Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km • Hacker News Board

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#271

Post by TylerE » Sat, Jul 25, 2020, 5:22 AM UTC

manquer wrote: post #264

TylerE wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they wouldn't. You're underestimating the age of the fleet. The average GA aircraft is 50 years old, and that is likely to increase in the near-medium term as production of GA aircraft is practically zero. Source: https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/20... . (Cirrus, mentioned above, produces about 300 aircraft a year - compare to the 100,000+ Ceessnas on GA fields, almost all of which are ove…

1980 is 40 years ago now . In another 10 years half the fleet would have changed .. still better than we are now . You could also speed it up by making costlier to run older ones over time . Keeps the industry more active too..

You're assuming production is constant - it isn't. It vastly dropped off in the early 80s due to increasing liability costs, and has never recovered.

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#272

Post by cheerlessbog » Sat, Jul 25, 2020, 5:22 AM UTC

dreamcompiler wrote: post #205

lisper wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private pilot here. Yes, aviation innovates slowly, but it's not nearly as bad as you make it sound. Cirrus aircraft have been a game changer, as has the Garmin G1000 avionics. I can fly just about any instrument approach entirely on autopilot. The only thing I have to touch is the throttle and the flaps. I get real-time traffic information via ADS-B, real-time weather via Nexrad. I do my flight planning in five minu…

Lots of innovation has happened in aircraft electronics. The powerplant? Not so much. Most light aircraft engine designs are four or more decades old, and the only ones cheap enough for a moderately-priced aircraft have carburetors. I don't think you can even buy a car these days with a carburetor, but with airplanes they're still standard, even though fuel injection makes a lot more sense in an airplane than in a ca…

How do carburetors work when inverting the plane?

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#273

Post by voska » Sat, Jul 25, 2020, 5:30 AM UTC

If you think building apartments in SF is hard, you should try getting a heliport approved! Their plan for SF based routes will be near impossible.

It took UCSF 5 years to get their helipad. They had to spend tens of thousands of dollars on noise studies.... for exclusively emergency flights

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#274

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Jul 25, 2020, 5:32 AM UTC

danaliv wrote: post #246

jessriedel wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That regulations are motivated by avoiding deaths does not mean that they are effective at that, or even if they are effective that they are worth the costs. Regulations that specify specific safety equipment, rather than specifying target error rates or bonds/liability, are the worst because they get enacted and then stay on the books for decades unchanged.

They aren’t motivated by it. They’re a result of it. Practically every rule or standard in the book can be traced to a crash. Mode C veil? Aeromexico 498, 82 dead. Radio comms standardization? Tenerife, 583 dead. CRM: United 173, 10 dead. Altitude requirements while being vectored to an approach (91.175(i)): TWA 514, 92 dead. I could go on. The answer to “why can’t we just” in aviation is “because people died.” The F…

It sounds like you're trying to disagree with the comment you replied to but none of those facts disagree with what they said.

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#275

Post by petre » Sat, Jul 25, 2020, 5:34 AM UTC

bfuclusion wrote: post #219

pdelbarba wrote: post #11

This isn't going to be certified and allowed for part 135 operations inside at least a decade. Boeing can't keep their jets from crashing due to simple trim control software, what makes anyone think the FAA is going to go along with these flights over densely populated areas? This feels a lot like when everyone was scrambling to start helicopter taxi services which promptly crashed and burned... Helicopters were a ma…

It depends on society's tolerance for death honestly. You're not going to be VTOLing a 737s worth of people so you're probably talking about the number of fatalities in a mid size SUV. People would care a lot less if the routes didn't take them over dense urban areas and the chance of one coming down on their head is super low.

It really depends on what it falls on or smashes into and if the VTOL has experienced lithium battery fire or not. If you use it to move between cities it could probably work just fine.

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#276

Post by 29083011397778 » Sat, Jul 25, 2020, 5:41 AM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #195

looping__lui wrote: post #40

I love innovation and stuff. Radical ideas. But the aviation market is one of the most heavily regulated - bureaucracy beyond comprehension. Did you ever wonder why Piper or Cessna airplanes look EXACTLY what they did 50 years ago? And why the engines used in these planes (e.g., Lycoming) are referred to as “Lycosaurus”!? If you go for a sightseeing flight with a local aeroclub - you will find the pilot spending 30mi…

> how does anybody imagine that a novel aerial vehicle like this actually IS CERTIFIED within a lifetime? All of the aircraft in existence have been certified in what is (for a very old person) one lifetime. I think we’ll be fine. Their schedule seems to have 5 years for development, and 5 more for certification. That seems reasonable.

> Their schedule seems to have 5 years for development, and 5 more for certification.

>That seems reasonable

That sounds laughable. Garmin, an established, well-funded, and well-connected company, spent multiple decades to certify one system with the FAA.

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#277

Post by looping__lui » Sat, Jul 25, 2020, 6:06 AM UTC

theptip wrote: post #187

looping__lui wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of analysis are you looking for? How much these features are worth is subjective and the general aviation market is super small and not exactly growing. Don’t get me wrong: everybody I know loves his SR20/22. My comment was not dismissive of the innovation by Cirrus (which I think is great). It’s about the costs getting it into the market and having it certified. Imagine you buy a car for 50k USD. Now, you…

> How much these features are worth is subjective Perhaps we're talking at cross purposes here; when talking about ROI, the numerator and denominator are usually both in dollars. If I'm pitching Lilium to some VCs, I'd model out the cost of researching, developing, and building the fleet ("I"), and the revenue I hope to generate in a given timeframe ("R"). After adjusting for the risk of failure, if that ROI is highe…

If you are in the aviation industry and building planes - you compete with other means of transportation; e.g., cars, trains, Ubers etc. It is a competitive market with relatively clear revenue expectations per person-miles (e.g., private helicopters potentially being an upper boundary). So, the R side of the equation is pretty known... Helicopter taxi services didn’t quite take off and I guess it is because they were kind a above the per person-mile price people were willing to pay...

You will also be in one of the most heavily regulated industries and push for a product that doesn’t even yet know its regulations...

You can’t compare it to the military because - well, they don’t have to certify the same way civil aviation has to. They can essentially say “it’s good enough”. And they aren’t bearing the “R” side risk of the investment for being expose a free market. Military contractors aren’t “paid by the price of a bomb dropped” in a competitive market.

The R is limited and known. We know helicopter taxi services don’t work. The I is a complete unknown and potentially magnitudes higher than expected. Why would I invest in this market that has historically had a bad track record for innovation?

E.g., you want an airbag in your car and better infotainment? Price for the car goes up from 50k to 250k. In the aviation industry, a Tesla would probably be closer to 500k-750k given all the innovation it has (and would need aviation certification) compared to a 50k “regular car”.

If you think this would not “make you think twice” - ok.

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#278

Post by looping__lui » Sat, Jul 25, 2020, 6:10 AM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #169

looping__lui wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the R side pops up when they optimistically tell you that your 20 min commute is going to cost 70 USD... SpaceX is exactly the WORST example in this context: they just went ahead without all the bureaucratic overhead you find at NASA; they weren’t exactly transporting people at the beginning but cargo... And they had a pretty clear market with fat margins; those margins were fat due to the (unnecessary) overhea…

That's a $250 flight which is mostly labour turned into a $70 flight without the labour. That's a marginal cost thing. It goes in a different part of the book. I'm not saying this is doable but those numbers show nothing.

?

Pilots essentially work for free... It has become “almost industry standards” that young pilots PAY to fly. If I threw a wild guess at 30k USD salaries for these kind of “pilot jobs” with 1000h of flying per year, that puts labor costs to 30-50 USD/h. Maintenance and gas will by far outweigh that.

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#279

Post by divbzero » Sat, Jul 25, 2020, 6:51 AM UTC

tmh79 wrote: post #113

ordinaryradical wrote: post #5

This to me is a true moonshot and venture-worthy idea. Some of these concepts may be technically or economically infeasible—it's a major risk—but the pay-off for human wellbeing is phenomenal. I wish we celebrated more companies like these, but it seems like most of them are met with (well-earned) skepticism rather than genuine curiosity. The world of atoms is harder than software, but it's awaiting disruptions like…

I dunno man, im getting kind of jaded as I get older. "True moonshot" to me seems more like cheap clean water for everyone, or a real way to sequester carbon, not a way for rich folks to get to their country cottages faster.

… or an effective vaccine within a year.

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#280

Post by _ph_ » Sat, Jul 25, 2020, 6:56 AM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #271

manquer wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1980 is 40 years ago now . In another 10 years half the fleet would have changed .. still better than we are now . You could also speed it up by making costlier to run older ones over time . Keeps the industry more active too..

You're assuming production is constant - it isn't. It vastly dropped off in the early 80s due to increasing liability costs, and has never recovered.

Well, one factor would be, that people are happy to fly old planes. If due to the environment regulations, you would have to buy more new planes, demand and consequently production would increase.