

Airplanes, oxygen and the media - yannis
http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2009/09/25/askthepilot335/

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projectileboy
While I appreciate the article, it's somewhat hard to take the author
seriously when he begins by angrily pointing out that it's impossible for
pilots to adjust air flow within an airplane, and then goes on to describe all
the ways in which pilots can adjust air flow within an airplane.

~~~
stratomorph
I'd like to note that those are two different adjustments. The claim is that
pilots adjust the mix of fresh and recirculated air. The author is talking
about adjusting the incoming flow volume of new air. Airplanes don't have
"recirculate" the way a car does for max A/C, and so to talk about the mixture
of fresh/recirc air is meaningless.

All those little air valves above the seats in a plane are letting in only
conditioned air newly drawn from the atmosphere through the engines, with no
recirculated air mixed in. The pilot can change the total amount of new air
coming in, but that's not the same as somehow making only 20% of that incoming
flow fresh air. The only place the air already in the plane is going is
straight overboard, through valves run by the pressure controller.

(I'd also point out that the fuel savings from a low-flow setting will be
minimal, because modern large high-bypass turbofan engines can bleed a LOT of
air without much of a performance cost. The bigger the airplane and its
engines, the smaller the savings.)

------
allenbrunson
"If the original title ends with the name of the site, please strip it off,
because the site name will be displayed after the link anyway. If the title
begins with the site name, you can leave it on if you prefer."

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

this person's submissions often have this problem, so i think it's time for a
reminder.

~~~
yannis
Oops! Thanks and noted :)

