101–110 of 251 posts
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.
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 instruct…
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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 f…
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 in…
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:
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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-control…
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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.
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.
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).
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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.
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.
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 compo…
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…