My dad was a career U.S. Air Force fighter pilot. After returning from combat duty in the Korean War, he did a tour of duty as a ferry pilot. He made the North Atlantic crossing many times in single-engine jet fighters, often in winter. The planes usually crossed in flights of two or more aircraft. My dad said that he and his squadron mates had an informal agreement: If one of them had an engine failure, another one would get behind the troubled aircraft and try to push it to maintain air speed. Fortunately they never had to try it.
For some reason, the link sites recently carried a bunch of articles about the Chinese-American aviator Hazel Lee, who is buried in my hometown of Portland, Oregon. Her job was to deliver planes during WWII, which is notable because she flew lots of different aircraft.
I still find it hard to believe that it's cheaper to pay someone (per the article, for transport from UK to US) $20k to fly your plane, than it is to dismantle and put it in a shipping container, and reassemble it on the other end.
Maybe I have a naive understanding of the complexity of taking a light aircraft apart? I do know though, that shipping a container from Europe to Australia (!) runs a bill of around $5k, and I can't imagine the plane referred to in the article taking more than two containers.
Most planes aren't designed to be disassembled, and you would be paying for a complete structural rebuild while paying a certificated mechanic's hourly rate.
Small aircraft are readily dissembled. The wings and tail feathers of most of them are bolt on affairs. This isn't to say that it's an easy task; it takes knowledge and skill like most things small aircraft. I have personally seen two people take the wings and tail feathers off of a Cessna 18x in less than four hours.
If you liked this article you'd probably also enjoy the book "Wind, Sand, and Stars" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. It's all about his time flying as an airmail pilot through the Alps, over the Sahara, and crossing the South Atlantic in the early 20th century.
Both the original French and the English translation by Lewis Galantière are lovely.
Chapter 3 is my favorite humanist defense of technology, and one of my favorite pieces of prose about engineering and design:
And now, having spoken of the men born of the pilot’s craft, I shall
say something about the tool with which they work—the airplane. Have
you looked at a modern airplane? Have you followed from year to year
the evolution of its lines? Have you ever thought, not only about the
airplane but about whatever man builds, that all of man’s industrial
efforts, all his computations and calculations, all the nights spent
over working draughts and blueprints, invariably culminate in the
production of a thing whose sole and guiding principle is the ultimate
principle of simplicity?
It is as if there were a natural law which ordained that to achieve
this end, to refine the curve of a piece of furniture, or a ship’s
keel, or the fuselage of an airplane, until gradually it partakes of
the elementary purity of the curve of a human breast or shoulder,
there must be the experimentation of several generations of craftsmen.
In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is
no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to
take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.
It results from this that perfection of invention touches hands with
absence of invention, as if that line which the human eye will follow
with effortless delight were a line that had not been invented but
simply discovered, had in the beginning been hidden by nature and in
the end been found by the engineer. There is an ancient myth about the
image asleep in the block of marble until it is carefully disengaged
by the sculptor. The sculptur must himself feel that he is not so much
inventing or shaping the curve of breast or shoulder as delivering the
image from its prison.
In this spirit do engineers, physicists concerned with thermodynamics,
and the swarm of preoccupied draughtsmen tackle their work. In
appearance, but only in appearance, they seem to be polishing surfaces
and refining away angles, easing this joint or stabilizing that wing,
rendering these parts invisible, so that in the end there is no longer
a wing hooked to a framework but a form flawless in its perfection,
completely disengaged from its matrix, a sort of spontaneous whole,
its parts mysteriously fused together and resembling in their unity a
poem.
They sensationalize this as "worst", but I'm sure many pilots would choose jobs such as this over the mundane task of operating a large airliner if the pay and career prospects were equal.
That's funny, but from the anecdotal evidence it sounds like single-engine ferry flights are at least a couple of orders of magnitude more risky than any ETOPS scenario. Fewer lives are put at risk, though.
I would have thought that there existed some local or international entity regulating private airplanes and their itineraries. I would assume the same way you can't get on the highway with a bicycle or a scooter, these airplanes shouldn't be allowed to fly over the Atlantic.
Why not? The reason you're not allowed to get on the highway with a scooter or a bike is because it's dangerous to others. The only danger to me taking my airplane across the Atlantic is to me.
I see this misunderstanding a lot among non-aviation people. I don't have to tell anyone what I'm doing when I fly. I can go to the airport, right now, and fly my airplane pretty much wherever I like. I don't have to file a flight plan (provided I'm flying visually - non-instrument). I can take off and fly pretty much wherever I like. I can take whatever route I prefer, provided I keep in contact via radio with the relative controllers of the various airspaces I might pass through and keep an eye out for other airplanes.
If I'm flying instrument, I do have to file a flight plan and stick to a planned route (or communicate changes to my route). And unless I'm just up doing practice around the local area, I always file a flight plan even if I am going VFR. My personal rule is over 50 nautical miles or into a class C airspace or above (basically, the area around most decent-sized airports), I file a flight plan. It's free, keeps me safe and keeps ATC happy.
There are some other ICAO rules when your start crossing ADIZ (Air Defense Identification Zone - the distance from shore where you must be identified). I have never personally encountered this so I would have to brush up on the appropriate procedure before doing it. But there is still nothing stopping me from doing it provided I follow the rules.
Flying is quite free and liberating. Not so much as driving, but more than most people seem to realize. It's up to me as a pilot to exercise good judgement in not getting myself and others killed.
>Why not? The reason you're not allowed to get on the highway with a scooter or a bike is because it's dangerous to others. The only danger to me taking my airplane across the Atlantic is to me.
Quite a lot of aviation regulations are designed to protect people from killing themselves and their passengers. For example, the requirements for carrying lifejackets/rafts, survival gear, etc. depending on where you're flying.
Also, as pointed out in other comments, there are requirements for flying this route (IFR, HF radio, liferafts, etc.), which are probably sufficient to protect pilots from themselves. Yet, even if you follow all the rules and wear a survival suit (which I don't think is required), it's still a highly risky endeavour.
> Yet, even if you follow all the rules and wear a survival suit (which I don't think is required), it's still a highly risky endeavour.
Absolutely, yes. No one would argue that this is not a massive risk. It's risky, and there are lots of regulations that make it safer.
But just because it's risky doesn't mean it should be illegal, which is what OP seems to be implying. It's a risk, but ferry pilots do a lot of smart things to mitigate that risk.
Aviation in general is a risk, which is why we have massive tomes of rules [0] that make it safe. And even if you follow every rule to the letter, bad things can still sometimes happen that are completely out of your control. Weather could go south in a hurry, or you could have a mechanical issue and lose an engine. How you deal with those issues will decide whether you live or die.
It's risky, but it's not illegal. With a properly trained pilot and a properly maintained airplane, those risks can be controlled. Part of being a good pilot is about minimizing risk wherever you can and being ready for anything that can possibly happen in the sky.
FWIW, I would not even dream of doing a flight that long over water, and I have massive amounts of respect for those who do. Hell, I never fly further from shore than I could glide if I lost my engine. The thought of being alone in a Cessna over the North Atlantic without being able to see the shore scares the hell out of me.
The only danger to me taking my airplane across the Atlantic is to me.
Depends on where and how high over the Atlantic you want to do it. If you pick a spot on the North Atlantic tracks, then other people's safety is at risk (and if you fly one of those tracks without coordinating it with ATC, you're going to have a bad time when you land).
How would that work? Countries don't have radar coverage over the entire ocean. Even if the aircraft were noticed, which country would be responsible for upholding the international accords? If Russian aircraft were scrambling to stop hobbiest aircraft off the coast of Alaska, that would be a political nightmare.
Given the time involved in gaining a pilots license and cost of aircraft, it seems that the adage 'Caveat Emptor' works just fine for oceanic air crossings.
Even if the aircraft were noticed, which country would be responsible for upholding the international accords?
...and more importantly, what could they do if they noticed? It's not like you can "pull over" a plane in the air and suspend the pilot's license immediately, unlike with someone on the road.
It could be done at the airport level. If your last known departure was from point A, how did you get here with an aircraft that is not suited to fly such long distance. Not only that, you shouldn't have been allowed to depart from point A to begin with.
But again, I thought that something similar already existed. Today I learned, that it doesn't.
You will be further shocked to know that, assuming I planned my route correctly, I could fly from Florida to Washington or Maine to California and not have to file a single piece of planning paperwork, nor tell anyone where I'm going, nor talk to anyone on the radio if I didn't want to.
I thought after 911 the FAA enforced registered flight plans for all flights cross country, no? At least that's what the general news reported at the time.
Actually, there are requirements for flying in Canadian trans-oceanic airspace. You need to fly IFR, and you might need an HF radio depending on the route:
There is ICAO and there are rules concerning the filing of passenger manifests and radio contact to break ADIZ (air defense identification zone), but what purpose would it serve to ban international or blue-water flying?
For the most part, the light airplanes being discussed aren't anywhere near the trans-oceanic airliners as the lights will be at FL250 (25,000') or below and usually below 18,000'. Bicycle or scooter on a highway is a completely different concern, IMO.
Why not? The reason you can't get on a highway is because it's dangerous to others, but here the risks seem minimal (large area, other planes usually have radar, etc).
Minor point: the other planes have weather radar, but that isn't useful for traffic detection. Only military aircraft have radar systems designed to pick up other traffic.
Some airliners have active traffic systems (most do not), but the real reason it's safe is that all the airliner and jet traffic is cruising well above where the piston-engine aircraft are flying. (The pistons will also be on high-frequency radios, making periodic position calls to Oceanic control, but those are more for the safety of that aircraft and less for traffic de-conflicting.)
