Category: Flying

Stories about flying planes and helicopters, discussions of technique and teaching.

Air India 171 Boeing 787 crash questions

by philg

Friends have been asking my opinion regarding the recent Boeing 787 crash in India. Based on the fact that the 787’s gear wasn’t retracting or retracted, the most common speculation right now seems to be that the flight crew mistakenly retracted flaps rather than gear at the “positive rate” point just above the runway.

I’m not typed in the B787 so I can’t say for sure how far apart flaps retraction and rotation speed are. In the CRJ, the following are true:

  • the plane won’t take off without some flaps down (i.e., even with full power from two engines it will just go off the end of a 15,000′ runway)
  • rotation speed (Vr) and flaps retraction speed (V2+10) are reasonably close, separated by perhaps 15 seconds (admittedly that’s with gear coming up); see “Everything about V Speeds Explained”
  • flaps on an airliner move rather slowly
  • with two engines at full power, the plane will climb reasonably well even if the configuration isn’t perfect
  • given a long runway, less than full power is typically used for takeoff so as to reduce wear on the engines and stretch out the time to overhaul

So… I have no idea what caused this tragedy, but I don’t think that “proper configuration; proper rotation speed; full power; flaps instead of gear just after takeoff” explains a failure to climb. Gear adds drag, but the plane needs to be able to fly in a clean configuration on just one engine and, therefore, with double the power it can easily overpower the gear drag. An inadvertent flap retraction also shouldn’t have caused a crash because, once off the ground, the plane accelerates very quickly toward and beyond V2. The Ahmedabad airport is at sea level and has an 11,500′ runway, which might enable reduced thrust to be used even given the reported 43C temperature. On the other hand, pilots who are sinking would likely push the thrust levers full forward as a reflex.

An obvious explanation is that the aircraft lost power in both engines shortly after takeoff, but it is difficult to think of a way that two turbine engines can fail at the same time. It happened to a Boeing 777 landing at Heathrow due to high altitude icing, but that’s impossible during a hot summer takeoff. It happened to Airbus single-pilot hero Captain Sully (Jeff Skiles nowhere to be found in the media!).

Maybe the fuel was contaminated, but jet engines will burn almost anything and why didn’t the engines quit during taxi?

Separately, should “British man” Vishwash Kumar Ramesh (Guardian) spend all of his future earnings on lottery tickets?

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Pride Month in aviation

by philg

Air Canada demonstrates “inclusivity” by excluding any cisgender heterosexuals from working on a particular flight:

Probability question: We are informed that being 2SLGBTQQIA+ is common/normal and also that in a company with more than 35,000 employees there had never previously been an assembly of 3-6 workers (pilots plus flight attendants) who all identified as 2SLGBTQQIA+ (the flight in the video was the “first all-2SLGBTQIA+ flight”.

In London, Ontario, home to a big Diamond factory:

The Irish equivalent of the FAA:

Atlas Air, best known for a crash with a DEI hire at the controls:

The folks who’ve taken over the Climate Change Awareness mantle from all-Hamas-all-the-time Greta Thunberg:

Airbus UK:

How is are observant Muslims supposed to “be their authentic selves” if they must walk by this flag on their way into work?

In case the Trump Tyranny (TM) reaches D.C.’s airports and the tweet below is memory-holed, screen shots:

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Loss of Rob Holland and David Paton, founder of Orbis

by philg

It’s World Pilot’s Day today, but I’m not celebrating. Rob Holland, whom the legendary Mike Goulian brought to my old home airport, died two days ago in an MXS-RH while preparing for an air show. Confusingly, Rob wasn’t doing any crazy-looking maneuvers just before the crash, but only returning for a normal landing. An aviation friend: “heard the engine broke off and took out Rob’s wing. The composite firewall breaking is a known issue with the MX airplane.” Here’s Rob with an air show spectator:

The first time that I went upside down in an airplane it was with Rob, instructing out of KBED in the Decathlon at the time. I saw him only at air shows after he escaped to tax-free New Hampshire, but I remember him as patient and unfazed by student incompetence. A great ambassador for aviation.

Also notable, though not a tragedy, David Paton, the 94-year-old founder of the Orbis flying eye hospital charity, has died. From the New York Times obituary:

David Paton, an idealistic and innovative ophthalmologist who converted a United Airlines jet into a flying hospital that took surgeons to developing countries to operate on patients and educate local doctors, died on April 3 at his home in Reno, Nev. He was 94.

The son of a prominent New York eye surgeon whose patients included the shah of Iran and the financier J. Pierpont Morgan’s horse, Dr. Paton (pronounced PAY-ton) was teaching at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins University in the early 1970s when he became discouraged by increasing cases of preventable blindness in far-flung places.

(i.e., his life was consistent with the data presented in The Son Also Rises: economics history with everyday applications)

Before it decided to concentrate on Rainbow Flagism and Critical Race Theory, USAID pitched in to help spread ophthalmology knowledge to poor countries:

Dr. Paton decided to raise funds on his own. In 1973, he founded Project Orbis with a group of wealthy, well-connected society figures like the Texas oilman Leonard F. McCollum and Betsy Trippe Wainwright, the daughter of the Pan American World Airways founder Juan Trippe.

In 1980, Mr. Trippe helped persuade Edward Carlson, the chief executive of United Airlines, to donate a DC-8 jet. The United States Agency for International Development contributed $1.25 million to convert the plane into a hospital with an operating room, a recovery area and a classroom equipped with televisions, so local medical workers could watch surgeries.

(I’m not sure that $1.25 million would pay for new carpet and a coffee maker in a Gulfstream today.)

David Paton wasn’t a pilot, but he created one of the greatest demonstrations of the power and value of aviation.

Some photos of the Orbis MD-10 at Oshkosh (EAA AirVenture) in 2021 (note the COVID-era mask, one of the few at Oshkosh that year):

Separately, if you need some help with your eyes in order to keep flying safely, U.S. News says to pack a bathing suit and go to Miami (ranked #1). Alternatively, pack a gun and ammo and go to Philadelphia (#2) or Baltimore (#3):

Circling back to Rob Holland, I think that he was truly one of those people whose personality in life matched his eulogy personality. Despite being a fierce competitor and top achiever, he never exhibited a touch of “pilot ego.” I will miss him.

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Florida aircraft sales tax avoidance talk at Sun ‘n Fun

by philg

Happy Tax Day for those who celebrate (i.e., Americans who aren’t smart enough to have joined Mitt Romney’s Club 47).

David Brennan and Jackie Mustian, attorneys at Moffa, Sutton, & Donnini, gave a talk at Sun ‘n Fun about how people avoid owing a 6 percent sales tax when buying an aircraft that will ultimately be based in Florida. (Imagine the potential liability for an elite buying a $100 million Gulfstream!)

First, it seems unlikely that Florida is getting any real benefit from imposing this tax. The true beneficiaries are attorneys and accountants who set up schemes to avoid it. Perhaps because of that, there is no urgency among legislators to eliminate the tax, as Maskachusetts did back in 2001. Under the assumption that the tax, and the army of professionals whose job it is to avoid it, are with us forever, here’s what we learned…

A nonresident who owns a new-to-him/her/zir/them aircraft has to be careful about visiting Florida for reasons other than maintenance or flight training. If the aircraft is here for 21 days within the first six months of ownership, Florida sales tax is owed. A flight that lands at 11:55 pm and departs 10 minutes later at 12:05 am is considered to have spent two days in Florida out of the allowable 20.

A Florida resident cannot take advantage of the above exemption. If the Florida resident is the sole owner of a Maskachusetts, Delaware, or Montana LLC that owns the aircraft, the 20-day exemption might apply, but an auditor might also try to look through the LLC shell to the real owner. The Floridian ideally would keep the aircraft out of state entirely for six months and also not display an obvious intent to bring it into the state on Day 183 (maybe the Floridian is a super douche and also is looking at buying a house in Nantucket and has written to the airport there about getting on the hangar waitlist).

Where the tax advisors seem to make money is in setting up an LLC that is in the business of owning an aircraft and reselling it or its use to others. Prior to the aircraft purchase, the LLC is registered with the State of Florida to collect sales and use tax. The “real owner” then dry leases time with the aircraft from the LLC and the LLC collects and remits sales tax on the dry lease payments, e.g., $75/hour, but only for those hours flown within the State of Florida. In the speakers’ opinion, the State of Florida doesn’t have a legal basis for challenging the reasonableness of the lease rate. The state is entitled to collect tax only on the money that is actually changing hands. That said, a $10/hour dry lease rate for a $1 million aircraft could seem ridiculous. (Other states where this kind of scheme is employed have some rules about the minimum cost for the dry lease based on prevailing interest rates.)

It’s too bad that DeSantis and the Legislature haven’t cleaned this up. In my opinion, the efficient way to tax aviation is a fuel tax and if the state wants more money from aircraft owners it should simply raise the existing aviation fuel tax (FL 206.9825):

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FAA Medical talk at Sun ‘n Fun: get BasicMed even if you have a conventional medical

by philg

Most of the lectures at Sun ‘n Fun happen in a modern air-conditioned building that belongs to Central Florida Aerospace Academy, a public high school. Fittingly for today’s topic, one enters the building via a door that features a coronapanic sign:

(See When will we feel safe enough to remove our coronapanic signs? (2024))

The presenter was Dr. Daniel Monlux, the kind of physician that noble aid recipients in the Middle East, accustomed to free food, education, health care, etc., probably wouldn’t ask to see twice (he was in the F/A-18 in the U.S. Navy). Dr. Monlux is a founder of Wingman Med, a consulting firm that helps pilots maintain their medicals.

The most important take-away from the talk is that every pilot should get certified under BasicMed even if he/she/ze/they also holds a conventional medical certificate. That way, if there is a hiccup in the medical renewal process, the pilot can still fly his/her/zir/their family around in a Cessna or Cirrus. There is no obstacle to dual medical certification.

What can go wrong in the medical renewal process? If the pilot discloses a new condition of some sort (the FAA doesn’t normally have access to a pilot’s medical records other than self-disclosure, according to Dr. Monlux) and that new condition isn’t on the “CACI list” or the pilot doesn’t have the right documentation for the AME (Aviation Medical Examiner) to issue a medical under CACI then there will be a deferral.

First, how can the pilot avoid a deferral? One way is to look at the CACI list web pages and figure out what the AME will need to see. Typically it is a report from a physician (not a nurse-practitioner or PA) within 90 days of the aviation medical exam.

Suppose that there is a deferral? Then the pilot is plunged into a hellish holding pattern. Mostly this is not due to the low-paid doctors employed by the FAA in Oklahoma City wanting to torture pilots, but rather because the FAA is required by regulation to use only USPS and hardcopy letters for communicating with pilots. It takes 2-3 months for a hardcopy mail exchange to occur. If the pilot hasn’t given the FAA exactly the information requested in the format that is requested, there will be at least another 2-3 months of delay. (no need for a DOGE reengineering here!)

Pilots often make things worse during this process. They will submit more information that the FAA requests, e.g., a full medical record from a provider that happens to have a medication list and a condition list. Invariably, these lists at medical institutions are out of date and contain conditions and medications that are no longer relevant, but once the FAA sees any of them they will need an explanation (from a physician within the past 90 days) about why the condition no longer exists and the medication is no longer being taken.

These processes can drag on for years and there is a plan for the FAA to start denying medical applications, rather than simply continuing the deferral farce, if the pilot can’t get organized to supply everything that the FAA needs (could be challenging in a country where it can take 3-4 months to get an appointment with a specialist). If the FAA actually denies a medical certificate then the pilot can’t continue to fly under BasicMed.

As noted above, most problems in this domain are self-inflicted. However, in the event of a complaint by a copilot, for example, the FAA does have access to prescription drug databases and might be able to see, for example, that a pilot was prescribed opioids (America’s favorite pastime) or anti-psychotic drugs.

Let me close with a trendy new topic: What if you’re a massive beefcake and decide to slim down via Ozempic or similar? Make sure that it is prescribed for weight loss, not diabetes! Diabetes is a matter of serious concern to the FAA because, among other things, it can affect vision.

Readers: Who has been on Ozempic or a competitive GLP-1 inhibitor? I have a few friends on them and everyone seems happy in their new thin guise. Is Elon Musk right that everyone should be on them? I would have to lose 20 lbs. to get into what the government says is an ideal weight range. As long as our house is within 15 minutes of Costco, I don’t see that happening absent Ozempic and, at the same time, I hate the idea of giving myself injections almost as much as I hate the idea of grueling exercise.

Speaking of Ozempic, here’s where I got lunch:

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Sun ‘n Fun 2025 report

by philg

I’ll write up a couple of in-depth items separately, but here’s an overview of my day at Sun ‘n Fun (Lakeland, Florida).

Previous visits to Sun ‘n Fun have been via (1) commercial flight from Boston and rental car from Tampa (advantage: Bern’s Steakhouse, back when you didn’t need to reserve months in advance), (2) Cirrus landing in the morning (complicated NOTAM, but not as busy as Oshkosh) and then potentially long-ish wait to depart between end of air show and 7 pm curfew, (3) minivan from our home in Jupiter, with stop at nearby Legoland. This year, I decided on a night-before flight to Bartow, Florida, a former P-51 training base (KBOW) that is 30 minutes from Lakeland, rent a car from Avis, and stay in a hotel (Florida has so much hotel capacity that prices don’t get to the insane levels that they do in Oshkosh). The mechanics of this worked out pretty well, but it is a mistake to try to leave Sun ‘n Fun by car within the first hour after the end of the air show.

For those who want to build their own planes, Sun ‘n Fun has a full slate of skills-building classes. Not sure that I would want to fly in a plane that contained my very first welds:

The airshow was loud, louder, and loudest with, admittedly, some finesse from superstar Mike Goulian. There were demonstrations of the F-35 (A and C models), the E/A-18G Growler, the F-16, and the Blue Angels (back to an all-male pilot team now that the Amazon Prime movie cameras aren’t rolling). With a smartphone, I think that the breakups are the best pictures that one can take of the Blue Angels, e.g.,

Here’s a photo taken from the control tower by a Bartow Airport employee (95B Photography on Flickr) that proves the ancient advice, “f/8 and be there”:

If you want to be a hero among progressives, you can volunteer with this Illinois-based organization (the representative was wearing an N95 mask, of course!) to exfiltrate a 15-year-old from benighted Florida to a state where his/her/zir/their genitals can be safely removed as part of gender-affirming care (abortion care is also part of the mission and the org says “hosted our very first drag show” in the 2024 annual report):

I’m not sure that the message of Elevated Access resonated with everyone at Sun ‘n Fun. There were some downright Deplorable people and planes (a couple of veterans, below):

As bad as it is to be a teenager in need of gender-affirming care stuck in Florida, the status of certified avionics is even worse. Situation summary: grim and expensive. Systems are old and clunky, e.g., the 2009 Garmin package touted in the latest -G7 Cirruses, and super expensive. There is still no reasonable upgrade path for the 4000 Avidyne-equipped -G2 Cirruses. A broker estimated that about 5 percent of these have been converted to the latest Garmin gear ($150,000 in an airframe that, pre-Biden, was only worth about $150,000) and that nobody should invest this kind of money. Considering that brokers make a commission on the total price of the plane, the advice not to do the Garmin upgrade means that it must be a stunningly terrible value. (Contrast to realtors, who always advise homeowners to do a huge amount of work prior to selling!) The Avidyne Vantage system is not certified yet. Dynon has nothing for the -G2 Cirrus.

Cirrus runs a great operation for owners at Sun ‘n Fun, including a perfect viewing location as well as air conditioning and cold drinks/snacks. I had my checkbook out to purchase a -G7, but the company refused my demand to add Blue Steel and Magnum to the color chart:

The latest and greatest Cirruses typically come with built-in oxygen for maintaining mental sharpness at high altitude. I’m wondering if this is being done all wrong. There’s a bottle built into the plane that is expensive to service and recertify. FBOs are getting into the habit of charging a fortune to top up these bottles with oxygen because their costs of labor and insurance are so high (the typical oxygen customer is a jet owner). There are some portable systems (example) that supposedly can concentrate enough oxygen up to 18,000′ to keep one pilot mentally sharp. It is rare to have more than two people on an oxygen-required flight and also fairly rare to go above 18,000′ (the limit for nasal cannulas). Maybe it would make more sense to put two of these these concentrators into the typical unpressurized airplane than a bottle-based system. I guess have a bottle supplement for those rare super high altitude flights.

V1 Hats is working on the problem of baseball cap-headset interference by thinning out the material near the ear:

I wish that it were possible to get custom designs and logos! Godzilla, at a minimum.

Here are some imports from China that made it in just under the tariff wire:

Towards the campground:

Flying out of Bartow, some ideas for decorating one’s living room ceiling and a nice museum devoted to the military’s time here:

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Tailboom chop in the New York City tour helicopter crash

by philg

Friends have been asking for an explanation of the horrific recent NYC tour helicopter crash, in which the machine was seen falling without its empennage (i.e., the tail had been chopped off by the main rotor system). Here are the passengers just before departure:

The weather seems to have been pretty good. The crash was at 3:15 pm, 15:15 Eastern or 19:15Z. Here’s the nearby (LaGuardia and Newark) weather at 1851Z:

KLGA 101851Z 16017G22KT 10SM FEW040 BKN100 BKN140 OVC250 08/M04
KEWR 111851Z 04011KT 7SM -RA BKN010 BKN017 OVC032 08/05

LGA had winds gusting 22 knots, which can generate some turbulence near buildings. Newark had steady winds of 11 knots with light rain and a low ceiling of 1000′ (not a problem for a helicopter that will operate at 500′). If turbulence leads to a low-G condition and the pilot doesn’t react properly, the result can be mast bumping (inner portion of the blades hit the shaft holding up the rotor system), but that common initial speculation seems unlikely in this particular case because the winds weren’t that heavy and a tourist flight isn’t usually the time for intentional rollercoaster-style maneuvers.

“Pilot in Hudson River helicopter crash called about needing fuel before fatal accident, CEO says” (Fox):

“The pilot of the doomed aircraft reportedly radioed about needing to refuel minutes before the helicopter crashed into the chilly waters, according to New York Helicopter Tour CEO Michael Roth, whose company operated the helicopter.”

This points to a more likely scenario (albeit still complete speculation until further data are available): engine stoppage due to running out of fuel followed by a failure to initiate an autorotation. The Robinson R44 has a similar two-blade rotor system to the Bell 206L4 (N216MH) that crashed. Here are some excerpts from the pilot’s operating handbook for the R44 that lay out the accident sequence:

  1. fuel exhaustion causes the engine to quit
  2. the engine quitting causes the rotor system to slow down
  3. the pilot, startled by the engine quitting, does not immediately (within 2-4 seconds) enter an autorotation, a lowering of the collective pitch control that flattens the blades and allows them to maintain speed while windmilling
  4. the retreating blade stalls, partly due to the high angle of attack caused by the relative wind beginning to come from below the helicopter as the helicopter falls, and the rotor system “blows back” due to the lost of lift (explaining this in full requires some understanding of the physics of gyroscopic precession)
  5. the severely tilted rotor contacts and chops off the tailboom

If this is indeed what happened, what can we learn? First, it is a lot easier to do the right thing in a training environment when simulated emergencies (e.g., an instructor rolling the throttle to idle) are expected. Second, being 100 percent vigilant 100 percent of the time is a perfect job for a computer whose job can be to shove the collective down and enter the autorotation even if the human pilot is still startled and frozen. A system like this has been designed, but is not widely available. See “HeliTrak launches R22/R44 Collective Pull Down” (2018), for example.

You might ask how it is possible for an experienced pilot to run an aircraft out of fuel. I was providing some recurrent training to two Brazilian helicopter pilots. Brazil is a huge market for helicopter taxi service due to horrific traffic and high levels of crime (they could use an El Salvador-style clean-up!). We were in the R44 at a quiet uncontrolled airport (6B6) in Maskachusetts doing some pattern work (take off, fly around in a circle, land). I stressed the importance of checking fuel levels and temperatures/pressures on downwind (flying at 500′ above the ground parallel to the runway) and before lifting up or taking off. I did the standard Robinson flight instructor trick of pulling the “gages” circuit breaker (aeronautical engineers can’t spell?). This causes the analog gauges to show 0 fuel, 0 oil pressure, and 0 oil temperature. The pilot flew 3 or 4 patterns without noticing anything amiss (i.e., missed at least checks of the gauges). His pilot friend in the back seat also didn’t notice anything. I asked them what they thought the most common cause of aircraft engine stoppage was. “Cylinder heat temperature too high?” was the answer (supposedly it is fuel exhaustion). I reminded them to make sure to do the pre-take-off and downwind checks. We fly at least 4 additional patterns without anyone noticing a problem. I asked the flying pilot to set the helicopter down on the runway and explicitly asked “How do the gauges look?” He responded, “fine”. His friend in the back seat agreed that nothing was amiss. Nervous myself about the fuel situation, I pushed the breaker back in, but not before noting that 0 fuel wasn’t a great way to fly. (In retrospect, I didn’t have to be nervous because Robinson’s orthographically-challenged engineers wisely put the low fuel light (10 minutes) on a separate circuit.)

Update: I’ve now seen some video, thanks to reader comments, in which the rotor system, still attached to part of the transmission, is also separated from both the tail and the fuselage. That casts some doubt on the above theory, but I will leave it in place as a reminder of how wrong I usually am.

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Meet at Sun ‘n Fun tomorrow?

by philg

Who wants to meet at Sun ‘n Fun tomorrow? I’m flying into Bartow tonight (I have some commitments here in Palm Beach County and wasn’t sure that I could make the 7 pm cutoff for Lakeland) and will ignominiously approach the event in an Avis Toyota Camry. Fly the mighty Cirrus back out on Saturday after a stop at Bok Tower Gardens, the polar opposite of Sun n’ Fun (photo from March 2022):

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When can we get a DOGE for aviation?

by philg

We had a 0-time Continental factory rebuilt engine dropped into a 2005 Cirrus SR20 back in 2019. The steel oil filler cap was new at the time. After 5.5 years of operation, in which combustion generated water vapor as a byproduct, the cap rusted out to the point that it is missing one of the teeth that engages spring tension to keep it in place.

Some pilots remove the cap after every flight for some period of time to let the steam out, though quite a few of these heroes of diligence also report having suffered from rusted oil filler caps. You might reasonably ask why anyone should care about the lifetime of this part. Why not buy a new cap every 5 years? An impervious-to-rust (plastic) ACDelco GM oil filler cap is $11 (presumably this is because people sometimes lose the caps, not because the cap won’t outlast the engine in ordinary circumstances). How much more could an aviation cap cost? (Answer: $386-$11)

I talked to some aviation mechanics about this and none thought that there would be any problem in Continental or Lycoming catching up on 70+ years of improvements in plastic or taking a class titled “Here are some things that Ford, Toyota, and GM were doing in 1985”. The best explanation that anyone had of why this expensive and rust-prone part would be used is that the engine family was certified like this back in the 1930s and it is too much effort to get the FAA to sign off on a change.

Maybe general aviation will be saved by eVTOLs that are designed and built with a completely different philosophy. If not, though, I wonder if we could get a DOGE going between the manufacturers of legacy piston engines/aircraft and the FAA to ask and answer questions of the form “Why wouldn’t you use a plastic cap in a rust-prone environment?”

3D printing nerds: have we advanced to the point that it is possible to toss a metal cap into a scanner and print a dimensionally identical plastic replacement that can handle the temps at the top of the engine (the oil temperature redline is 240F so maybe you want a plastic that is good to 400F)?

For reference, here is the perfect-condition oil filler cap, never previously touched or used by anyone other than the dealer, in our 4.3-year-old Honda Odyssey:

It’s available for $13.49, including shipping, from a Honda dealer via Amazon. If we assume that shipping is bundled into the price, this is a $10 part at most. Why did people replace it? Here are a couple of Amazon review reasons:

  • The original cap began to leak around its base after 8 years and 60K miles.
  • Don’t know what happened to my oil filler cap?

Searching for incidents across all cars where an oil filler cap was replaced, and ignoring those where the cap serves an engine venting or emissions function, it seem as though loss is the most common reason and typically due to a service shop forgetting to put it back on.

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Progress in aviation as measured by the Robinson R88

by philg

Robinson has figured out that the big money in helicopters is government and medevac (also government, since Medicare and Medicaid pay). Consequently, they’ve released the R88, a machine big enough to serve as an air ambulance (government pays) or firefighter (government pays) or police (government, obviously, and oftentimes air taxi for bureaucrats). Here’s what it looks like:

The turbine powerplant is made in an Islamic country and generates 950 hp. Rumor has it that the new helicopter will cost $3.3 million so let’s call that $4 million in today’s dollars by the time it goes out the door with useful equipment.

My summary to a pilot group:

Never in the history of humanity has there been a single-engine helicopter that could carry two pilots and 8 passengers underneath a two-blade rotor system.

Let’s have a look at the Bell UH-1 (“Huey”), which first flew in 1956 and of which more than 16,000 were built. The Huey had…

  • two pilots
  • seats for 11 passengers
  • a single engine (700 hp in the prototype; 1100 hp by 1960)
  • a two-blade rotor system

What did the first Hueys cost? $250,000 (source). Adjusted from 1960 into today’s mini-dollars… that’s $2.7 million.

The Robinson R88 is surely an improvement over the Bell in many respects. There are LCD screens in front and a modern autopilot to “pitch in” (so to speak). It may also be more reliable and cheaper to maintain (I hope!). But it’s kind of interesting that there hasn’t been more of an improvement in specs or cost after nearly 70 years.

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