Fuel Economy: Prius vs Airplane

LOL. What about a piper cub or a Cessna? Or a Helicopter?
A jetpack can only go for about 3 to 5 minutes before you run out of fuel .... :-P
I wonder how many pigeons or helium balloons it would take to lift up 200 pounds?

 

Mythbusters used over 3000 helium balloons to lift a 40 lb child.

 

Then there is the block-to-block time:

• 20-25 minutes to reach the airport
• 30-45 minutes in-processing and boarding
• 1-2 hour first hop
• 30-60 minutes transfer
• 1-2 hours final hop
• 20 minutes to get luggage and rental
• 20-25 minutes to leave airport and reach destination

There is a break-even point where flying takes longer than just driving to the destination. It of course varies but somewhere close to 400 miles becomes the threshold. Shorter, one might as well just drive to the destination. Longer, the plane wins.

Bob Wilson

 

Did they ever get the kid back?

 

Lots of safety lines. She was a cute little thing.

 

Notice how they give 'seat miles' for planes but not for cars...

Also the energy content of jet fuel is close to that of diesel, not E-10 gasoline.

 

2 hops for 400 miles.... I don't think so. Although 400 miles is about right for drive or fly.

 

You didn't include:

• 20-45 minutes TSA security screening, including wait line
• tbd -- safety margin to ensure 2- to 3-sigma probability of not missing the flight

 

That is very well disclosed in the caption, far better than most other news factoids we get.

 

If there are no two hour delay's.

 

I thought you should be at the airport 2 hrs before the flight?

It all depends on connection, distance from airport and such. Once I has such a tiring 800 miles flight (2 legs), that i would be much easier to drive.

 

That's significantly more balloons than in the french film short "The Red Balloon"(1956) ....
My balloon fantasy has been busted.

 

True enough on the latter phrase.

"Mileage for autos is based on full vehicle, not seats"

This is a very open to misinterpretation. "whole vehicle" would have been unambiguous, "full vehicle" gives the impression that they assumed full capacity of passengers, rather than the opposite, no passengers.

 

Misleading math.

Big vehicles (buses, trains, planes, etc.) operate under an economy of scale. You might get 9 MPG, but if you're moving thousands of pounds or dozens of people, you're overall more efficient than something getting 100 MPG but only able to haul a few hundred pounds or a couple of people.

 

Private vehicles also operate on the owner's schedule and carry more and varied luggage.

Bob Wilson

 

How is it misleading if you calculate MPG per passenger?
The math is either correct or incorrect, it's not like you spin math equation.

 

Sorry Walter!

 

Maybe I worded poorly.

When judging MPG, you have to consider many factors. A plane or train or bus looks less fuel efficient, but when in it's element, it may be more fuel efficient than the most fuel-sipping car.

Just like a Prius gets it's best MPG with no cargo and just the driver and a full-size pickup truck isn't a bad deal when it's hauling passengers and cargo.

I was concerned about how good my MPG would be when I got the Prius because I couldn't test drive in my area to see how well it did in light of my daily driving. What one person gets and another person gets (and what they produce in a lab for the government) can all be different things.

 

Recall my Cessna 150 was about 4.5 gallons per hour at a 90 mph economy cruise, so a little less than 20 mpg for pilot only and less than 40 mpg for pilot plus 1 passenger (max capacity). BUT, straight line distance for aircraft was usually 20% les than highway distance for cars. Any way I compute it, the Cessna was less efficient than Prius with same number of pilot and passengers but was also quicker on the long cross country flights.
Other small piston aircraft were typically less efficient than the Cessna 150, and helicopters were WAY less efficient, so the Prius with 2 people is more efficient than traditional aircraft. Electric aircraft may be even more efficient, but they are quite new and maybe should be compared to the Leaf and Tesla rather than the Prius.