Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by majormajor 934 days ago
It's hard for me to imagine (in the US) the government allowing an explosion in small commercial flights w/o TSA and all that rigamarole. If you get 10x, 100x the volume today, with a less upper-crust passenger base, the perceived security/terrorism risk probably starts getting talked about.
1 comments
JakeTheAndroid 934 days ago
and there is already a massive shortage of ATC employees right now. At minimum this would need to be addressed and more than double the workforce of ATC. That's without accounting for any additional infra that might be needed to support a 10x or 100x in traffic.
link
ramesh31 934 days ago
>That's without accounting for any additional infra that might be needed to support a 10x or 100x in traffic.

The TSA requirement is nil for 10 person flights and these would be VFR only anyways. You would avoid a vast majority of the need for added ATC by operating between uncontrolled fields and relying on enhanced automation. The traditional airport model doesn't really apply when flights can be made so casually. Imagine a world where tiny runways that only service EVs are integrated into the city and you can hop between them as easily as catching a bus. Crosscountry travel would be also be possible via smaller hops, and cost less than a direct long haul jet liner ticket.

All of that is enabled by the orders of magnitude reduction in operating costs. EV Alice is claiming $200/hr to operate an aircraft that has the equivalent performance to a $1k+/hr turbine within the range limitation.

link
JakeTheAndroid 934 days ago
> Imagine a world where tiny runways that only service EVs are integrated into the city and you can hop between them as easily as catching a bus.

I mean, that sounds like a massive shift in infrastructure and city planning. I am not sure how efficient and affordable this would need to be to achieve that level of integration into daily society. Currently nothing, in the US at least, is setup to function this way. Whereas rail and roads are already deployed.

And again, this ignores any of the issues brought on by scale. If this is the way we want people traveling at a 10x or 100x rate, the airspace is going to be busier and likely will need some sort of coordination, whether ATC or some other mechanism.

link