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The Aircraft Thread!
- Thread starter PracticalMac
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What about piloting a DC-10 or the upgrade MD-11?
I was not fond of flying in passenger DC-10s since they seemed early on to have a lot of safety issues, I guess they evened out after longer experience but I sometimes inconvenienced myself to avoid flying in them.
Not long ago I saw a composite reproduction video of the UA#232 crash of a DC-10 in 1989 in Sioux City, Iowa. That reminded me that even though the pilots did a great job with no hydraulics, saving 185 of the 296 on board, at the time back then I was put off about the whole idea of flying DC-10s for awhile because of that failure of the tail mounted engine having taken out all the hydraulics.
I kept telling myself remember it would probably not even be possible to replicate that accident exactly... and another part of myself said yeah, so?: "Close enough" could also be pretty bad.
One had to admire the pilots and flight engineer (and a guy who helped land the thing who was aboard as a passenger but was a flight training instructor for DC10s, talk about very good luck under circumstances) for being able to get the thing down at all ... the plane had kept banking to the right the whole time after the explosion so any left turn was a full circle right project, plus meanwhile they had landing gear down but useless ailerons and no brakes and no way to risk circling around long enough to ditch excess fuel before their one shot at landing the thing.
The first 5 A380 have been retired by an airline after their lease ended.
They are only 10 years old, as Singapore Airlines replaces their passenger aircraft this quickly.
As they are early builds, they are difficult to resell.
Two will be stored and stripped of valuable parts.
One has been bought by HiFly for wet lease. They have a first customer for the summer. There's a second plane on the way.
List price was $250 million. The dry lessors still need around $60 million each to break even. Scrapping one could bring $120 million.
They are being offered for lease at 40% discount with respect to the $2 million per month a new one costs.
The current list price of an A380 is $450 million.
They are only 10 years old, as Singapore Airlines replaces their passenger aircraft this quickly.
As they are early builds, they are difficult to resell.
Two will be stored and stripped of valuable parts.
One has been bought by HiFly for wet lease. They have a first customer for the summer. There's a second plane on the way.
List price was $250 million. The dry lessors still need around $60 million each to break even. Scrapping one could bring $120 million.
They are being offered for lease at 40% discount with respect to the $2 million per month a new one costs.
The current list price of an A380 is $450 million.
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I flew on a DC-10 once(or really twice-once each way) many years ago and remember it being loud and noisy but seemed huge. Granted I was young. This would have been '92 or '93.
Not too long ago, I made a series of flights and all were made on MD-88s and MD-90s. They were as loud and rattly as I remember the DC-10 being, although obviously a lot smaller. One of the MD-88s had a terrible brake shoe grind, but I've since been told that's actually somewhat normal(with that said, I flew Atlanta-Little Rock when I noticed it, and when I flew Little Rock-Atlanta back the next day on the same tail number plane, it was gone so I guess they'd worked on them overnight).
Since work a mile from UPS's World Port hub, I see all kinds of cargo planes coming and going all day. UPS doesn't fly DC-10s, MD-10s or MD-11s in anywhere near the kind of numbers as Fed-Ex, but they do have a handful of MD-11s. The first time I saw one, it caught me off guard with the amount of racket it made. Since there aren't that many tri-jets around these days, I figured it was either an MD10/11 or 727 and thought it was the former, but I'd never heard one that loud before(usually when I think of a loud tri-jet I think of the 727). Sure enough, though, it had to have been an MD-11 since it was a UPS plane
Ah, tings are harder in Europe (sad).
I figure about $600 a flight. Or come over the pond one day and visit one of the many ride experiences.
Sorry if this is consider OT. Obviously we have some pilots around here: in addition to talking about the planes, I’m wondering if we could coax some of them to tell some of their tales. I’ve logged a few hundred thousand miles as a commercial passenger, but I’m always keen to hear about the experiences of crew: commercial, private, amateur, military, etc.
I think that this is an excellent idea.
A number of years ago, I visited an aviation museum in Kiev (it is excellent, and a must visit for anyone interested in planes - both military and civilian from the Soviet era).
The museum had some extraordinary planes, a number of which served to illustrate the limits of aviation technology at the time they had been built.
I work in entomology and invasive species. As such we use aircraft to treat once in a while. It's always fun to hang around the crop dusters. Usually, we're using Air Tractor 400's, 500's or 601's. There was a site we treated a couple years ago that included a state park campground. I was the ground observer as 3 AT-500's came over the site. With those P&W turbines echoing through the trees at 7:45 am, it sounded like a lot more than 3 planes. The cub scout group thought it was the coolest thing ever. But there was this one grumpy camper who was giving me an earful for waking him up. I just turned to him and said, "Quiet hours ended at 7:30."
Grats!
[doublepost=1532123776][/doublepost]One of my favorite historical aircraft from the Cold War is the B-58 Hustler, mostly because of it's astetics, but also because it was the tip of the airborne nuclear spear. Trivia: This was the aircraft used by the US in the movie, Fail Safe, if I recall correctly.
I have the great fortune of being able to hang out with a Hustler pilot every month or so. He's got some amazing stories - what an airplane!
Little planes, big planes, little planes- An interesting story is the transition to building larger commercial aircraft. Not really a story, just an observation.
B747
As commercial aircraft grew in size post WWII, the Boeing 747 was a huge hit in the 1970s. At the time, Boeing was the predominant commercial aircraft builder. Then along come Airbus a European consortium that produced highly successful narrow body, the A-320 and A-330 wide bodies.
Outstanding airplanes, but then Airbus took on it’s mega project, the A-380 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A380) to compete with the 747. They had many orders lined up from package carriers like FedEx and UPS, but ran into serious problems and delays with electrical issues.
A380
Quote from link:
Initial production of the A380 was troubled by delays attributed to the 530 km (330 mi) of wiring in each aircraft. Airbus cited as underlying causes the complexity of the cabin wiring (98,000 wires and 40,000 connectors), its concurrent design and production, the high degree of customisation for each airline, and failures of configuration management and change control.[
I called it a stray tron issue, but the result was 100s of orders were cancelled, and Boing who at one time planned a full double decker 747, decided instead to focus on smaller aircraft designs. Only certain airports could accommodate them, and everything with them took longer, longer to prepare, longer to board and deboard, and having a 500 seat capacity means you need an adequate boarding area and that many people who wanted to fly to a location.
At that point in time airlines at least in the US were prioritizing frequency (more flights) with smaller aircraft, and seemed to go overboard. More on this in a minute. Boeing came up with the Dream Liner a smaller widebody (compared to the A380) and I thought they were yet again brilliant. Alas Boeing ran into it’s own technical issues as delays caused many order cancellations including at NWA.
https://www.cnet.com/news/boeings-787-dreamliner-a-legacy-of-delays/
Dreamliner
In the US, with the focus on frequency, I really disliked the substantial move to much smaller 50-70 seat aircraft that were not nearly as spacious, using aircraft that were originally designed for short flights, now being used for 3 hour + flights in cramped quarters.
For international flights wide bodies still offer the best solution. We flew to Hawaii in a B-757 from Minneapolis and hated it. Too long of a flight with not enough space and that was in first class. Yet, I question the overall convenience of a 500 seat aircraft for reasons previously mentioned. It’s the same reason I prefer a 1200 passenger over a 4000 passenger cruise ship.
[doublepost=1532356251][/doublepost]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird
B747
Outstanding airplanes, but then Airbus took on it’s mega project, the A-380 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A380) to compete with the 747. They had many orders lined up from package carriers like FedEx and UPS, but ran into serious problems and delays with electrical issues.
A380
Initial production of the A380 was troubled by delays attributed to the 530 km (330 mi) of wiring in each aircraft. Airbus cited as underlying causes the complexity of the cabin wiring (98,000 wires and 40,000 connectors), its concurrent design and production, the high degree of customisation for each airline, and failures of configuration management and change control.[
I called it a stray tron issue, but the result was 100s of orders were cancelled, and Boing who at one time planned a full double decker 747, decided instead to focus on smaller aircraft designs. Only certain airports could accommodate them, and everything with them took longer, longer to prepare, longer to board and deboard, and having a 500 seat capacity means you need an adequate boarding area and that many people who wanted to fly to a location.
At that point in time airlines at least in the US were prioritizing frequency (more flights) with smaller aircraft, and seemed to go overboard. More on this in a minute. Boeing came up with the Dream Liner a smaller widebody (compared to the A380) and I thought they were yet again brilliant. Alas Boeing ran into it’s own technical issues as delays caused many order cancellations including at NWA.
https://www.cnet.com/news/boeings-787-dreamliner-a-legacy-of-delays/
Dreamliner
In the US, with the focus on frequency, I really disliked the substantial move to much smaller 50-70 seat aircraft that were not nearly as spacious, using aircraft that were originally designed for short flights, now being used for 3 hour + flights in cramped quarters.
For international flights wide bodies still offer the best solution. We flew to Hawaii in a B-757 from Minneapolis and hated it. Too long of a flight with not enough space and that was in first class. Yet, I question the overall convenience of a 500 seat aircraft for reasons previously mentioned. It’s the same reason I prefer a 1200 passenger over a 4000 passenger cruise ship.
[doublepost=1532356251][/doublepost]
I believe the Hustler and the (OMG) SR-71 were cutting edge technology in their times. I saw the latter in Okanowa (1980s timeframe) taxi by and then takeoff. Impressive to watch.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird
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The issue there were flight controls operated by hydraulics, and losing all hydraulics that ran through the tail as a result of an uncontained engine failure in the tail. After that accident, changes were made in the DC-10 to hopefully prevent that occurrence for that specific occurrence. The hydraulic lines would auto shutoff to the tail.
The pilots flew that plane using engine thrust , a fulcrum effect based on the engines under the wing to steer that plane, raise and lower the nose. It was frankly amazing. Older airplanes like the DC-9 had mechanically linked trim tabs that moved the ailerons in the case of a hydraulic failure.
Newer airplanes are mostly fly by wire with duplicate and triplicate replication to maintain control in the event of degradation of controls. Absolute worse case for the A-320, the only mostly assured connection was the rudders, but as I recall, electrically. It’s depressing how much I’ve forgotten in 5 years.
Such a loss was not even practiced, but was certified by the FAA as adequate in an extreme emergency. In an aircraft where the flight system does not allow the pilot to stall the aircraft inadvertently, stalls were not practiced. You have to realize we have moved into an era where aircraft sysytems are now designed and capable of overcoming pilot error. But it also moves the pilot into the realm of asking, what is the aircraft doing now?!
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I'm not a big plane guy but the Concorde has to be the best looking non military plane to ever exist
For an international flight, 7-11 hours long, for myself a 250-300 seat aircraft is ideal. Domestically a 150 seat wide, narrowbody like a B-737 or A-320 is hard to beat as long as it’s not in the cattle car configuration. There is a lot of flexibility on how seats are configured to allow for recline and leg room.
It looks fast, its feat is speed, although it’s commercial success was limited. It’s lacking in relative comfort and luxury for the utility of speed. In the 1980s, I was looking forward to the first hypersonic airliner, New York to Tokyo in 3 hours. Still waiting.
Boeing's planned hypersonic airliner could fly from NYC to London in two hours
https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/scienc...-airliner-could-fly-nyc-london-two-ncna887111
What is it like to be "just a passenger" in planes you've previously instead been in the cockpit?! In situations like turbulence or other flight disruption, is it like being in the back seat when your kid's at the wheel and some idiot ahead of him does something stupid? Or do you just figure hey, I'm off duty...
It looks fast, its feat is speed, although it’s commercial success was limited. It’s lacking in relative comfort and luxury for the utility of speed. In the 1980s, I was looking forward to the first hypersonic airliner, New York to Tokyo in 3 hours. Still waiting.
Boeing's planned hypersonic airliner could fly from NYC to London in two hours
https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/scienc...-airliner-could-fly-nyc-london-two-ncna887111
I got to walk through a Concorde and the soviet version in Sinsheim
https://sinsheim.technik-museum.de/en/
Neither were really all that luxurious but both were cool