RE: Mid-air refueling

this has been done on commercial flights, albeit postal flights. It was done in the thirties with the sea empress seaplane i believe, it had a parasite aircraft which would deliver mail along the way, and to places unreachable by the ‘mother aircraft’ the sea empress was the forerunner of the WW2 sunderland. the parasite aircraft was twin engined, and i remember it being called mercury- it was written on the nose of the aircraft- appropriate dont you think?? any way flight refuelling limited was started up and they tested the idea on these aircraft, it worked pretty well as I recall.

there is no major problem with doing this now, we’ve seen pics of KC10’s refuelling each other, so why not a320’s, the weight gain in extra pipingwouild be a mininmal fraction, and the technology is mature. a GPS guidance system coupled with a very short range laser, or millimetre radar would do for distances within that capable of the GPS With these systems the safety factor could stay almost the same, and would hardly add to the crews management task, as it has become. The sensitivity of the controls would be the limiting factor for this operation, but a flying boom type operation could cure that. refueling at altitude, with the exception of aircraft generated turbulence, and cloud generated turbulence would be a relatively calm affair, there would be no need for a race track pattern if the airliner is on a straight leg for four hours, you may aswell plug in there and then.

of course when do you pick up your cargo and passengers?? this would only be worth it if you are traversing a major part of the world. the reduction in fuel load if in flight refuelling was available wouldnt really matter because you still have to house a certain number of people in a fuselage and to a large extent this dictates the size of the aircraft- so your wings arent going to be that much smaller, your fuselage certainly isnt, what would you do?? probably just change the aerofoil to give u an acceptable lift co efficient……………nice thought tho.

coanda