What is it about technology that makes you think your widget will solve everything? This idea is one that I trust never happens, given the foreseeable consequences variations on road rage and simple bad driving that inevitably would ensue:
"Today I am talking about making aviation available to everyone as a daily means of transportation. Transportation changes society. When they dumped the horse and cart people took over two continents. 150 years ago steam turned America into a nation. Today 50 per cent of the world lives in urban areas thanks to the car. And in the last 50 years, the aviation industry has made one world thanks to the airplane."Hmmm...I think people live in urban areas thanks to public transportation and live in the country and burbs due to a car in, umm, one or two countries. But think about it. Do you really want to be jostling for a place in the on-ramp with that crazy neighbour down the block or the moronic teen in the boom-box rust bucket? Of course, this isn't really about doing this but getting investment to provide the tinkerers with decades of care free tinkering but can you see one actual advantage to this idea as a form of mass transit?
Comments
Chris Taylor - May 7, 2008 1:06 pm
Personal aircraft for the average joe is not going anywhere soon. The level of precision and discipline demanded of pilots is far beyond what is required for the average driver. The last time you got a ride in a friend's car (or a cab), did they:
- Have a driving-specific medical every year to maintain their licensing?
- Hold a model-specific type certification for the make/model of car that they were using?
- Give you a safety briefing on the location of the ELT and how to activate it in case they were incapacitated?
- Select an alternate destination in case they could not make it to the planned destination?
- Calculate the exact fuel load required for the journey, plus ramp handling time, plus enroute winds, plus fuel for alternate, plus holding/delays, plus mandatory reserve?
- Check current and future weather at departure, along the planned route, and at destination (and alternate) to ensure that the weather is within safety tolerances for the vehicle type and their own license rating?
- Check the exact fuel levels (in gallons or pounds) and take the control surfaces through a full range of motion before getting out into traffic?
- Perform an engine run-up in driveway at full RPM, for no less than a minute, to ensure it will perform at spec once you hit the highway?
- Maintain mandatory separation from other drivers at the regulated altitudes and lateral distances, reporting any infractions to the regulating agency? How about a medical every year?
- Communicate effectively with other drivers to maintain required separation and drive safely?
- Compute fuel burn and monitor weather updates enroute to determine whether a diversion to planned or unplanned alternates (for refueling or weather avoidance) is required?
- In winter, fully deiced the vehicle's control surfaces and windows prior to departure.
- In winter, monitor icing conditions on the vehicle while enroute, and terminate driving when icing buildup has seriously compromised vehicle safety.
If the average guy is too distracted to hold a phone conversation and drive safely at the same time, I can't see how they can expect them to fly. Pilots bark on the radio for the whole damn flight and still have to manage that whole flying thing, too. Can't see any way people will fly with the ease of driving unless you take 99% of the variables out of the hands of the human driver and let the plane fly itself.