Category: Uncategorized

Friends have been asking me, usually prefaced with “I’m not typically prone to conspiracy theory,” about the difficulty of stealing and hiding a Boeing 777. I’m hoping this is because of my experience as an airline pilot and not because they think that I am an expert on stealing and hiding things…

Anyway, one question that they seem to have is how big an airport one needs for such an airplane. If you want to land in bad weather, with lots of safety margin, and have a nice terminal for passengers, the number of places where a B777 could be landed is pretty small. FAR 121.195 requires that a turbojet be able to land in 60 percent of the available runway. You need to assume that the thrust reversers have failed and the plane can be stopped only with brakes (plus spoilers that pop out of the wings, typically, to destroy lift and make the brakes more effective). Pilots don’t even try to land on the first 1000′, since a wind variation or pilot error might result in landing a bit short. Thus if one is going to land and roll 5000′ one needs a 10,000′ runway to be legal. (See this posting about my LaGuardia landing for why this FAA rule is prudent.) For departure you need to be able to accelerate to about 180 mph, lose an engine, think for one second, hit the brakes, and stop without running off the runway (or a special overrun area beyond). Alternatively you must be able to accelerate to about 180 mph, lose an engine (i.e., half of your power), and continue the takeoff with that one engine, clearing whatever obstacles are beyond the runway.

What if you are willing to assume that you’ll make a reasonably competent landing and that the thrust reversers will function normally? Certainly a B777 could be landed in 5000′ of runway (less than one mile). See this article on how a Boeing 747 was landed at a ridiculously small airport in South Africa. The calculated landing roll, without reverse thrust, was 3000′ (the article says “landing distance” so this might actually be 1000′ of flying and then 2000′ of rolling). An Air Canada crew managed land a Boeing 767 at an abandoned airport that originally had a 6800′ runway (Wikipedia) despite a lack of engine power that limited their use of flight controls and therefore necessitated a higher-than-normal approach speed.

Could you take off again from a short runway? Sure. In this test flight, a journalist reports lifting off in a 777 about 3300′ down the runway. A Southwest Airlines B737 joined the Cessna crowd at an airport with a 3700′ runway and took off again without incident (story).

I don’t have any special knowledge about Malaysia 370, but it would definitely be possible to land such a plane at an out-of-the-way or decommissioned airport, refuel it, and take off again.

What could a person do with a stolen Boeing 777? The parts don’t have as much commercial value as one might think, due to the fact that operators in most countries need to comply with a lot of regulations regarding the serial numbers and provenance of all of the parts that are placed onto a certified aircraft, particularly one of “transport class.” Countries that the U.S. government doesn’t like, such as Iran, have trouble operating Boeing airplanes because we make it tough for them to get spare parts (see Wikipedia story on Iran Air).

Those are the answers that I’ve given to friends. I’m about as confused by the situation as anyone else, however. Certainly my personal hope is that the plane is parked under a tarp somewhere and the passengers will eventually return home.

Full post, including comments

The book Coolidge, which I recently reviewed (posting), relates that the former president was able to earn about $150,000 per year by writing a syndicated daily newspaper column. That’s $2.1 million in today’s money, according to the BLS.gov inflation calculator.

Due to his having been sued for child support, the public now knows that Peter Orszag, a former Obama Administration official, is earning about $4 million per year from Citigroup (Washington Post).

[Coolidge might have been able to spend more than Orszag, however. The top income tax rate in 1930 was 25 percent and that applied only to income over $100,000 ($1.4 million in today’s mini-dollars). So let’s assume that Coolidge kept about 80 percent of his income after taxes or $1.68 million in 2014 dollars. Orszag, on the other hand, under New York law will owe 17 percent of his pre-tax income to a recent ex-girlfriend, mentioned in the article as having given birth to a daughter. The mother is described as a “venture capitalist” but even if she were to earn $10 million per year that does not affect her entitlement to child support at the 17-percent rate. (New York courts can cap the amount of income on which the 17 percent is calculated, however.) Let’s assume that Orszag pays about 50 percent of his income in local, state, and federal taxes plus the standard 17 percent pre-tax child support in New York. Thus Orszag keeps 33 percent or $1.32 million. According to the Post, the child support plaintiff in D.C. seeks $264,000 per year in “direct” payments to herself plus, presumably, additional amounts to pay for the actual expenses of the two children that have given rise to the lawsuit. Politico.com says that the plaintiff seeks $300,000 per year (to supplement a $350,000 per year pre-tax income from McKinsey and $2 million in liquid assets). The Post says that the children attend Georgetown Day School, where tuition seems to be about $35,000 per year (are there any government officials whose children go to government-run schools?). This New York Post article implies that the children are with their father at least some of the time. Thus, in addition to paying for the two kids when they are at their mother’s house, Orszag also will pay for these two kids’ expenses when they are with him. At a minimum that would entail a bigger apartment so that they can have rooms. The USDA “cost of raising a child calculator” estimates that a high-income two-parent family in the Northeast will spend about $40,000 per year on two kids, excluding “child care and education”. Add that to the $70,000 in private school tuition and using the $300,000 per year child support number from Politico and the total is a $410,000 per year after-tax subtraction from income. The Post article says that the $400,000 trust fund established by Orszag for the children’s education has been depleted. So he’ll need to put away $50,000 per year for college (child support recipients are not expected to save any of the money that they receive). This New York Post article mentions that Orszag had at least one previous legal dispute with this plaintiff, from whom he was divorced 8 years ago. So Orszag may have ongoing legal fees averaging $200,000 per year. That leaves Orszag with $660,000 per year with which to support himself and his current family.]

Full post, including comments

I had the opportunity to test-fly a PC-12 NG. I was interested to see how this would compare to the “legacy” PC-12 that I flew back in 2006 (review of that plane). The new plane has a more powerful engine and is therefore a few knots faster. Friends who are pilot at PlaneSense, the largest U.S. operator of the PC-12, said “the extra speed might save you an hour per year.”

What does the new engine do to cabin noise, a traditional weakness of turboprops compared to jets? Here are some data from January 17, 2014 in N47NG, a 2010 PC-12 NG, serial number 1103, in a flight from KBED.

• idling on the ramp: 76 dBA center cabin
• taxi: 76 dBA center cabin
• takeoff: 85-90 dBA center cabin
• climb: 86-88 dBA center cabin
• level 6000′, 217 knots: 90 dBA pilot ear level; 87-88 dBA center cabin; 84-87 dBA rear of the cabin (but 89 dBA next to the cargo door)
• level 10,000′, 200 knots: 90-91 dBA pilot ear level; 85-87 dBA center cabin; 84-88 rear of the cabin
• level 15,000′, 200 knots: 89-90 dBA pilot ear level; 83-87 dBA center cabin; 83-86 rear of the cabin
• descent: 80-83 dBA center cabin
• pattern: 80 dBA center cabin

I didn’t record the numbers as carefully back in 2006 but it seems that these are roughly 4 dB louder than the older slightly slower airplane. In fact, the PC-12 NG has roughly the same measured interior noise level as a friend’s G36 piston-powered Bonanza and is louder than a Diamond Star DA40 (previous posting). From a pilot’s point of view, the 90 dBA in the front exceeds OSHA limits (85 dBA) for exposure at work without hearing protection (and so do most of the cabin readings). This is 9 dBA louder than an early 1980s Twin Commander turboprop that I measured (posting). It is also much louder than a King Air (previous posting), though no worse than a TBM 850 (previous posting). For reference, interior noise levels in light jets are usually below 80 dBA in the cockpit and below 82 dBA in the passenger cabin, closer to the engines.

How about the fancy Honeywell avionics in the front that are part of the NG experience? The PlaneSense pilots all have hundreds or thousands of hours of experience with this system but they prefer the legacy avionics, updated with the latest Garmin touch-screen GPSes.

Being an owner of a Honeywell glass flight deck is pretty expensive, with annual extended warranty coverage costing about $15,000 per year. In other words, every four years you pay Honeywell enough to have bought all of the stuff in a brand-new Garmin G1000 system. I’m not in love with the user interface philosophy of Garmin, but I think it would have saved everyone a lot of time and money if Pilatus had used a Garmin system, which nearly all pilots know how to use. Certainly if the Garmin systems are capable of supporting faster and more complex aircraft, such as the Embraer Phenom 300, they would be capable of performing in a PC-12. It might be simpler for a piston pilot to transition to a Phenom 100 or Cessna Mustang twin-engine turbojet because (1) the piston pilot already knows how to use a Garmin glass panel, and (2) the latest turbojets include FADEC for the engines.

If you need 10 seats and must visit airports with short runways, the PC-12 remains a strong candidate. But the high cabin noise level, apparently made worse in the NG model, means that passenger and pilot comfort will not be comparable to a jet. Everyone in the plane should be wearing some sort of hearing protection.

(A friend who traded in his Twin Commander turboprop on a Phenom 100 jet a few years ago said that “Now we usually have to stop for fuel when we go to Florida, which we didn’t have to do in the Commander, but the family arrives much more refreshed.”)

Related: measurements from a 2000 Series 9 PC-12/45.

Full post, including comments

A friend who is a wine expert operated a red wine blind tasting (not double-blind, however). All of the wines were decanted and served in anonymous bottles.

The top three results:

1. Little Penguin Shiraz 2012 (about $6 per bottle (link))
2. Col Solare 2007 blend ($60)
3. Villa Antinori Reserva Chianti 2010 ($29 per bottle)

With a score of 7, the Little Penguin scored nearly a full point (out of 10) higher than the $60 competitor. The rest of the wines were mostly in a cluster between 4.5 and 5.5. On the bottom end, the outliers with a Louis Jadot Beaujolais 2012 and an Oyster Bay 2011 Pinor Noir.

[It is unclear if Little Penguin Shiraz is the same from bottle to bottle or year to year. The company’s Web site does not mention any vineyards or winery. So it might just be that they buy surplus wine from the persistent worldwide glut (see my February 2010 posting about how the French wine inside a $10 bottle costs 46 cents).]

Full post, including comments

The great minds of the New York Times are wondering (editorial) why we don’t have streaming data from the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. (As previously noted here, none of the great minds of the New York Times have a technical background.) How much could it possibly cost to send back data at intervals?

It turns out that the retail cost of circuitry that will do the job is about $1000 (in the boutique quantities that the aviation industry buys; probably closer to $10 if added to every Honda Accord). I wrote about this a bit in my Heli-Expo notes:

Spidertracks is interesting because an FAA-approved GPS costs $5-15,000 and an FAA-approved Iridium phone installation is about $30,000. The Spidertracks box includes one of each for $1000 plus $1.90 per flight hour for Iridium fees to send back position reports.

For retrofitting a certified airliner the numbers above should probably be more like $500,000. I.e., the government regulations that the New York Times is fond of advocating add a factor of perhaps 500X to the cost of doing what they now want.

This is sort of the same situation as for the Asiana 777 that crashed in San Francisco. Recall that the ground-based instrument landing system radio beacons were inoperative that day so the four pilots decided to fly a visual approach, with the same results as five U.S. Air Force officers (three pilots; two flight engineers) flying a similarly sized C5 cargo plane back in 2006 (story). Equipment that enables a GPS-based precision autopilot approach costs about $500 in an experimental airplane (minimal regulation), about $10,000 in a crummy four-seater (onerous regulation), and perhaps $1 million in a Boeing 777 (crazy intense regulation). Because airlines don’t want to pay a 2000X markup for regulation they generally fly with whatever avionics came with the airplane.

[This is not to say that I am advocating deregulating or privatizing aircraft and avionics certification. Only pointing out that we have as a society made a choice that we would rather stick with risks that we understand, e.g., 20-50-year-old technology in airliners, than suffer from the risks of innovation, e.g., letting passengers use Kindles and iPads.]

Full post, including comments

A friend posted the following on Facebook today:

I have to purchase private health insurance for my family. It’s bad enough that I have to do this with after tax dollars unlike people who get it through their employer, but now I am forced to deal with the incompetence of our government as well. I had a very good plan, not the “sub-standard plans” Obama speaks of, because I already live in a state where health insurance is mandatory and those types of plans are not offered. But my Romneycare wasn’t good enough for Obamacare. I was told months ago that our family’s plan would be cancelled on March 31st. In fact they called me approximately 3 times a day for 3 months to remind me of this. And not because it wasn’t good enough, but because they needed to charge me about $150 more per month for the exact same plan. I would have to re-enroll for the privilege of paying more money. What choice do I have? NONE- it’s the law. I got the bill for my April premium and was ready to pay it, when [Massachusetts General Hospital] called to say that an appointment on Wednesday for my daughter [to see why she is waking up screaming at night] wouldn’t be covered because the people working for our government had cancelled my plan as of March 1st – not March 31st as they had told me on a daily basis. So, now I’m left with no insurance for the month of March, and when I called their answer was “hmm..I’ve never seen this before, but sadly there is nothing we can do.” I’ve tried multiple times to call another department of the Health Connector [Massachusetts version of healthcare.gov] and apply for a waiver to get coverage for March, but the line is always busy. So, thank you Mr. President and everyone in Congress who voted for this legislation. You’ve wasted my entire morning dealing with this and left me without coverage. Could you please be the ones to wake up with my five-month-old daughter 10 times a night until I can get an appointment when I have insurance?

[slightly edited by me]

I’m wondering if the explanation for all of this is that people routinely underestimate administration costs. I have done this in our helicopter business. I would price Groupons so that we would break even when customers showed up to take an introductory ground school and flying lesson. Then we would lose money because customers would call the front desk to reschedule, ask questions, etc. We could tell how much money we were losing because we had to pay the front desk workers.

With most government programs there is no mechanism for recording the hours wasted by citizens complying with laws and regulations. As far as government workers are concerned, the admin cost on the citizen side might be zero. So that makes it possible for bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. to be celebrating the success of a program while citizens in Massachusetts are experiencing a reduced quality of life.

[In the case of my friend, her quality of life is definitely reduced by the existence of health insurance. Her family of four is large enough that costs will be smoothed out to some extent. She and her husband have sufficient savings and extended family support to absorb even the expenses for a catastrophic illness or accident. So she would be much better off swiping her credit card every time she consumes medical services, the same way that she pays for groceries and restaurant meals. But she can’t do that because (a) she has already been forced to pay for health insurance (about $20,000 per year for a family of four), and (b) providers would charge her 2-10X as much if she were paying individually.]

 

Full post, including comments

… I recommend reading Little Failure: A Memoir (I’m halfway through).

A family vacation in which the decision to emigrate was made:

Over a bowl of tomato soup, a stout Siberian woman told my mother of the senseless beating her eighteen-year-old son had endured after his conscription by the Red Army, a beating that had cost him a kidney. The woman took out a photo of her boy. He resembled a moose of great stature crossbred with an equally colossal ox. My mother took one look at this fallen giant and then at her tiny, wheezing son, and soon enough we were on a plane bound for Queens.

Here’s the Soviet emigre engineer encountering an American college:

On his first visit to Oberlin my father stood on a giant vagina painted in the middle of the quad by the campus lesbian, gay, and bisexual organization, oblivious to the rising tide of hissing and camp around him, as he enumerated to me the differences between laser-jet and ink-jet printers, specifically the price points of the cartridges. If I’m not mistaken, he thought he was standing on a peach.

Soviet health care in the 1970s:

[the author as an infant is] revived, but the next day I start sneezing. My anxious mother (let us count the number of times “anxious” and “mother” appear in close proximity throughout the rest of this book) calls the local poly-clinic and demands a nurse. The Soviet economy is one-fourth the size of the American one, but doctors and nurses still make house calls. A beefy woman appears at our door. “My son is sneezing, what do I do?” my mother hyperventilates. “You should say, ‘Bless you,’ ” the nurse instructs.

Russian grandmothers:

Behind every great Russian child, there is a Russian grandmother who acts as chef de cuisine, bodyguard, personal shopper, and PR agent. You can see her in action in the quiet, leafy neighborhood of Rego Park, Queens, running after her thick-limbed grandson with a dish of buckwheat, fruit, or farmer’s cheese—“Sasha, come back, my treasure! I have plums for you!”

An immigrant trying to understand American TV:

The Brady Bunch: Why are Mr. and Mrs. Brady always so happy even though Mrs. Brady has clearly already had a razvod with her previous husband and now they are both raising children who are not theirs? Also, what is the origin of their white slave Alice? Three’s Company: What does it mean, “gay”? Why does everyone think the blond girl is so pretty, when it is clearly the brunette who is beautiful? Gilligan’s Island: Is it really possible that a country as powerful as the United States would not be able to locate two of its best citizens lost at sea, to wit, the millionaire and his wife? Also, Gilligan is comical and bumbling like an immigrant, but people seem to like him. Make notes for further study? Emulate? Planet of the Apes: If Charlton Heston is a Republican, are the monkeys Soviet?

Dreams in the new country:

There are three things I want to do…: go to Florida, where I understand that our nation’s best and brightest had built themselves a sandy, vice-filled paradise; have a girl tell me that she likes me in some way; and eat all my meals at McDonald’s.

More: read the book

Full post, including comments

I’m still bewildered by the news coverage of the situation in Crimea and our politicians speaking confidently about the situation over there. Now it seems that the Crimeans (about as many as live in Pittsburgh, Denver, or Baltimore) will vote on whether or not they wish to secede from Ukraine (nytimes). If they do vote to secede, does American have a principled reaction ready or will we decide whom to support based on expediency or something else?

Let’s review where we’ve stood on issues of secession…

• 1776: British subjects in 13 colonies decided to secede from the British Empire. We were for it.
• 1830s: A majority of people in Texas wanted to secede from Mexico. We were for it.
• 1940-present: People in Taiwan wanted to secede from China. We were for it but lately our support has wavered.
• 1861: Southerners decided to secede from the U.S. We were against it.
• 1974: Some people in Northern Cyprus wanted to secede from Cyprus. We are against it (official State Department page).
• 1990s: Albanians in Kosovo wanted to secede from Serbia. We were for it.
• 2010s: A majority of people in South Sudan wanted to secede from Sudan. We were for it.

Are we decided to be for or against these secessions based on a single high principle, based on competing principles, or based on expediency and self-interest?

Full post, including comments

I don’t know enough about Ukraine, Russia, or Crimea to comment intelligently on the current conflict. What I can say is that reading news coverage about Crimea has not been helpful for learning more. The Wikipedia article on Crimea, on the other hand, shows and explains a lot better why this territory of 2.5 million people (fewer than the Boston metro area) has become the subject of a dispute. Unlike news media coverage, Wikipedia explains that this territory was part of Russia until its 1954 transfer to Ukraine (then a Soviet Republic) and then in 1991 was “upgraded” to an “Autonomous Soviety Socialist Republic” shortly before the Soviet Union collapsed. Since the Soviet Union broke up there seems to have been a dispute regarding governance that was never fully resolved and that few in the West were aware of.

My only criticism of the Wikipedia article is that it says that Crimea is about 10,000 square miles in size but does not compare that to a U.S. state or a European country. It turns out that this is roughly the same area as Massachusetts or Vermont and about 15 percent smaller than Belgium.

Can anyone come up with an article from a mainstream newspaper that includes the above facts for context?

[And separately does this conflict show that we are over-investing in our military? Our president has asked Russia to withdraw her troops from Crimea but the Russians are not complying. For about ten years we have tried to get the Afghanis and Iraqis to do what we said and they did not comply. I suppose that it is always possible to argue that it could have been worse without the investment, e.g., “The Mexicans and Canadians would have invaded if we didn’t spend so much.” (see these charts from the Washington Post) But that reasoning would also support a military budget of 50 or even 80 percent of GDP (“you can never be too safe” and “would you really risk your freedom just so that you could buy a new Honda Accord or move your family from an apartment into a house?”). Wikipedia (my source for everything now!) says that there are about 2.2 million Americans in the military, either active duty or reserve. Compared to the other countries that actually isn’t too crazy huge (sortable table in Wikipedia), but it is crazy expensive and it is tough to think of a situation where we’d want to send 2.2 million Americans somewhere to fight a war.]

Full post, including comments

The most important thing that I learned about at Heli-Expo wasn’t on the show floor and I decided that it merited its own posting. I attended a two-hour seminar on autorotations. It seems that the stress on lowering the collective in the event of an engine failure is misplaced and that this emphasis starts in the FAA’s Rotorcraft Flying Handbook, i.e., the Bible as far as Private helicopter students are concerned.

Flying a helicopter may well be the most dangerous job in the U.S. (TIME magazine puts “pilots” in at third most dangerous but they are lumping in scheduled airline pilots, whose jobs are not hazardous at all, with helicopter pilots and Alaskan bush pilots) A real-world emergency in which an autorotation becomes necessary is not common but being prepared may mean the difference between life and death.

I decided to write an article on how to teach autorotations, incorporating the best ideas from the seminar.

Full post, including comments