11 ms·

What flying was like fifty years ago

113 points by hggh 3y ago

barrkel 3y ago
This kind of writing is written less to inform others than to trigger nostalgia in people with a similar background to the writer. It's laden with jargon and uncontextualized events that you need to be an insider with similar experiences to comprehend and appreciate. Overall it's a kind of written social proof of having been there, done that, for other people in the writer's ingroup. I do it myself when talking to an older software engineer for the first time, it has a purpose - but it's not super interesting to outsiders.
- ultrarunner 3y ago
  The headline of the website does say "by pilots, for pilots", so I'm not sure what else would be expected.
  - barrkel 3y ago
    It's not what the HN submission says, and the title doesn't show up on mobile (Firefox).
  - SilasX 3y ago
    Not submitting it to a more general audience that doesn’t have the prerequisite background, I’d say.
- lainga 3y ago
  The author did also work at Apple and SRI after graduating from MIT...
- coldtea 3y ago
  >but it's not super interesting to outsiders. It is however super interesting to curious outsiders. The average Joe can go doom-scroll somewhere else for that "amusement" dopamine rush. They didn't write it to amuse or teach the general population. Not everything posted has to.
- TheRealPomax 3y ago
  Interesting enough to get upvoted to the front page, though, and that's the HN way.
- hatthew 3y ago
  80% of HN links are not interesting to me, I'm just on here for the remaining 20%. I assume others are similar.
sojournerc 3y ago
Nice article. Recent crashes with pilots failing to understand modern avionics are in dark contrast to this level of understanding and craft in the airplane. E.g. https://youtu.be/pkH6kecIeBg https://youtu.be/pkH6kecIeBg
egberts1 3y ago
Flying? 50 years ago? Filet mignon, garlic-chive mashed potatoes, cheddar broccoli. Today, peanuts, if any. Crashes, lucky then, lucky now.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
  I bet if you paid the inflation adjusted fare you payed then, you could fly first class now and have that food plus a lot of other benefits such as increased safety, quieter flight, higher cabin pressures which will result in a more comfortable flight.
  - Scoundreller 3y ago
    And more flights per day and more routes (debatably a bad thing), so scheduling is a lot easier (for the passenger). Fuel burn per passenger mile has also gone steadily down. I wonder what’s gotten more efficient: the automobile or the aircraft. At least very few go out of their way to choose unnecessarily large aircraft for their job.
  - settsu 3y ago
    https://simpleflying.com/50-years-airfares/ https://simpleflying.com/50-years-airfares/
- beachy 3y ago
  Flying 50 years ago? Rows of people (much/most of the plane) smoking, with a flimsy curtain dividing them from the on-smoking section. Getting off with your clothes smelling like an ashtray.
  - jimt1234 3y ago
    And stewardesses (before they were called "flight attendants") would sometimes ask if it was okay to be seated in a smoking section. I agreed once when I was around 16 years old. Big mistake. I sat next to a dude that chain-smoked the entire flight from San Francisco to St. Louis.
johnhess 3y ago
What's wild is that a lot of that equipment (or barely newer versions) is still standard fare at flight schools. It's possible to get a fancy glass panel if you look. But you'll probably still fly a 172. It'd be nice if the regulations would make designing clean sheet airframes a viable business again.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
  A 172 might be a luxury. I flew mostly C152's during my flight training. The only times I got to fly a 172 was when my instructor had to fly morning traffic patrol and invited me to fly for him. Nicer airplane, though. Nowhere as cramped as a 152.
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    I remember walking up to a 152 for my first flight lesson, peering inside, and then laughing. You can just reach over and touch the other side of the plane without leaning inside, it's only as wide as your arm is long (well, I suppose it depends on your arms, but you get the idea).
- ultrarunner 3y ago
  Consider part 43, appendix A: It is legal for an owner to change a worn out tire. It's also legal to service wheel bearings. If, however, in the course of reassembly a new brake rotor or pads are installed instead of the old ones, illegal work has been performed. Part 43 also says nothing of actually inflating tires, so it's unclear— in the letter of the law— whether or not filling flat tires is approved. There's probably an advisory circular around somewhere that expounds on this, but it illustrates well the over regulated[0] nature of GA in America[1] where the results of regulation do not necessarily effect safety. We have 50 year old (on average) airframes flying around with engines designed in the 1940s (on leaded fuel, no less). It costs $40,000+ to rebuild these engines, due largely to laws about who can work on them and the monopolies on who can provide which engines. It's only like this because the FAA is, for whatever reason, unable to work to a real solution. [0] This is a specific complaint, not an argument for a general rollback [1] Yes, I am aware that aviation is even more regulated elsewhere-- and that costs are increased while participation is decreased in those places
seabass-labrax 3y ago
> And as I got to know the airplane, I could estimate the fuel burned on a trip within a gallon. Leaning was done by pulling out the mixture until the engine got rough. It was much later when the fancier planes got EGT gauges, and decades after that with EGT readouts for each cylinder Correctly leaning a piston engine to balance the power output, manifold pressure, EGT (Exhaust Gas Temperature), CHT (Cylinder Head Temperature), Peak Pressure Point and RPM is a fascinating subject. After a series of mysterious spontaneous combustion events in my home flight simulator, I found a 1999 article by John Deakin of AVweb, and was finally able to investigate and resolve the issue and take my Constellation up to FL220 - and back down again - with all four engines intact! https://www.avweb.com/features_old/pelicans-perch-18mixture-magic/ https://www.avweb.com/features_old/pelicans-perch-18mixture-... I've found no other more informative article on the topic! Particularly interesting to me is that the 'engine getting rough' behaviour that the C172 author describes is actually due to the variation of fuel flow to the different cylinders. When you lean the engine, the fuel flow isn't reduced identically to all the cylinders, causing the power output to become unbalanced. John Deakin points out that "virtually all factory big bore engines suffer from this uneven power distribution, which sets an artificial limit on just how lean we can run." Radial engines have superior fuel flow, because the fuel is driven by centrifugal force into each cylinder equally from a central pipe! The Lockheed Super Constellation in my flight simulator shows no roughness when leaned, because it has radial engines. However, it's still susceptible to detonation due to the higher combustion speed when leaned. That's what was causing the fires. Interestingly, one feature which my flight simulator doesn't replicate - but was present on the Super Constellations in real life - is a 'spark retard' control. That would allow power to be squeezed out of the engines even more efficiently by letting the engines run leaner without detonation, artificially delaying the spark to compensate for the more violent combustion.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  > Particularly interesting to me is that the 'engine getting rough' behaviour that the C172 author describes is actually due to the variation of fuel flow to the different cylinders. When you lean the engine, the fuel flow isn't reduced identically to all the cylinders, causing the power output to become unbalanced. You can get balanced injectors[1] to solve this, and then you can more aggressively lean before the onset of roughness. 1: https://www.avweb.com/ownership/gamijectors-for-lycomings/ https://www.avweb.com/ownership/gamijectors-for-lycomings/
psunavy03 3y ago
An interesting trip down memory lane for those of us who learned to fly later. But he went and ended it with a bunch of "old man yells at cloud" nonsense. Yes, airmanship needs to be cultivated in an era of glass cockpits, but that doesn't mean the glass isn't head-and-shoulders above the steam gauges. The only reason the steam gauges existed were because they were the best we could do at the time. Hopefully the next step is incorporating augmented reality.
- seabass-labrax 3y ago
  I read the final part as more nostalgic than scornful of modern equipment; after all, the author does acknowledge that each generation of radio equipment was more capable than the previous. It's not surprising though that after fifty years, one might feel a little out of one's depth with more modern equipment - reduced to being "child of the magenta", as the author puts it. I don't know; I just think one can afford to be more charitable towards anachronisms when someone's been at it for half a century :) Augmented reality on the flight deck is nearly there... The Airbus A220 (also known as the Bombardier C-Series) may optionally be purchased with heads-up-displays. Similarly, the Dash 8 Q400 can be retrofitted with a HUD. Curiously, HUDs are actually required for some instrument procedures in the USA.
  - psunavy03 3y ago
    HUDs are ancient history. They have been around for decades and JHMCS has been around on the military side for over a decade. I'm honestly surprised some level of HoloLens 2/Magic Leap 2-esque AR hasn't been demoed yet for the civilian side.
    - seabass-labrax 3y ago
      That would certainly be useful for enhancing situational awareness, particularly for TCAS. I can imagine a floating red circle around a conflicting flight with a line extending out in the direction of flight (which is rather difficult to judge by sight alone). Too much would be distracting, of course, but I can't see any reason why it couldn't be developed with as much care and testing as traditional avionics are.
ecliptik 3y ago
I know this article is more about pilots, but recently watched The Parallax View (1974)[1] and there's a scene where Warren Beatty goes to an airport, walks on the tarmac and boards a plane. He finds an empty seat, a flight attendant comes over and has him pay for the ticket, all while the other attendants are offering drink service before the flight takes off and everyone is smoking. I don't know how period accurate it is, and maybe it was embellished to make the plot smoother, but I couldn't help thinking how different air travel was 50 years ago in regards to being a passenger. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Parallax_View https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Parallax_View
- seabass-labrax 3y ago
  My father flew on commercial airliners somewhat frequently throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s in Europe, Africa and the Americas, and told me that travelling by air was just like catching a bus in South America. There's nothing I would like better than being able to get hold of a proper timetable for a given airport, but sadly this doesn't seem to be easy. Airlines book their slots months in advance, so its not as if they don't know when they'll be flying.
  - pc86 3y ago
    They book the flights out months in advance but are also constantly cancelling and adjusting things basically right up to the day of the flight.
    - dhosek 3y ago
      There are still regular schedules. Flight 1172 will have the same scheduled route and time one day after another. But with computers, the visibility into the schedule is both obscured (because they’ll show you only the flights with open seats) and less necessary (because they’ll show you only the flights with open seats). Crewing requirements mean that it’s important to have some stability in operating schedules. The stereotype of flight crews staying in a hotel at the far end of their flight is only the case for long-haul flights which comprise a minority of flights. Most crew will be on an out and back itinerary for their working days, sleeping in their own beds at the end of the day.
HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
> As a child of the magenta "Children of the magenta" should be required reading/listening for anyone interested in aviation. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magenta-automation-paradox-pt-1/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magen...
- mcapodici 3y ago
  Aside: Magenta the color is interesting - the color code is #ff00ff. When I used to use the BBC Micro you had 8 colors by combination of red, blue, green on and off. Magenta is red and blue on, green off. So the color is a result of lack of memory for more colors. Probably the same reason for planes.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - satiated_grue 3y ago
    Magenta (#ff00ff) used to be called fuchsia. And nobody, unless they are named Fuchs, knows how to spell "fuchsia".
    - HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
      I started this particular subthread, and I actually do know how to spell fuchsia. In college once I made a reference to "my red notebook over there" and the entire room (all women except for me) erupted in "that's not red; that's fuchsia" with one lagging voice adding, "or hot pink." So yeah, I can spell it, if only because I had never heard of that color before then and I looked it up.
      - seabass-labrax 3y ago
        The funny thing is that real Fuchsias display such a diversity of colours as to make naming the colour rather pointless. It is not substantially more sensible than calling a colour 'rose'. I'll think I will stick to the hex codes ;)
ben7799 3y ago
I took lessons in the early 90s, didn't finish, then took lessons again in the early 2000s and again quit. The second time I took lessons at Hanscom field. In both cases things had not really progressed much at all beyond his experience 50 years ago. I learned the slide rules and the paper plotting and all that stuff just like him. I did have an electronic flight computer that was like a handheld calculator, but learning it all by hand was required. It is not hard to understand at all for anyone who was headed towards engineering. The radios were super primitive and didn't even have electronic displays, they had rotating dials inside the radio that just spun to the number. By the time I took lessons at Hanscom it was a Big Airport (TM) and it kind of stunk. The quaint taxiway names were not in use. I'd sit there and wait 20 minutes in line to take off behind traffic and pay for the whole thing. If I somehow got the bug to go back and do it again and actually finish I would want to go to a smaller airport. But I'd probably end up back at Hanscom field cause at this point I live like a mile away and it would actually be convenient, even if I did have to sit there and hemorrhage money sitting in line to take off. I did not really get the old man yelling at clouds vibe from him about glass cockpits. More like he finds the complication challenging.
bergie 3y ago
Apart from some minor electronics improvements (like easier radios), that all sounds remarkably similar to my experience learning to fly twenty years ago. Still all paper charts, compass, time, VORs. Was definitely rewarding to get the navigational calculations right. Planes were the same too! Having learned sailing in the GPS-and-chartplotter era, I sort of miss that. Time to get buy the HO tables for the sextant, I suppose…
- lsh123 3y ago
  I also got my license around that time with eb6, paper charts, VORs, NDB approaches, … and I don’t miss it a bit. Nostalgia - yes. But not missing it. I like to fly direct, I like to get LPV approach to 200 feet at an airport that would never ever ever would had had an ILS installed, I like traffic and weather on ADSB, I like my ForeFlight, and list goes on. The new technology helps to make flying safer. Yes, you need to know how to use all of this. And yes, it’s complicated. But the benefits are great too.
  - bergie 3y ago
    Sure, just like I’m really happy having for instance AIS for collision avoidance on the boat. I never got to fly with all the modern automations, though. Fuel prices shot up drastically around the time I got my license, and so I let it expire after a couple of years. There's a good quote in that “Children of Magenta” article: “We appear to be locked into a cycle in which automation begets the erosion of skills or the lack of skills in the first place and this then begets more automation.” Though this comment from that 2015 article aged like milk: “Airbus planes, by the way, are no more or less safe than their main rival, Boeing.”
gxs 3y ago
A reminder to all that 50 years ago was 1974 and not 1954.
- dhosek 3y ago
  Every so often I like to play the mirror game. Pick some arbitrary date in the past (my birthday, release of Star Wars, etc.), then see what I get when I take the time between now and then and go that distance back from that date. In the case of my father who’s turning 92 this year, the mirror game takes me all the way back to 1840.
  - schoen 3y ago
    Compare https://flowingdata.com/2020/01/03/timelines-to-make-you-feel-old/ https://flowingdata.com/2020/01/03/timelines-to-make-you-fee... (with a Wait But Why article and two xkcd links).
ginkgotree 3y ago
I started flying in 1999, and I have to say, this article more closely resembles my flying then than my flying now. Dual VORs, one with ILS, no LORAN, obv no GPS, and all pitot/static vacuum gauges. Not CHT, I think it had an EGT, no fuel flow or digital engine monitor. I remember when I went from a C152 to a C172 and finally a 200RG Arrow, one of the biggest learning curves was folding/unfolding your maps faster to keep up and keep a clean sterile cockpit. Its hard to state how much aviation has progressed in the last two decades.
jcgrillo 3y ago
> I never flew to Vermont or Maine, the last two states I now need to have visited all 50 This is too bad, VT has some great airports. I used to enjoy flying from B01 (Granville, NY) up to B06 (Basin Harbor, VT) for lunch. They had a nice restaurant right off the runway. Then I'd head over to KLEB or KRUT, fuel up, and then back to B01. This was in a 1949 Piper Clipper ca. 2004, handheld radio, VFR. Wasn't much different than described in the article, but I never spent much time in controlled airspace except for however many hours was required in training (mostly at KLEB IIRC).

113 points by hggh 3y ago

This kind of writing is written less to inform others than to trigger nostalgia in people with a similar background to the writer. It's laden with jargon and uncontextualized events that you need to be an insider with similar experiences to comprehend and appreciate. Overall it's a kind of written social proof of having been there, done that, for other people in the writer's ingroup. I do it myself when talking to an older software engineer for the first time, it has a purpose - but it's not super interesting to outsiders.

ultrarunner 3y ago
The headline of the website does say "by pilots, for pilots", so I'm not sure what else would be expected.
- barrkel 3y ago
  It's not what the HN submission says, and the title doesn't show up on mobile (Firefox).
- SilasX 3y ago
  Not submitting it to a more general audience that doesn’t have the prerequisite background, I’d say.
lainga 3y ago
The author did also work at Apple and SRI after graduating from MIT...
coldtea 3y ago
>but it's not super interesting to outsiders. It is however super interesting to curious outsiders. The average Joe can go doom-scroll somewhere else for that "amusement" dopamine rush. They didn't write it to amuse or teach the general population. Not everything posted has to.
TheRealPomax 3y ago
Interesting enough to get upvoted to the front page, though, and that's the HN way.
hatthew 3y ago
80% of HN links are not interesting to me, I'm just on here for the remaining 20%. I assume others are similar.

sojournerc 3y ago

Nice article. Recent crashes with pilots failing to understand modern avionics are in dark contrast to this level of understanding and craft in the airplane. E.g. https://youtu.be/pkH6kecIeBg https://youtu.be/pkH6kecIeBg

egberts1 3y ago

Flying? 50 years ago? Filet mignon, garlic-chive mashed potatoes, cheddar broccoli. Today, peanuts, if any. Crashes, lucky then, lucky now.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
I bet if you paid the inflation adjusted fare you payed then, you could fly first class now and have that food plus a lot of other benefits such as increased safety, quieter flight, higher cabin pressures which will result in a more comfortable flight.
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  And more flights per day and more routes (debatably a bad thing), so scheduling is a lot easier (for the passenger). Fuel burn per passenger mile has also gone steadily down. I wonder what’s gotten more efficient: the automobile or the aircraft. At least very few go out of their way to choose unnecessarily large aircraft for their job.
- settsu 3y ago
  https://simpleflying.com/50-years-airfares/ https://simpleflying.com/50-years-airfares/
beachy 3y ago
Flying 50 years ago? Rows of people (much/most of the plane) smoking, with a flimsy curtain dividing them from the on-smoking section. Getting off with your clothes smelling like an ashtray.
- jimt1234 3y ago
  And stewardesses (before they were called "flight attendants") would sometimes ask if it was okay to be seated in a smoking section. I agreed once when I was around 16 years old. Big mistake. I sat next to a dude that chain-smoked the entire flight from San Francisco to St. Louis.

johnhess 3y ago

What's wild is that a lot of that equipment (or barely newer versions) is still standard fare at flight schools. It's possible to get a fancy glass panel if you look. But you'll probably still fly a 172. It'd be nice if the regulations would make designing clean sheet airframes a viable business again.

HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
A 172 might be a luxury. I flew mostly C152's during my flight training. The only times I got to fly a 172 was when my instructor had to fly morning traffic patrol and invited me to fly for him. Nicer airplane, though. Nowhere as cramped as a 152.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  I remember walking up to a 152 for my first flight lesson, peering inside, and then laughing. You can just reach over and touch the other side of the plane without leaning inside, it's only as wide as your arm is long (well, I suppose it depends on your arms, but you get the idea).
ultrarunner 3y ago
Consider part 43, appendix A: It is legal for an owner to change a worn out tire. It's also legal to service wheel bearings. If, however, in the course of reassembly a new brake rotor or pads are installed instead of the old ones, illegal work has been performed. Part 43 also says nothing of actually inflating tires, so it's unclear— in the letter of the law— whether or not filling flat tires is approved. There's probably an advisory circular around somewhere that expounds on this, but it illustrates well the over regulated[0] nature of GA in America[1] where the results of regulation do not necessarily effect safety. We have 50 year old (on average) airframes flying around with engines designed in the 1940s (on leaded fuel, no less). It costs $40,000+ to rebuild these engines, due largely to laws about who can work on them and the monopolies on who can provide which engines. It's only like this because the FAA is, for whatever reason, unable to work to a real solution. [0] This is a specific complaint, not an argument for a general rollback [1] Yes, I am aware that aviation is even more regulated elsewhere-- and that costs are increased while participation is decreased in those places

seabass-labrax 3y ago

> And as I got to know the airplane, I could estimate the fuel burned on a trip within a gallon. Leaning was done by pulling out the mixture until the engine got rough. It was much later when the fancier planes got EGT gauges, and decades after that with EGT readouts for each cylinder Correctly leaning a piston engine to balance the power output, manifold pressure, EGT (Exhaust Gas Temperature), CHT (Cylinder Head Temperature), Peak Pressure Point and RPM is a fascinating subject. After a series of mysterious spontaneous combustion events in my home flight simulator, I found a 1999 article by John Deakin of AVweb, and was finally able to investigate and resolve the issue and take my Constellation up to FL220 - and back down again - with all four engines intact! https://www.avweb.com/features_old/pelicans-perch-18mixture-magic/ https://www.avweb.com/features_old/pelicans-perch-18mixture-... I've found no other more informative article on the topic! Particularly interesting to me is that the 'engine getting rough' behaviour that the C172 author describes is actually due to the variation of fuel flow to the different cylinders. When you lean the engine, the fuel flow isn't reduced identically to all the cylinders, causing the power output to become unbalanced. John Deakin points out that "virtually all factory big bore engines suffer from this uneven power distribution, which sets an artificial limit on just how lean we can run." Radial engines have superior fuel flow, because the fuel is driven by centrifugal force into each cylinder equally from a central pipe! The Lockheed Super Constellation in my flight simulator shows no roughness when leaned, because it has radial engines. However, it's still susceptible to detonation due to the higher combustion speed when leaned. That's what was causing the fires. Interestingly, one feature which my flight simulator doesn't replicate - but was present on the Super Constellations in real life - is a 'spark retard' control. That would allow power to be squeezed out of the engines even more efficiently by letting the engines run leaner without detonation, artificially delaying the spark to compensate for the more violent combustion.

ryandrake 3y ago
> Particularly interesting to me is that the 'engine getting rough' behaviour that the C172 author describes is actually due to the variation of fuel flow to the different cylinders. When you lean the engine, the fuel flow isn't reduced identically to all the cylinders, causing the power output to become unbalanced. You can get balanced injectors[1] to solve this, and then you can more aggressively lean before the onset of roughness. 1: https://www.avweb.com/ownership/gamijectors-for-lycomings/ https://www.avweb.com/ownership/gamijectors-for-lycomings/

psunavy03 3y ago

An interesting trip down memory lane for those of us who learned to fly later. But he went and ended it with a bunch of "old man yells at cloud" nonsense. Yes, airmanship needs to be cultivated in an era of glass cockpits, but that doesn't mean the glass isn't head-and-shoulders above the steam gauges. The only reason the steam gauges existed were because they were the best we could do at the time. Hopefully the next step is incorporating augmented reality.

seabass-labrax 3y ago
I read the final part as more nostalgic than scornful of modern equipment; after all, the author does acknowledge that each generation of radio equipment was more capable than the previous. It's not surprising though that after fifty years, one might feel a little out of one's depth with more modern equipment - reduced to being "child of the magenta", as the author puts it. I don't know; I just think one can afford to be more charitable towards anachronisms when someone's been at it for half a century :) Augmented reality on the flight deck is nearly there... The Airbus A220 (also known as the Bombardier C-Series) may optionally be purchased with heads-up-displays. Similarly, the Dash 8 Q400 can be retrofitted with a HUD. Curiously, HUDs are actually required for some instrument procedures in the USA.
- psunavy03 3y ago
  HUDs are ancient history. They have been around for decades and JHMCS has been around on the military side for over a decade. I'm honestly surprised some level of HoloLens 2/Magic Leap 2-esque AR hasn't been demoed yet for the civilian side.
  - seabass-labrax 3y ago
    That would certainly be useful for enhancing situational awareness, particularly for TCAS. I can imagine a floating red circle around a conflicting flight with a line extending out in the direction of flight (which is rather difficult to judge by sight alone). Too much would be distracting, of course, but I can't see any reason why it couldn't be developed with as much care and testing as traditional avionics are.

ecliptik 3y ago

I know this article is more about pilots, but recently watched The Parallax View (1974)[1] and there's a scene where Warren Beatty goes to an airport, walks on the tarmac and boards a plane. He finds an empty seat, a flight attendant comes over and has him pay for the ticket, all while the other attendants are offering drink service before the flight takes off and everyone is smoking. I don't know how period accurate it is, and maybe it was embellished to make the plot smoother, but I couldn't help thinking how different air travel was 50 years ago in regards to being a passenger. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Parallax_View https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Parallax_View

seabass-labrax 3y ago
My father flew on commercial airliners somewhat frequently throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s in Europe, Africa and the Americas, and told me that travelling by air was just like catching a bus in South America. There's nothing I would like better than being able to get hold of a proper timetable for a given airport, but sadly this doesn't seem to be easy. Airlines book their slots months in advance, so its not as if they don't know when they'll be flying.
- pc86 3y ago
  They book the flights out months in advance but are also constantly cancelling and adjusting things basically right up to the day of the flight.
  - dhosek 3y ago
    There are still regular schedules. Flight 1172 will have the same scheduled route and time one day after another. But with computers, the visibility into the schedule is both obscured (because they’ll show you only the flights with open seats) and less necessary (because they’ll show you only the flights with open seats). Crewing requirements mean that it’s important to have some stability in operating schedules. The stereotype of flight crews staying in a hotel at the far end of their flight is only the case for long-haul flights which comprise a minority of flights. Most crew will be on an out and back itinerary for their working days, sleeping in their own beds at the end of the day.

HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago

> As a child of the magenta "Children of the magenta" should be required reading/listening for anyone interested in aviation. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magenta-automation-paradox-pt-1/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magen...

mcapodici 3y ago
Aside: Magenta the color is interesting - the color code is #ff00ff. When I used to use the BBC Micro you had 8 colors by combination of red, blue, green on and off. Magenta is red and blue on, green off. So the color is a result of lack of memory for more colors. Probably the same reason for planes.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- satiated_grue 3y ago
  Magenta (#ff00ff) used to be called fuchsia. And nobody, unless they are named Fuchs, knows how to spell "fuchsia".
  - HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
    I started this particular subthread, and I actually do know how to spell fuchsia. In college once I made a reference to "my red notebook over there" and the entire room (all women except for me) erupted in "that's not red; that's fuchsia" with one lagging voice adding, "or hot pink." So yeah, I can spell it, if only because I had never heard of that color before then and I looked it up.
    - seabass-labrax 3y ago
      The funny thing is that real Fuchsias display such a diversity of colours as to make naming the colour rather pointless. It is not substantially more sensible than calling a colour 'rose'. I'll think I will stick to the hex codes ;)

ben7799 3y ago

I took lessons in the early 90s, didn't finish, then took lessons again in the early 2000s and again quit. The second time I took lessons at Hanscom field. In both cases things had not really progressed much at all beyond his experience 50 years ago. I learned the slide rules and the paper plotting and all that stuff just like him. I did have an electronic flight computer that was like a handheld calculator, but learning it all by hand was required. It is not hard to understand at all for anyone who was headed towards engineering. The radios were super primitive and didn't even have electronic displays, they had rotating dials inside the radio that just spun to the number. By the time I took lessons at Hanscom it was a Big Airport (TM) and it kind of stunk. The quaint taxiway names were not in use. I'd sit there and wait 20 minutes in line to take off behind traffic and pay for the whole thing. If I somehow got the bug to go back and do it again and actually finish I would want to go to a smaller airport. But I'd probably end up back at Hanscom field cause at this point I live like a mile away and it would actually be convenient, even if I did have to sit there and hemorrhage money sitting in line to take off. I did not really get the old man yelling at clouds vibe from him about glass cockpits. More like he finds the complication challenging.

bergie 3y ago

Apart from some minor electronics improvements (like easier radios), that all sounds remarkably similar to my experience learning to fly twenty years ago. Still all paper charts, compass, time, VORs. Was definitely rewarding to get the navigational calculations right. Planes were the same too! Having learned sailing in the GPS-and-chartplotter era, I sort of miss that. Time to get buy the HO tables for the sextant, I suppose…

lsh123 3y ago
I also got my license around that time with eb6, paper charts, VORs, NDB approaches, … and I don’t miss it a bit. Nostalgia - yes. But not missing it. I like to fly direct, I like to get LPV approach to 200 feet at an airport that would never ever ever would had had an ILS installed, I like traffic and weather on ADSB, I like my ForeFlight, and list goes on. The new technology helps to make flying safer. Yes, you need to know how to use all of this. And yes, it’s complicated. But the benefits are great too.
- bergie 3y ago
  Sure, just like I’m really happy having for instance AIS for collision avoidance on the boat. I never got to fly with all the modern automations, though. Fuel prices shot up drastically around the time I got my license, and so I let it expire after a couple of years. There's a good quote in that “Children of Magenta” article: “We appear to be locked into a cycle in which automation begets the erosion of skills or the lack of skills in the first place and this then begets more automation.” Though this comment from that 2015 article aged like milk: “Airbus planes, by the way, are no more or less safe than their main rival, Boeing.”

gxs 3y ago

A reminder to all that 50 years ago was 1974 and not 1954.

dhosek 3y ago
Every so often I like to play the mirror game. Pick some arbitrary date in the past (my birthday, release of Star Wars, etc.), then see what I get when I take the time between now and then and go that distance back from that date. In the case of my father who’s turning 92 this year, the mirror game takes me all the way back to 1840.
- schoen 3y ago
  Compare https://flowingdata.com/2020/01/03/timelines-to-make-you-feel-old/ https://flowingdata.com/2020/01/03/timelines-to-make-you-fee... (with a Wait But Why article and two xkcd links).

ginkgotree 3y ago

I started flying in 1999, and I have to say, this article more closely resembles my flying then than my flying now. Dual VORs, one with ILS, no LORAN, obv no GPS, and all pitot/static vacuum gauges. Not CHT, I think it had an EGT, no fuel flow or digital engine monitor. I remember when I went from a C152 to a C172 and finally a 200RG Arrow, one of the biggest learning curves was folding/unfolding your maps faster to keep up and keep a clean sterile cockpit. Its hard to state how much aviation has progressed in the last two decades.

jcgrillo 3y ago

> I never flew to Vermont or Maine, the last two states I now need to have visited all 50 This is too bad, VT has some great airports. I used to enjoy flying from B01 (Granville, NY) up to B06 (Basin Harbor, VT) for lunch. They had a nice restaurant right off the runway. Then I'd head over to KLEB or KRUT, fuel up, and then back to B01. This was in a 1949 Piper Clipper ca. 2004, handheld radio, VFR. Wasn't much different than described in the article, but I never spent much time in controlled airspace except for however many hours was required in training (mostly at KLEB IIRC).