Because I’m stirred up, I’ll post this as well.
Started by a smart kid who got a glider’s license at a young age, thanks to Airports.
He will change the world with this design, and suddenly there will be “airports” all over cities because of his ‘clean’ design.
In reality, it is just that his design enables efficient VTOL and no noise pollution that will make it such a success.
Engineering comes from schools and Experimentation comes from experience. Without having his own experience of flight, I’m not really sure Mr. Wiegand would ever have invented this incredible system.
When your grandkids are getting rides in the Lilium Jet and laughing about how ridiculously inefficient trains and cars are, remember your short-sighted comments about aviation and pollution and how roads and trains are somehow worthy of taxpayer euros but airports somehow are not.
It was Henry Ford’s innovation to enable the common man to buy cars. Why can’t the common man buy airplanes too someday?
With attitudes like I see here, there’s no chance for it to ever happen. Forget flying cars! Ha!
#enemies_made #rant_over
I can’t help pointing out that the Soviet Union had a quite positive view of general aviation
Being ex Czechoslovakia, 1957-69, it wasn’t quite like that. Yes, GA did exist, quite a lot in CZ, but only hand-picked communist party people had access to it, for obvious reasons. Where I lived, LKPM, the head of the uranium mines, Karel Bocek, had “his own” Morava 200. But even he must have been barred from using it because when he escaped in the 1970s, he did it inside a truck, to West Germany.
The USSR would have been at least as tight.
…. remember your short-sighted comments about aviation and pollution.
I have no “short sighted” ideas about aviation, and I fly airplanes myself. That does not necessarily mean I have to like all extremes, like the example what_next gave. I do think that we are repsonsible for the planet we live on, and while I enjoy flying (and driving fast cars) myself, I know where the priorities should be. Humans will only be able to have fun in the future – if we survive. I am not a follower of an extremist views but denying that we are working hard to destroy nature is not the solution.
(Flight is) …. “More efficient than almost any other mode of transport”
That one is simply wrong, sorry.
dylan_22 wrote:
That one is simply wrong, sorry
what are you basing your opinion on?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transportation
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2014/07/driving_vs_flying_which_is_more_harmful_to_the_environment.html
https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/09/evolving-climate-math-of-flying-vs-driving/
and for engineers http://www.lafn.org/~dave/trans/energy/rail_vs_airEE.html
BTW, there is a global shortage of pilots as well…
if there were more opportunities for individuals to get the basic PPL, it would be a lot easier for them to move up to the professional rank.
That’s such an old debate, but really there’s about as many theories as there are people trying to prove their point. Sure, if you take the fuel consumption per seat/mile of a full A350 or B787 the figure is pretty impressive (3 L per 100 km per seat, or similar). On the other hand a typical European car will burn only 1.9 liters/100 km/per seat with 4 people in it.
But, whatever, we were taling about extremes. And you can make a calculation yourself for a Bizjet with one passenger from Stuttgart to Zuerich. And there’s more to Jets and the Environment than fuel consumption. For one there’s a (convinciing and strong) theory that exhaust gases are more damagin to the atmosphere at high altitudes.
Let’s leave it at that.
PS: About the “global shortage for pilots”. One friend of mine, who was trained by the best flight schools in Europe wrote 900 applications to airlines worldwide before he found a job with Easyjet, after 5 years. And now he shares a small room with another pilot in Paris, guess why. Fact is: Theres many open pilot positions for Airbus or Boeing rated pilots with 1500 hours on Jets. But that’s a different story.
Edit: This is from the Yale study you presented:
… This new transportation reality also comes down to the fact, Sivak says, that cars increasingly have only the driver in them — no or few passengers. The result is that associated energy intensity and greenhouse gas emissions are very high, making air travel look like a comparatively sound alternative. ….Peter wrote:
The USSR would have been at least as tight.
As I understand it, others here could cite from first hand experience I’d imagine, ‘every man’s’ opportunity to fly light aircraft in the USSR was with DOSAAF, which was in reality analogous to U.K. Air Training Corps, i.e intended to screen for military pilots, but slightly hidden as a voluntary society that supported the military.
Yak 52s and the like were the DOSAAF aircraft, and most are now ‘wasting’ 16 US gallons an hour of 100 LL in private western ownership. It seems about half of the 50s and 52s made fly at my base 
It’s great
The Czechs had Zlins, a more Germanic device descended from Bückers, also exported in period to the west. I’d like one, but would understand if they don’t necessarily make you feel warm and fuzzy.
I’m sure happy normal individuals can in 2017 buy and fly any of the above for the price of a car ($50K buys a Yak 52) I enjoy being around their activity, sharing in their enjoyment of life, and I hope they similarly enjoy mine.
what_next wrote:
I know that I am of one of the rare breed of “luxury animals” who get paid for pursuing their hobby and who do somthing which, overall, is harmful for everyone and everything. Burning 1000 pounds of kerosene to fly one person from Stuttgart to Zürich (which is actually something we do all the time) and then another 1000 pounds to fly back empty is outright insane.
Well, i was not really talking of biz jets doing this at the consumption you quote. In comparison, me flying from ZRH to Egelsbach and back will consume some 80 liters of Avgas. Not sure if my car can make it to FRA and back with less. That is the General Aviation I am talking about.
what_next wrote:
But it would not make me sad if this kind of flying would just disappear. For the benefit of our children and grandchildren.
You’d need a new job for starters too. Maybe not a bad idea if you do something you find insane.
Silvaire wrote:
Would it be fair to say that your only interest in flying is to make a living doing something you disrespect, that owner-flown light aircraft are of no interest, and that your view of an ideal future is no private aviation at all?
Unfortunately there are people like that around, quite a few. It only is surprising when you find some of them who actually are pilots….
However, I don’t think a Soviet style aviation would be the answer because the last thing the soviets cared about was the environment. They knew darn well that allowing people to travel individually meant to grant them some freedom. And freedom was the total opposite of what that system wanted to grant it’s citizens.
I recall a few years back one of Europe’s foremost aviation mags did a guided trip to Taiwan and back. One of the conclusions the author of the report wrote was that there was a parallel between how private GA was developed in a country and the degree of freedom it’s people enjoyed. That was never more true than for the Soviet block where there was neither.
Jan_Olieslagers wrote:
I can’t help pointing out that the Soviet Union had a quite positive view of general aviation, even if it was quite different from other views perhaps more ego-centric. Since the demise of the Soviet Union and its state and sub-states, countless airstrips are decaying, countless An-2’s are rusting away, &c &c.
Well. The Soviet Block had no individual GA. None whatsoever. They had aeroclubs which worked with the military, Aeroflot and the Military (today’s Rossia Aviation) were one and the same and basically all airplanes were involved in this. There were NO privately owned airplanes whatsoever. On the other hand they did as you rightly say have a lot of light aviation including loads of AN2’s (if you count a 5.7 ton airplane thus) but those were mainly used either for the military or for agricultural purposes and actually to do airline services. I used to fly AN2’s in Bulgaria and that is exactly what it was. When I did my AN2 rating in 1992, I had to do it under their military aeroclub (something I only found out about when i received my type rating and found out that the signature on it was the chief of the airforce) and we could only do local flights at the time. Today, GA in Bulgaria is thriving and developing, there is a whole network of small airfields, airports and a very active light GA scene. And it makes a lot of sense too.
AF wrote:
Europe has really lost the plot.
I would not think that “Europe” has lost the plot as a whole seeing that we still do have quite a large GA scene and things on a regulatory level are improving rather than going the way they used to not a few years back.
It is however a fact that a lot of opposition to GA come from inside the industry itself, primarily from airline folk who think that GA is something which disturbs their operation. Which, in 99.9% of cases is the result of misinformation and often enough misantrophy on their part. In todays airline world, there is a lot of disgruntled and often outright destructive energy around as that industry has seen a destruction of their profession which is hardly present anywhere else. Consequently, there are a lot of very angry folks out there who will direct that anger at any target of opportunity. GA unfortunately serves as scapegoat for some of these folks, who are either deluded enough the really believe it damages them or who simply need somewhere to vent their justifyable spite. Preciously few realize that they are only part of the game which is played at a much higher level.
For myself, i’d have to say that airport managers should be people who are willing to make airports work and not bureaucrats who wish to impose their own ideas on others. The question whether GA has a place on any airport in this world is one of willpower not of necessity.
AF wrote:
Why can’t the common man buy airplanes too someday?
Actually, why can’t he? The small airplanes we are flying are affordable (as in used airplanes) to a huge number of people. The problem is the infrastrucure which he is either denied outright to use or the restrictions the infrastructure puts onto him. There is a shortage of hangar space, shortage of movement contingents and the crazy notion that airports need opening and closing hours, despite the fact that in other parts of the world, airports operate entirely without anyone there. Again, it’s castration of valuable infrastructure by people whose goal in life is to restrict others.
dylan_22 wrote:
On the other hand a typical European car will burn only 1.9 liters/100 km/per seat with 4 people in it.
Which one? I’ve yet to see a normal car which is also available in price to normal folks which burns less than 5-7 l/100km.
About the “global shortage for pilots”. One friend of mine, who was trained by the best flight schools in Europe wrote 900 applications to airlines worldwide before he found a job with Easyjet, after 5 years
Global pilot shortages is a fairy tale invented by flight training organisations trying to make money out of people’s dreams. These shortages do not exist to a large extent. Instead, there is a huge number of unemployed pilots who are in severe debt and have simply set their career dreams onto the wrong horse. The rules of economy play here most brutally, which is why the profession of airline pilot today has lost almost all the perks it used to have. If you have 900 folks who apply to a single job, any airline owner with his economical hat on will exploit that situation. And they do. No, claiming that there is a shortage is not much better than those internet scams where people get talked out of their money.
Trump has advocated privatising US airports along European lines. Details seem sketchy, but I wonder what that would mean for GA in the USA?
Initially (and by design) US ATC privatization would likely have little impact on non-turbine aircraft, but obviously in the end ATC fees on GA would be rolled in, at airports and possibly en route. I think you’d see a flight to uncontrolled airports, IFR operations would decrease and so on… but the horrific example of European ATC along those same lines has been instrumental in preventing it so far. The Canadian example seems to work better but the counter argument there (other than the obvious, ATC is intrinsically a government function) is that the Canadian ATC operation is miniscule by comparison and relatively easy to control indirectly.
BTW. some members of the US Congress have for years advocated privatizing US ATC, it’s a recurring theme and the executive branch is largely irrelevant. A basic issue in play is the constitutionally defined role of Federal Government, which promotes (but does not provide for) the public welfare… Notably in this case by facilitating interstate commerce as a taxpayer funded duty, and not by awarding monopolies a license to prey upon otherwise free people.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Which one? I’ve yet to see a normal car which is also available in price to normal folks which burns less than 5-7 l/100km.
I drive a Kia Cee’d. Definitely a “normal car” “available in price to normal folk” and it burns slightly less than 5 l/100 km on the highway. Not at German Autobahn speeds of course.
