Plane & Pilot June 2021

A while ago, around 125,000 deaths ago, in fact, I asked whether the pandemic should make us reconsider aviation safety in light of the great death toll that COVID-19 has wreaked upon the world, and the United States, in particular. After an entire year under the specter of a global pandemic, the answer, I believe, is clearer than ever. Much of what we do in aviation is driven by safety concerns, to the point where we’re dealing with relatively small numbers—a few hundred fatalities a year. That’s not nothing, but it’s been hard for me lately to think of that as a huge number, a number that on its face is an unacceptably high price for us to pay for doing what pilots of small planes love to do. Are driven…

First Successful Aerial Refueling: 1921 Altitude Accomplished: 1,000 feet Gallons Transferred: 5 Transfer Method: Wingwalking, plane hopping Refueling Hoses Introduced: 1923 Nickname Of Flexible Hose System: “Probe-and-Drogue” Primarily Used By: U.S. Navy, Marines Hose Location On Tankers: Wingtips Speed Fuel Can Be Transferred: 420 gallons/minute Alternate Aerial Refueling System: “The Flying Boom” Primarily Used By: U.S. Air Force How It’s Different: Hose replaced by telescoping tube Tube Location On Tanker: Underside of tail Popular Boom Tanker: Airbus A330 MRTT (multi-role tanker transport) Length Of Boom When Retracted: 38 feet Fully Extended: 60 feet Speed Fuel Can Be Transferred: 1,200 gallons/minute Pounds Of Fuel Tanker Can Hold: 250,000 Single-Engine Aircraft Able To Be Refueled In One Flight: ~15 Able To Be Refueled At Once: 3 Maximum Altitude Of Operation: 35,000 feet Average Cruising Speed: 300-350 mph First Aircraft Equipped With Boom: Boeing B-29 Superfortress First Exclusive Jet Tanker: Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker Developed: 1965 KC-135s Still In…

BACKGROUND It’s a beautiful day—the sky is clear, wind is calm, and you’re ready to go flying! Donning that sweet leather jacket your spouse gave you for Christmas, the one with all the aviation patches you think make you look all “Top Gun,” you complete your preflight, give a couple winks to some admiring kids nearby, and climb onboard your rocket to the sky. Even though there are two perfectly good front seats, you nestle into the one on the left. Normally, you don’t think anything of it, but for whatever reason, today it hits you—why do you always fly from the left? Why not the right? Curious, you text your buddy across the pond to see if they happen to do the reverse in England—because they’re weird like that with…

RASH OF FATALITIES LEADS NTSB TO CLAMP DOWN ON PART 91 REVENUE FLIGHTS Parachute jumping flights, “doors off” helicopter tours, hot air balloon rides, some warbird rides and cost-sharing for other GA flights, among others, fall under a gray area of FAR Part 91, the section of regulations that govern non-commercial operations. Eight recent fatal accidents that killed 45 people and injured 12 have led to scrutiny of the rules surrounding such hybrid revenue passenger flights. In most cases, the operations took place with agreement from the FAA specifying particular levels of oversight, enforcing agreements similar to a Part 91 corporate flight department’s formal Safety Management System. The NTSB argued that the nature of the accidents shows the FAA was not executing enough of that oversight, and operators were not following the…

Compared to early screaming turbine engines (thanks to continuous improvement in design), airplane noise over the past 60 years or so has been reduced to a whisper of its former self. But a recently published FAA Neighborhood Environmental Survey, the first since 1992, reveals that a large majority of people who live near airports are “highly annoyed” by aircraft flying overhead. And while the survey focused on neighborhoods surrounding 20 large airports, the results show that public sentiment is largely against anything that flies. The survey included 10,000 respondents and was filtered by noise level. The level of animosity that people have had toward airplane noise is really nothing new. But the strangest takeaway is that quieter airplanes have not made airport-adjacent residents happier. They have had the opposite effect. Residents were…

In addition to being first through the sound barrier, Chuck Yeager was the originator of that low-key distinctive West Virginia drawl that generations of military pilots mimicked if they wanted to be guilty of having the “right stuff.” No matter how serious the emergency, pilots have taken his lead and sounded cool, calm and in control. But more than that, General Yeager had the gift of transmitting the most information in the fewest words. With his recent passing, we owe it to him to follow his lead to be excellent pilots and accurate communicators. Flash forward to today. Airline pilots and air traffic controllers handle some of the busiest airspace in the world, with considerable skill, brevity and poise. However, spend a little time monitoring the local airport frequencies, and you may…