The Hangar

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Federico

07:56

tomorrow morning we might have the first test that goes all the way down to a touchdown. fingers crossed.

1 hour later…

falstro

09:20

@Federico nice. by the by, I got my exploding kittens. It was sitting at the post office, and should've been returned to sender long ago. Got lucky.

4 hours later…

Jay Carr

13:03

Hey @casey, look a question that I bet you'd be good at answering! :)

Q: Who decide the way a plane must be handled?

Up to Friday I'd flown only with EasyJet and Alitalia. In the last weekend I took two Vueling flights and have felt a difference in the way of maneuvering in respect to EasyJet and Alitalia. Take off seemed more "brutal", and from a position slightly more at the beginning of the runways. After ...

If you're willing to look past the lack of understanding on the passengers part, there is an interesting question at the heart of it (well, to me anyway.)

5 hours later…

casey

18:27

@JayCarr someone else got to it first. I have a hard time with those kind of questions avoiding to go into a statistics explanation that their sample size of 1 or 2 or 3 cannot produce the generalizations they are aiming for

im my experience people with military fighter backgrounds tend to be the yank-and-bank type and the military heavy people and the civil people tend to be a bit gentler on the controls. All is out the window in bad conditions though when man-handling the airplane is necessary and dodging convective cells mean maneuvering a lot.

Jay Carr

19:17

@casey Hmm, so it all just comes down to the pilot then? I was under the impression that different carrier trained their pilots to do some things differently. Not a lot of things, but at least enough that you might be able to tell the difference if you knew what to look for.

casey

19:32

@JayCarr you'll find SOP is pretty consistent for the actual flying. (e.g. standard rate / 30 deg bank normally, no more than 45 if necessary, half rate above FL240)

one place you'll find differences is in taxing.

e.g. southwest will start spinning engine 2 as soon as engine 1 has reached "rollback" (where other carriers wait for the previous start to completely finish). SW also normally taxis at a speed that our chief pilots would tell us not to :)

other stuff, like autopilot use is largely subjective

our guidelines were simply "you can turn it on as low as acceleration height and must be off by 200 AGL on approach"

I tended to fly to at least 10k ft or higher and turned it off before localizer intercept

I also liked to turn off the flight director (and slave it to the other guy so it wouldn't pop back up) and fly a raw data approach at least once a trip, if not once a day if the weather would cooperate and be nasty.

the place I instructed at did ATP training in seminoles. If you didn't brief what "steep turns" meant, the fighter jet guys would try to put the seminole in knife edge flight and the civil guys would roll to 45 deg.

Jay Carr

20:00

@casey Huh, yeah that all makes a lot of sense. Terry once mentioned in a comment that different carriers would have their pilots take off in different ways. Particularly, he worked at one carrier where you rotated to optimum climb angle immediately, and another where you would rotate to 10º and then wait until lift off before rotating all the way to optimum climb. Are there more things like that?

casey

i'd image most of those type rules are designed to limit tail strikes

Jay Carr

Tis what I figured on that one. But they were the same type in this case, both 747-200.

He said the one with the 10º rule was his second carrier, so he basically just ignored them......... :)

casey

different people in different training departments -> different text

what happens online isn't always what it says in text...

Jay Carr

So some of that stuff just comes down to the captains discretion, right?

casey

ultimately the safe operation of the airplane is fully under the authority of the PIC

Jay Carr

20:05

I assume if someone reviews your actions later, though, and thinks you're making bad decisions you could be removed. Not during the flight but...later.

casey

but the FOM/GOM is an FAA approved document and you should treat it like you would 14 CFR

Jay Carr

casey

for the most part the FOM is an aggregation of the applicable parts of 14 CFR and whatever opspecs your carrier is authorized for

3 hours later…

Ethan

22:49

Hey have you guys heard of the nuclear powered engine concept by Boeing quite interesting

Jay Carr

23:16

@Ethan I's actually a pretty old idea, but maybe they can be more successful with newer tech: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_NB-36H

ratchet freak

23:34

> "This question is not a duplicate I did the research."

just because you say you did the research doesn't mean you did...

Ethan

@ratchetfreak I personally do not like people saying my question is duplicate because I really want the answer to the question and the question they said duplicate didn't have the answer for me so that's why I said it.-

But somebody did just recently delete that statement

ratchet freak

but when it comes in a badly researched question it just rubs me wrong

I mean I get that the shock body is kinda hard to find good keywords for if you don't know the name

but when you say research I expect at least a google search

when I type in "fuel wing" in google the first result is

Wet wing

A wet wing is an aerospace engineering technique where an aircraft's wing structure is sealed and used as a fuel tank. Wet wings are also called integral fuel tanks. By eliminating the need for fuel bladders, aircraft can weigh less and the wing root bending moment caused by the lift generated by the wings in flight is decreased. This offers further reduction in weight by allowing structural components to be designed lighter as the components do not need to support larger forces. Wet wings are common among most civilian designs, from large transport aircraft, such as airliners, to small general...