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

lilium.com

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

#301

Post by p_l »

danaliv wrote: post #248
stickfigure wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Each one is almost always a direct response to a particular incident that killed people ...in 1970. Not saying that all aviation regulations are bad, but the fact that carburetors are still used in general aviation is pretty damning.

Nothing damning about it. It works. I know seven people who have experienced engine failures in general aviation airplanes. Not one had anything to do with the carburetor.

Carburetor icing is pretty common cause of accidents, sometimes deadly.

However, that is often compounded with "the plane was made in 1960s"

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

#302

Post by the_duke »

kraig911 wrote: post #266

I work in aviation. Maintenance FAA regulation tracking. Aside from all the great points about safety some things to note A lot of people here seem to forget that for the miles and hours in flight versus the costs of AC/upkeep are VERY different from that of a car. You spend hours and hours in a car you buy. Most small AC have a TTAF of 300 hours or less. And they are YEARS old. Literally nothing is wrong with a carb…

Electric motors should be a lot easier to maintain.

The Lilium jets also have a lot of small engines, allowing for multiple failures in flight.

A lot of commenters are also missing the fact that Lilium plans to use pilots initially, until regulations allow for autonomous operations. (it's not mentioned in the article)

I'm sure there will be plenty of problems, but it will be interesting to see if the idea is viable.

I think one of the biggest deal-breakers will actually be noise. Those things are loud.

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

#303

Post by wffurr »

legitster wrote: post #41

> With a range of up to 300km (186 miles), we’ll be able to focus on connecting entire regions with high-speed transport, rather than trying to persuade you that we’re quicker than a crosstown journey on an underground train or bike. As an air-taxi skeptic, I have to say I am refreshed to see a startup actually spend more than five minutes figuring out the market fitness problem. Focusing on bypassing geographic barr…

Public transit in urban cores is a much harder problem. The politics of it from funding to allocation of road space are seen as a zero sum game among the participants with a well funded automotive lobby sabotaging the process.

By contrast, getting approval to build a small footprint vertiport and use some unused or underutilized air rights seems easy.

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

#304

Post by protomyth »

praveen9920 wrote: post #258
protomyth wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In limited situations that is happening now: https://www.garmin.com/en-US/autonomi/ Autoland has achieved FAA certification. It’s now available on select G3000® flight deck-equipped aircraft. And it’s coming to more soon.

With a pilot behind it. Driver/Pilot less is not approved anywhere in US

That is the emergency 'the pilot is dead' system. It's for a passenger to hit a button when the pilot is incapacitated.

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

#305

Post by redis_mlc »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #274
danaliv wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, the writer who said "because of" is more correct than "motivated by."

The US FARs are really a sequence of reactions to dead passengers, which is what "written in blood" means.

That's why the NTSB always seems to be one step ahead of the FAA in demanding action - the NTSB investigated an accident with dead people, found a cause, and requested the FAA do something about it.

Source: commercially-rated airplane pilot.

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

#306

Post by searchableguy »

renewiltord wrote: post #282
looping__lui wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

? 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.

Helicopter pilots in the Bay Area get paid $30k/year? Okay, I don't know that to not be the case but it sounds hard to believe.

OP might be talking about europe:

https://www.dw.com/en/being-a-pilot-isnt-what-it-used-to-be/...

https://dutchpilotgirl.com/pilot-salary/

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

#307

Post by dreamcompiler »

drewm1980 wrote: post #269
dreamcompiler wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wow, hearing that rich people are still allowed to dump lead into the atmosphere above our heads just ruined my morning. What things of non-entertainment value would we loose if we just banned leaded fuel overnight? Are crop dusters burning lead while spraying pesticides over our food crops?

The amount of lead pollution produced by GA is a tiny fraction of the amount that used to be produced by cars, but still I think it's time for it to go away.

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

#308

Post by dreamcompiler »

NikkiA wrote: post #299
tjohns wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to be rich to fly. You can buy a older used aircraft for the cost of a nice car. Sometimes cheaper. (Note: Not the Cirrus they're talking about upthread.) They're working on replacing leaded fuel. The challenge is mostly regulatory, since they won't certify any of the replacements until they're sure it's 100% safe. It's still a work in progress. As for what you'd lose: Search and rescue, medical transp…

Search and rescue is almost soley helicopter traffic, and very rarely requires leaded fuel (a turbine doesn't need leaded, it can run on it, but it'll run just fine on unleaded too). The number of places still using non-turbine helicopters for anything other than training and very light sightseeing is very small, probably close to 0% worldwide. Same is true of Medical Transport except possibly for Australia where lig…

Search and rescue in the USA is mostly done by the Civil Air Patrol, which almost solely uses fixed-wing aircraft.

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

#309

Post by GekkePrutser »

nradov wrote: post #179
gibolt wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VTOL and several other major capability differences really should change the certification process. Current certifications a designed around certain engineering constraints. Nearly all existing planes operate with the same basic parts, thanks to the fuel. This dictates the possible drivetrains. Reduced complexity can lead to drastic reconsideration. While I don't expect change to be super fast, regulation tends to mo…

There is already a certification process for helicopters and autogyros, so VTOL capability alone is no reason for a different certification process. Helicopters require a 20 minute fuel reserve in VFR conditions and 30 minutes in IFR conditions. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.151

Yes but these are automated, so they could be programmed to stay within X minutes of backup landing sites at all times, and altitudes to reach them easily.

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

#310

Post by GekkePrutser »

TylerE wrote: post #110
kaybe wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's going on with the Sanford-Lorton connection?

That's the autotrain. Carries passengers AND the car. T https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_Train

Sounds similar to the Eurotunnel between France and England. Very cool to be driving through a train!
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