of your required documentation AND a radio operators license.

None if you don't land! I used to fly into US airspace out of Boundary Bay airport - just south of Vancouver. There's actually no immigration or customs requirement at all if you don't land the thing on the other side of the border.

I've been toying with the idea of getting my pilot's license (eventually) partially for the sake of avoiding the TSA when I actually have to travel. What I'm curious about is how difficult/expensive it is to rent a plane that can fly further than stated in the article? (say, TX to CA, for instance) I imagine it wouldn't make much sense to buy a huge cross-country jet for the occasional long trips, although I am kind of surprised it's only ~$30k for a smaller one!

I think renting such a plane would be difficult, but there are home-built airplanes with ranges over 1000 miles. You need a big bladder to go that far, though...

Really? I've heard it should be pretty easy, and that unless you're planning to fly often, renting is by far the best way to go (aside from just taking the airlines). Then again, my sources might not be all that knowledgable!

Renting is tough to use airplanes to take purposeful trips.

Flight schools (the overwhelming source of rental airplanes) don't want you taking their plane for 9 days (two weekends and the week in-between) and flying it 3-hours each way, or 6 total hours of rental for 9 days where they can't rent it to anyone else.

The typical minimum is 3 hours per day away from base.

Before I bought my twin-engine airplane, I wanted to have 50 hours of multi-engine time (to make insurance more affordable), and I rented a flight school twin to build that time, including some trips.

Because it was a twin (and therefore not in as high-demand), I was able to negotiate a 2-hour daily minimum, but that meant for long trips like Thanksgiving and Christmas, I had a lot of "extra hours" that I was going to have to pay for anyway, so I'd take side trips to fly off those hours (and to go visit used airplanes that I was considering purchasing).

It is also virtually impossible to decide "Hey, the weather looks good this weekend; I'd like to rent a plane all weekend and go to XYZ." The plane will be booked at some point during that weekend.

If you want to use an (non-airline, non-owned) airplane for travel, you want to join a partnership or a small club, not rent from flight schools. (This will be vastly cheaper than sole ownership, as you could imagine.)

That range is just the distance you can fly without stopping to refuel. Multi-stop trips can certainly be longer than that, if you have the time.

A faster plane will get you there quicker, of course, but they are also much more expensive and harder to fly.

That price is for a rather old used plane; newer planes cost much more. Some flying clubs have a variety of planes to rent, though you need to reserve them and more importantly learn to fly them.

First of all, you can buy a perfectly safe and airworthy Cessna 150 for around $15k, and you could fly it from TX to CA - it would just take quite a long time, and probably be quite bumpy. You might also get stranded for a few days half-way while waiting for weather.

To fly long cross-country trips in comfort you really need something like a Cessna 182, or even better a Cirrus or a light twin. You'll end up spending at least $100k for well equipped IFR plane (and you'll need an instrument rating). Ideally you'd want oxygen, turbos and deicing so you can fly above/through the weather.

So, in summary, it's not really feasible to buy a plane for personal transportation across large distances unless you want to spend a lot of money. You just can't beat the airlines in terms of value for money, safety and reliability, even if it is a miserable experience.

Don't get me wrong but I do not get what's so exciting about flying yourself or owning a plane. Flying is for getting from point A to B. Flying just for fun missing any purpose might be fun the first couple of times but then it's like driving a bus from A to A.

Sex is for making children. I don't get why anyone would enjoy it more than once.

Because you are flying in the air. In a machine. Above the ground. Like a god.

Well done

True, but do this for 200 hours... and you're out of options of new stuff to try. Then you try a bigger/better plane and/or more extreme manouvres.

Same as with sex: when you're bored with the regular stuff: try new manouvres or a new partner ;-)

In the same way as hacking is ONLY about making a product?

You can never do it out of general interest, just to learn more about something?

> Flying is for getting from point A to B. Flying just for fun missing any purpose might be fun the first couple of times but then it's like driving a bus from A to A.

On the contrary. For years I owned a Piper Super Cub, an old-fashioned cloth-wing airplane, and I flew it everywhere just for fun. I would fly it out into the desert and land in a dry lake bed or salt flat, just to be somewhere totally wild and unexplored. I also stunt-flew it at air shows, doing all kinds of aerobatics and fun stuff. That was the most fun I had as a pilot, and flying for business couldn't compare.

Is there not any form of travel you enjoy? Not even a bike, skateboard, or even a walk in a forest?

The adrenaline rushes I get during the various phases of flight are why I do it. Turning onto the runway, the big white numbers rolling under you, pushing the throttle forward and letting the engine roar to life is quite thrilling.

Also thrilling is trying to put yourself on a 50' wide piece of pavement while going 70mph in a medium that's moving, unlike the pavement.

Oh, and the view is awesome.

> Turning onto the runway, the big white numbers rolling under you, pushing the throttle forward and letting the engine roar to life is quite thrilling.

I still get a little bit of that - as a passenger in a commercial airliner. And I fly weekly.

However, my father in law, who's a retired captain and flight safety specialist has made no ambiguity as to his opinion of anyone related to him getting into a plane piloted by anyone not a career pilot (and it's not that he doesn't like or trust me - it's entirely based on his opinion of GA safety). Given his gravity on the subject, I'm inclined to do what he says, but it seems I should get myself a lesson or two to try it out.

Disclaimer: Highly biased of course ;)

Speaking as a glider pilot in training, its hard to beat the feeling of winch launch or the rising in a thermal column. Flying small planes connects you to the elements while still leaving you in control (if everything goes well). To me its the perfect combination of technology and outside activity.

Amen to that, your first successful solo flight is something everyone remembers.

It is just fun!

Regarding the elements bit: The first time I went solo the only reason I stayed up for more than 15 minutes was finding a large bird (kestrel maybe) circling in a thermal and joining it. You don't get much more "with the elements" when in the air than that (Hang gliders excepted).

I'm comercial pilot with 9000+ hours of A320, B737, and MD80. Every time someone asks me about getting the Private pilot licence, I point them to a glider course. The airmanship and the experience is so much pure and intense in a glider. Also the costs are much lower for the weekend airman.

You could say the same thing about cars - they are only for getting from point A to B,right?

Yet I very often take my car for a drive, without a purpose or a destination in mind. Drive for a couple hours, through the nearest forests or hills, and then head home. It's fun.

See, this is respectable, if not that common. But when I tell people I sometimes just take a train somewhere new and then come back, they look at me like I'm weird.

No way. I used to take the trains in Seoul...going to new places. Sometimes I wouldn't get out except to switch platforms and go back. If it was the green line, I'd just go in a big circle, ha. It's good for clearing the mind.

I'd encourage people to call up your local flight school and schedule an intro lesson. It'll be about 45 minutes, no real "book learning" component, and the cost will vary (they'll tell you) but should be $150 +/-$50 range.

You'll either immediately be hooked (me), or at least see/feel some of the excitement and decide whether or not it's worth it. Either way, you got a novel experience.

I completely agree that I wouldn't leave tech to go fly an airliner around on a schedule.

I used to stop by the airport 2-3 evenings per week and just fly around for an hour; it was a great way to push all of work out of my head and truly relax. Now, with a family and much more demanding job, I fly to go places, for currency/training, but very rarely have time to "just fly".

It's not for everyone, but anyone even close to on the fence should take an intro lesson. Little to lose and if you find you like it, it's a quite enjoyable hobby.

Feel free to email me with questions.

I love flying, but I can understand that perspective. It's the same perspective that non-gamers tend to have about games. It's just fiddling around with a controller in front of a screen, what's fun about that? The same could be said of plenty of other hobbies (what's fun about fishing, for example?).

But for the people that do enjoy it, it's obviously much more than that. It's about the challenge, the scenery along the way, and the places that you can easily reach with an aircraft that aren't necessarily so easy with just driving.

Of course, people are wired differently. Maybe none of those things appeal to you personally. I think that is true for a lot of people, actually, and that is one of the reasons that flying is such a small niche hobby (obviously there are a lot of other reasons as well).

A bit more info on the SFO question: http://www.quora.com/How-difficult-or-unusual-would-it-be-to...

The first time I flew in a plane, I never Landed..because I parachuted out, using the 'old 18'ft Army round parachute'pulled both toggles down the whole way 5+min descent...great fun!

The most startling thing about this to me was how much costs have gone up.

In 1990-91 I was working on my Private Pilot's license. I lost interest around 38 hours or so and never finished, but it was fun while it lasted. Last flight was my long solo cross-country. Costs were around $50/hr for a Cessna 152 and about $45/hour for the instructor. This was flying out of BDR in southwestern CT. Looks like prices are averaging more than double now. Whew!

Is there a site where you can find other people that want to fly from somewhere specific too somewhere specific to share fuel costs with? I'd love to go up in a private plane for a few hours if it only cost me $200 or less.

http://jetsuite.com/suitedeal

They hire out the return legs for trips which are empty

edit: The prices quoted are for the whole plane, all 4 seats so usually about 150$ each

wow. Americans and Canadians actually spell it, as well as say it, "airplane". weird.

(mumble mumble aeroplane mumble)

still wondering if today you can build a cheap airplane that just burns less fuel...

Building your own airplane is possible and actually quite common. There are kits for anything from one-seaters with open cockpit to pressurized turboprops.

http://eaa.org/homebuilders/

No I meant like newer generation planes with more efficient engines, lighter, more aerodynamic, etc.

I'm not sure if current airplane designs are as good as they can...

True, engine efficiency is kind of flat-lined. Turbines aren't efficient for most GA operations, but there are new diesel aviation engines coming online.

Aerodynamically, I don't know about big gains. Something like a Lancair Legacy is pretty low drag. You can make lower-drag planes, but that typically comes with much higher stall/takeoff/landing speeds that make the plane harder to fly and much less safe in the event of a forced landing.

Personally I'm looking forward to the next generation of electric aircraft, once battery density improves and costs come down. A Chinese company is already producing an electric ultralight and working on a small GA electric: http://www.flyingmag.com/aircraft/lsasport/germany-certifies...

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