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  • 40 passengers, 1 pilot

    You have to take these concept aircraft with a healthy eye-roll, but I found it interesting that the concept here was a flying bus, hence a single pilot 'bus driver'. What do the regs say about that?

    Most eVTOL companies are thinking at air taxi scale, offering just 2-5 seats. Lilium is a notable exception, putting forth a whopping 7-seat "air minibus" design and prioritizing longer trips. But there are very few companies thinking at the kind of scale Kelekona's talking about.

  • #2
    Or 4 (ok, 4-6) trips on Cape Air with pistons mixture throttle prop cowl flaps and no autopilot.
    Les règles de l'aviation de base découragent de longues périodes de dur tirer vers le haut.

    Comment


    • #3
      Ridiculous design. 40K pounds of thrust in these "large fans" but still very small compared to what a helicopter rotor for that weight would be. Yo can accelerate a lot of air a bit or a little air a lot. Accelerating a little air a lot not only is much less efficient, but it also hard to manage in a VTOL aircraft. You already saw the damage that Ospreys tend to cause, that will be a breeze compared to this hurricane. And then you are carrying the motors, batteries and electrical system capable of providing 40K pounds of thrust but use only a fraction of that when flying horizontally. And by the way, when flying horizontally, what is the aspect ratio of that wing? Yes, that's what I thought, supper inefficient again. And it is going to fly at 300 MPH?

      This is more fantasy than Santa.

      --- Judge what is said by the merits of what is said, not by the credentials of who said it. ---
      --- Defend what you say with arguments, not by imposing your credentials ---

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      • #4
        Originally posted by Gabriel View Post
        And by the way, when flying horizontally, what is the aspect ratio of that wing? Yes, that's what I thought, supper inefficient again. And it is going to fly at 300 MPH?
        Would you like some lift with that drag? I can imagine this thing snap rolling in high speed turbulence.

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        • #5
          You all remember back in the 60's, the airlines went to Boeing/Douglas and said can you produce a two pilot aircraft? That would save us money, no Flight Engineer.

          Well I've always felt that we will see a one pilot aircraft in the near future. As it is most everything except taxiing and takeoff and some landings are done by electronics anyway. In an emergency the #1 flight attendant could be trained to make a coupled landing or on freighters you could have some guy on the ground behind his computer who could take control.

          Only time will tell.

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          • #6
            though i'm not especially good at it yet, i pilot a DJI Mavic Mini. clearly the software is far better than i will ever be in all likelihood. i'm not advocating a company like DJI produce people carrying drones, but the technology is so insanely good and keeps getting better. and yeah, the mavic will fly itself back to a homepoint and land by itself.

            yeah, technology fails sometimes, but it just may be that humans fail more often.

            there's also the undeniable fact that advanced fighters are designed to be unstable and uncontrollable without the computer, or so i've read. so we already rely on tech to control uncontrollable aircraft.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Evan View Post
              You have to take these concept aircraft with a healthy eye-roll, but I found it interesting that the concept here was a flying bus, hence a single pilot 'bus driver'. What do the regs say about that?

              https://newatlas.com/aircraft/keleko...ing-evtol-bus/
              The only problem with one pilot is what if he gets incapacitated then no one can fly the plane

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              • #8
                Originally posted by Nick L View Post

                The only problem with one pilot is what if he gets incapacitated then no one can fly the plane
                Bus.

                There are systems now that can autoland if a general aviation solo pilot becomes incapacitated. But systems rely on sensors which must have plenty of redundancy. The trouble is, these sensors are exposed to a common environment. If something in the environment damages or disabled one sensor, it will probably do so for all of them. Any reliable autoland system must have multiple means of determining flight parameters if every sensor of one means fails. An example of this is using AoA sensor data and engine RPM data to approximate airspeed when all airspeed data sensors fail. GBAS and advancements in AI using synthetic vision and infrared has the potential to make autoland systems virtually failproof, but the supporting infrastructure and adoption are further off than some of these aircraft concepts would like it to be.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by kent olsen View Post
                  You all remember back in the 60's, the airlines went to Boeing/Douglas and said can you produce a two pilot aircraft? That would save us money, no Flight Engineer.

                  Well I've always felt that we will see a one pilot aircraft in the near future. As it is most everything except taxiing and takeoff and some landings are done by electronics anyway. In an emergency the #1 flight attendant could be trained to make a coupled landing or on freighters you could have some guy on the ground behind his computer who could take control.

                  Only time will tell.
                  Time will tell YES unequivocally. The question is not if, but when. First one pilot. Then no pilot. Eventually, not even a backup pilot on the ground.
                  Planes have already completed experimental gate-to-gate fully autonomous flights.

                  --- Judge what is said by the merits of what is said, not by the credentials of who said it. ---
                  --- Defend what you say with arguments, not by imposing your credentials ---

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Gabriel View Post
                    This is more fantasy than Santa.
                    Even more than trying to make the word rhubarb sound sexy.

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                    • #11
                      Originally posted by ATLcrew View Post

                      Even more than trying to make the word rhubarb sound sexy.
                      Hot strawberry rhubarb pie, with vanilla ice cream...

                      You're welcome.
                      Les règles de l'aviation de base découragent de longues périodes de dur tirer vers le haut.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Well like I say it gets closer and closer.

                        Now Cathay Pacific wants it's long haul Airbus 350 cargo and then pax trips to be crewed with only 2 crew members. That means on the long legs only one crew member will be in the cockpit while the other is taking their nap. If any of you have done those long cruise legs it does make a little sense. Especially over the water where all you do is make a position report every hour or so.
                        But as I've said it's one of the little steps towards single pilot ops. Aw the old days of two pilots and a flight engineer.

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                        • #13
                          Imagine when they allow no pilot on board operation. This is going to be really crazy

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                          • #14
                            Originally posted by kent olsen View Post
                            Aw the old days of two pilots and a flight engineer and a navigator and a radio operator.
                            Fixed.

                            --- Judge what is said by the merits of what is said, not by the credentials of who said it. ---
                            --- Defend what you say with arguments, not by imposing your credentials ---

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by kent olsen View Post
                              Aw the old days of two pilots and a flight engineer and a navigator with a periscope and a sextant and a radio operator with a telegraph key.
                              Securely fixed.

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