Why do you need to press so many buttons to start a plane? Can’t there be just one button to start everything in sequence automatically?
In: Technology
There are two points to this. If you are thinking of an old 172 airplane the main reason is it’s from the 50s level technology. Sure improvements have been made but those carburetor piston engines need you to manually control fuel flow (more to do with airplanes encountering different air pressure at altitude which requires the fuel mix to be adjusted). Its old reliable technology but had a bit more human input.
New engines that have digital controls are mostly just push button start. A computer takes care of everything just like your new car. Might be 3 switches, battery then fuel pump on then flick the starter and boom engine running. Separate switches for these things to be able to isolate them in emergency or just because they are not always needed.
The rest of the time taken getting into the air is running checklists to ensure everything is running properly and if you are going IFR flying getting the clearance from ATC can also some time be a longer wait.
The aircraft can be in the air very quickly if you need to and skip the checks. For example when I was on a red alert stand by for fire fighting we had to be airborne in less than 5 minutes from getting the call. As we are waiting at the look out tower for 8 hours a day we clearly are not sitting strapped in all day waiting so some of that 5 mins is just getting in. To make sure the aircraft is ready I ran the full checklist at the start of the day and basically just did the bear minimum checklist to get into the air. Typically in around 45secs to a minute to have the helicopter cold to airborne. In this case I’m trusting my previous full checklist and the aircraft hasn’t been out of my sight all day. For less critical flying we do have turnaround checklists that ignore many items on the first start of the day checklist to get airborne quicker. Compared to flying IFR where more items are critical that they work so longer checklists I might be 10min on the ground before departing.
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