The Luton(!) Duet is owned by a mate of mine who also has a Luton Minor and a Luton Major. Despite several offers to fly the Duet I have never managed to get round to it. One thing that should be realised is that the Duet is actually nothing to do with Luton. I believe the plans were once available from Phoenix who also were once supplying Luton Minor plans and that is the only similarity. With regards to weight carrying…I know my friends son (20 something year old male) has flown it with other not-too-big adults. Perhaps treating it as one adult + one child is the way ahead for this aircraft.

As I’ve said before…

If the gun is kept in the cockpit as the last line of defense the pilots can use in case of breach of the flightdeck door then that is the one place it can be stored where it CANNOT BE USED BY AN INTRUDER to gain access. Sitting there as we do at present with nothing means we are defenseless against inevitable intrusion. A gun in the flightdeck could be the final opportunity to save lives.

Nice to have you with us.

Similar problems with 4 wing mounted engine aircraft. A340 has a tolerance of 7 degrees wing down before we start getting edgy about a pod scrape.

There are 2 techniques for coping with a crosswind. Firstly a wing down technique as demonstrated by the Ryanair photo. By keeping a wing down you slip into the wind at the same rate it drifts you off your desired track keeping the fuselage pointing straight down the runway. The upwind undercarriage touches down first before you lower the other on. Problem as you know is wing/engine clearance. If this is an issue then you can use the crab technique. Here you keep the wings level but head the aircraft into wind but keep the resultant track down the runway. Just before touchdown you apply downwind side rudder to align the wheels with the runway. On the 340 when you apply the rudder during the flare (known as kicking off drift) there is also a big rolling action in the direction the rudder is applied so you end up having to apply opposite sidestick as well.

Yes. Standard fit is seats for 3 flightcrew + 2 jumpseats on the left hand side behind the skipper.

I get to fly a lot of brand new aeroplanes at the moment and yes they do have a new car smell (with a tinge of garlic). Personally I prefer to fly aeroplanes that are about 6 months old as that way someone else has sorted out all the niggles you always get with a brand new aircraft. In fact Chuck Yeager summed it up nicely when he said ‘never fly the A model of anything’.

That would be a relief crew member rather than a supernumary. A supernumary (by the names very definition) is not a required member of crew whereas a relief pilot would be required to allow the operating flightdeck crew members the chance to rest in order to extend their flight duty period.

To give you an idea of how it works…
The third crew member would get into one of the seats around top of climb or shortly after. The operating crew member can go off to either an assigned passenger seat or preferably a crew rest bunk for a period of time. After that time he returns to the flightdeck and resumes his seat. The relief pilot then swaps with the other pilot while he takes his rest. The length of time that they can extend their 2 pilot permitted duty by is half the time they have been resting for if they have been in a bunk or a third of their rest time if they have been in a seat. For example, if the relief guy is operational for, say, 6 hours then each pilot gets 3 hours kip. If they have been in the bunk then the duty time can be extended by 1.5 hours or if only seats were available then the extension would be 1 hour. The original 2 pilots will complete the flight using the extension to their flight duty time.
Now if there were 2 relief pilots (ie a 4 pilot flight) then both operating pilots would be able to go on rest together so they would get the entire 6 hour period in the bunk so therefore they can have an extension of 3 hours (2 hours for a seat).
The difference between resting in a bunk or in a passenger seat is immense. This is an area where we are very lucky as we have bunks in every company aircraft whereas BA mostly have seats only for crew rest on their 777 fleet although I gather they plan to rectify this with future orders.