| A few points: -- I don't know of any glider mass-produced after WW2 that seats more than two individuals, ± a water/sand ballast tank, ± a range-extender or self-launching engine. -- Have you ever experienced a winch launch? Try it. It's about 3g of acceleration, sometimes more. I quite like them. Most normal people probably wouldn't. -- At the top of the winch launch, you pretty much need to immediately find a thermal and gain some height before flying off cross country. You've got about a minute or two to do so, before entering the circuit and needing to re-launch and try again. -- Replace "200 kph" with "about 80 kt IAS". Remember that gliders fly beneath the weather 99.9% of the time and the winds in clouds are strong -- although the only youtube videos I've seen of an aircraft landing "backwards" on a runway are of a Russian high-wing aircraft, it's entirely plausible that you could end up getting a negative tack speed in a cloud. -- Cloud flying, or flying in inclement weather is insanely dangerous for a glider. They're relatively light, have large aspect ratio wings, and don't usually have a whole lot of instrument navigation equipment on board. If the wings are wet, their coefficient of lift goes down...which would have very bad consequences for your business model. There's a reason that cross-country glider pilots have a friend with a land rover and a trailer, and train to land in fields, after all. -- You have absolutely no opportunity to make a go-around in a glider landing. Zilch. Nada. Screw it up and Plan-B is a well placed field. This is less likely to be acceptable commercially. |