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A lot of the expenses in flying arise out of regulatory requirements. Want to carry passengers? Pilot needs a license that take several hundred hours minimum to
by rmk 6y ago
A lot of the expenses in flying arise out of regulatory requirements. Want to carry passengers? Pilot needs a license that take several hundred hours minimum to obtain. Want to use a part in an airplane? Getting it through the FAA certificating process will inflate its cost by several multiples. Want to operate an aircraft? You need to get it inspected every $fixnum number of hours of operation by a mechanic who in turn has to do everything the 'certified' way and is himself certified by the FAA.
It's these costs, not fuel costs, that account for a big percentage of the cost of flying. There's no meaningful way to reduce the cost of flying without reducing them. Perhaps electrics will incur much lower costs in maintenance, reducing costs somehow.
- TylerE 6y agoWell, don't discount fuel. I had the oppurtunity to spend an hour in a T-6 trainer a number of years ago. This was the primary trainer used by Air Force in WW2. Big radial engine. At full throttle (which we were mostly at, as we were doing acrobatics), that eats through fuel at about 40 gallons/hr. That's $200/hr just in gas, for a plane that carriers 2 people and isn't really all that powerful.
- yovagoyu 6y agoGas is a huge deal in large passenger planes where instead of miles per gallon, they actually measure efficiency in gallons per mile. The 747 for example eats about 1 gallon per second (~3600 gallons per hour) according to this source: https://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/modern/question192.htm https://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/modern/qu...
- jeltz 6y agoWe measure fuel efficiency for cars in "liters per 10 km" in my country.
- danielfoster 6y agoThis is absolutely true, hence why the Cessna is so cheap to operate. Once the engine and power system are certified everything else is good to go.
- fulafel 6y agoThe tax free/subsidized fuel era is likely to end fairly soon (unless we're going to fail badly at climate change mitigation measures).
- nemetroid 6y agoFuel typically accounts for 20-30% of airline operating expenses. For 2019, it accounted for 23.7% [1]. 1: https://www.iata.org/contentassets/ebdba50e57194019930d72722413edd4/fact-sheet-fuel.pdf https://www.iata.org/contentassets/ebdba50e57194019930d72722...