Dear MEL Topic Readers,
Aerial ballet: How airplanes fill up with
fuel mid-air
If you want to extend the range of an
airplane, how would you do that? If there were gas stations floating in the
air, you could fly your aircraft to one of them and pump the gas. Though there isn’t
any such floating gas station in the sky, you could get your hungry aircraft
refueled in the air from a fuel tanker airplane via a hose. This idea sounds
simple but the execution is complex. The two airplanes are flying much faster
than any car on the road. Also, winds are much faster and rougher than on the
ground, and there could be sudden turbulence while refueling jet fuel. Indeed,
air-to-air refueling extends aircrafts’ range and endurance substantially and is
actually a commonly practiced operation among air forces in the world, it is a
very challenging and dangerous task. Pilots of both fueling and refueled airplanes
are required precise skills to stay close to each other for a few minutes. But
such precision skills are going to be taken over by a fully-automated system as
early as next year. Then, drones, helicopters, and jets will all be refueled in
the air more safely and easily.
Will there be commercial fuel tankers
sometime soon?
Enjoy reading the history and methods of
mid-air refueling.
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