BIG HEADLINE posted:

It *can*, but the problem is that it can't be either/or. Once a KC-135 is configured for probe and drogue, probe-only planes have to find another tanker until it's reconfigured. Only a handful of -135s have wingtip hose units so they can literally swing both ways.

Wingnut Ninja posted:

2props1dome

Wingnut Ninja posted:

It's also allegedly miserable to tank off of and very easy to damage because there's very little play in that tiny length of hose.

StandardVC10 posted:

It's not actually refueling from two hoses at once, is it?

vessbot posted:

Plugged in formation roll

Finger Prince posted:

https://i.imgur.com/CV31Ket.gifv

Ola posted:

BIG HEADLINE posted:

https://onemileatatime.com/el-al-last-747-flight/

HookedOnChthonics posted:

HookedOnChthonics posted:

HookedOnChthonics posted:

HookedOnChthonics posted:

Trabisnikof posted:

Here's the video of that:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE4P5ysqKXE

Hobo on Fire posted:

That video starts with it refueling a B-52 - a plane often referred to as the "Big Ugly Fat Fucker."

...And the 747 makes it look like a skinny little baby.

Sagebrush posted:

What's the little one in the back? An F-111?

e: yep. looks like this picture is from the same photoshoot

drgitlin posted:

In the first picture the second plane is an SR-71.

quote:

Fuel system details and flight characteristics

All the E.I to E.IV Eindeckers used a gravity fuel tank which had to be constantly filled by hand-pumping from the main fuel tank, which starting with the Fokker E.II was mounted behind the pilot; this task had to be performed up to eight times an hour.

Nebakenezzer posted:

On the Fokker Eindecker:

Platystemon posted:

That would be significantly less insane in a plane that wasn’t a fighter.

drunkill posted:

Upto a quarter of 787 oxygen masks may not deploy in a cabin depressurisation event says a former boeing quality control engineer.

:boeing:

https://twitter.com/BBCBusiness/status/1191868950201720834?s=19

Finger Prince posted:

Not masks, bottles. So he identified the squib for the pax O2 bottles wasn't firing, arranged a test, found that there were an alarming number of bad bottles. Boeing says "we'll take it from here", and they do, removing all faulty bottles from production and sorting out their supplier. So... The system works I guess? What's this guy sour about?

simplefish posted:

Plus Boeing saying "we've addressed the problem in an appropriate way and now everything's fine" has shown that they have, to put it kindly, poor judgement on what constitutes "appropriate" and "fine"

Finger Prince posted:

Not masks, bottles. So he identified the squib for the pax O2 bottles wasn't firing, arranged a test, found that there were an alarming number of bad bottles. Boeing says "we'll take it from here", and they do, removing all faulty bottles from production and sorting out their supplier. So... The system works I guess? What's this guy sour about?

Finger Prince posted:

Not masks, bottles. So he identified the squib for the pax O2 bottles wasn't firing, arranged a test, found that there were an alarming number of bad bottles. Boeing says "we'll take it from here", and they do, removing all faulty bottles from production and sorting out their supplier. So... The system works I guess? What's this guy sour about?

Finger Prince posted:

Knee jerk hysteria. The loving ashes aren't even cold and everyone is convinced beyond a doubt that there's something deeply, inherently flawed with a plane that has been in continuous production for like half a century. Yeah sure, everyone is just going to renege on billions of dollars of contracts and sign new billions of dollars of new contracts with Airbus because a 320 didn't crash most recently.

Finger Prince posted:

If it is MCAS related, then the FAA probably steps in and grounds them until they fix it, which will probably be a hasty mandatory AD to deactivate it. Boeing probably eats the manhour cost of implementing it plus lost revenue while they're grounded. That'll be costly, but not the end of the world. Remember that the 787 was grounded for 4 months while they redesigned the battery enclosure, and it's doing fine. That was a much bigger undertaking than a software update and maybe some wiring changes.
It's ironic that the whole reason this MCAS system was created was due to customers who were worried about all the Airbuses stalling and falling out of the sky and wanting an automated anti stall system for an airplane that historically didn't have that problem.

Platystemon posted:

Remember when the 787 battery fires kept happening and then Boeing fixed it?

Sometimes I wonder if it’s really fixed.

joat mon posted:

But the third plane, in the back(ground), is an F-111.

quote:

Inside the High-Stakes Race to Build the World’s First Flying Taxi

Lilium, a German start-up, illustrates the potential and the risks of creating a new generation of electric aircraft for urban transportation.

By Adam Satariano

Nov. 5, 2019

MUNICH — Inside an airplane hangar about 20 miles from central Munich, Daniel Wiegand lifted the door of a prototype that he said would become one of the world’s first flying taxis. He’s coy about how much it cost to build — “several million,” he says — but promises that within five years a fleet of them could provide a 10-minute trip from Manhattan to Kennedy International Airport for $70.

A lot is riding on his plane. Mr. Wiegand, 34, is the chief executive and a founder of Lilium, one of the most promising and secretive start-ups in the global race to build an all-electric aircraft that will — regulators and public opinion willing — move passengers above cities.

“This is the perfect means of transportation, something that can take off and land everywhere,” Mr. Wiegand (pronounced VEE-gand) said. “It’s very fast, very efficient and low noise.”

Expectations that aerial taxis will be a reality in the coming years are quickly building. Companies like Lilium are testing their machines, laying the groundwork for wider production and starting discussions to gain support from government officials.

At least 20 companies are in the market, which Morgan Stanley estimates will top $850 billion by 2040. Larry Page, the billionaire co-founder of Google, is financially backing Kitty Hawk, a company run by the first engineers on Google’s autonomous car. Boeing and Airbus have projects underway. Automakers including Daimler, Toyota and Porsche are investing in the sector. Uber is developing an air taxi service, with plans to open by 2023 in Los Angeles, Dallas and Melbourne, Australia.

Yet saying your plane could fly over Manhattan in five years doesn’t mean it will. Building durable jets at a reasonable cost still presents engineering and technical challenges. And a long process awaits with regulators, including the Federal Aviation Administration, that will need to weigh safety concerns.

“The question is can we build a platform that is broadly accessible to everybody and is not just a rich person’s toy, and can we build it so quiet that people on the ground aren’t annoyed by it?” said Sebastian Thrun, the chief executive of Kitty Hawk.

Lilium, which has raised more than $100 million from investors, illustrates the high-wire act of the companies trying to live up to the hype.

The black-and-white aircraft shown by Mr. Wiegand is less “Jetsons”-like flying car than a glider, with a carbon fiber body and 36-foot wingspan. Like several other flying taxis in development, it is battery powered, providing a range of 186 miles and a top speed of nearly 190 miles per hour. Inside the oval cabin will eventually be plush seats and other comforts for four passengers and a pilot.

The engines are packed inside four wings with flaps that rotate so the aircraft can take off and land vertically like a helicopter. But it is quieter than a helicopter, so it could potentially land in some areas traditionally off limits to aircraft.

The costs of the jets may eventually fall to several hundred thousand dollars each, Mr. Wiegand said. And with lower maintenance costs because there are fewer mechanical components, rides should cost roughly the same as an Uber or a taxi ride. Insurance companies have told him that they will provide him with risk coverage.

If successful, he said, the jets will transform urban transportation, with customers using Lilium’s app to book a flight from a network of small airports that connect suburbs, college towns and other hubs to cities. Imagine, he said, jets connecting areas across California or southern Germany that don’t have high-speed train lines.

Eric Allison, the head of Uber’s flying taxi effort, said the technological hurdles were less complex than for autonomous vehicles; there is less traffic in the air, and the first generations of the aircraft will have pilots.

Still, Mr. Allison said, no company has received government certification to fly commercially.

“That’s a tall order,” he said.

Then there are the many other obstacles to overcome. Battery technology limits how far the vehicles can fly. Building a prototype is different from starting mass production. And the price of the machines, and operating them, needs to be low enough to make rides affordable for customers.

Regulators could slow development by limiting the number of takeoffs and landings on desirable routes. There aren’t enough air traffic controllers now to handle a big influx of flights across cities. One fatal accident and demand could dry up.

“This is going to be a test of staying power — an ability to lose money, an ability to ride out a failure,” said Adam Jonas, a lead author of the Morgan Stanley report on the industry. “Many will fail.”

Lilium is years away from making money and, with more than 300 employees and an expensive research and development budget, is burning through cash. Mr. Wiegand said it would have to raise more money.

“It’s not enough to just build a nice prototype and fly it around,” he said. “What we really need to be successful is building a company that’s capable of designing, certifying, manufacturing and operating these aircraft in very large scale.”

Lilium has said little publicly beyond releasing a few engineering specifications and declaring that it will be carrying customers by 2025. It is seeking certification for its jet from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency and plans to do the same with the F.A.A. The hypothetical New York route is more of a long-term goal.

After accepting an invitation to be the first journalists to see its jet, reporters from The New York Times arrived at Lilium’s headquarters last month only to face restrictions on what they could photograph or see. Executives say the company has completed hundreds of test flights and simulations, but none were held during the visit because of rain and wind. (Last month, Lilium released a slickly produced video showing its jet completing a test flight.)

American rivals say they know little about Lilium beyond its hiring of experienced aviation executives from Rolls-Royce, Airbus and Raytheon to oversee areas such as manufacturing, quality control and procurement. Even Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor and a trained physicist, is intrigued. At an aviation conference last year, she stopped by Lilium’s booth and peppered Mr. Wiegand with questions about the battery, flight range and engines.

Mr. Wiegand said secrecy was necessary to keep rivals from learning too much. Unlike other jets that look similar to the small commercial drones that can be bought in a store, Lilium’s plane has packed 36 smaller engines in its rotating wings that act as thrusters for takeoffs, landings, and subtle movements forward and back. Encasing the engines in the wings reduces friction and noise.

“Nobody has one with the performance we have,” Mr. Wiegand said.

He came up with the idea for Lilium during college, working out the engineering specifications while many of his friends were out drinking. He founded the company with three others in 2015, borrowing money and persuading suppliers to provide some free parts to begin building a small prototype.

After proving it worked, they raised money from investors including Niklas Zennström, a co-founder of Skype who now runs Atomico, a venture capital firm in London. In 2017, the Chinese internet giant Tencent led an investment of $90 million.

Nobody has flown inside Lilium’s jet. Test flights are done remotely from the ground. But Mr. Wiegand, who was flying gliders at age 14, promises to be one of the first.

“I was flying long before I was allowed to drive a car,” he said.
Correction: Nov. 5, 2019

An earlier version of this article misstated the potential size of the aerial taxi market according to an estimate by Morgan Stanley. It is more than $850 billion by 2040, not more than $850 million.