This won't affect us (GA) significantly, but they have finally done the obvious...

http://link.brightcove.com/services/pla ... 7928787001

lc

Cool. I could save .1 gallon from my hangar to the fuel pumps. Let's see. 56 cents one way, $1.12 both ways. I burn an average of 600 gallons a year, and I fill up typically when I need 30 gallons, plus or minus, so maybe 20 times. At $20.24 per year, how many years would it take me to pay for electric motors on my landing gear, even if they were available? Inquiring minds want to know.

Cary

Well, in the old days, when jets and GA mixed at major airports, the stench of burned kerosene would have been a lot less while waiting your turn to be #1....
These days GA doesn't seem to be welcome at major airports.

lc

The Luftwaffe used to use draft animals to save taxi fuel...

At the current price of hay, it's probably a lot cheaper to use the engine(s)!

Cary

This will put the coal shoveler of the engine car, I mean the tug operator out of work and will be a union issue for them and increase the load on the pilot. Other wise it looks like a very good thing.

Yeah, we heard something about this recently. Lots of good possibilities for this. Tell you one thing, our wing walkers are going to have to pay more attention than they currently do! I see this as being a pretty probable and a benefit to the operators of the aircraft. The only thing I see wrong with this would be on contaminated taxiways. Just don't know if you are going to get enough traction from the nosewheels to overcome icy, slick taxiways or accumulations of snow. My guess is that in those situations, it will be back to the current two engine taxi, but if the goal is reducing tugs, tug drivers, and associated equipment, that's going to be a long line waiting for the next available crew to push me off the gate.

Seems like a bad idea to me - extra weight of batteries and electrical motors and controllers is very heavy. A simpler solution is electric or gas powered tugs - one for every plane arriving and departing. Much cheaper and no performance penalty on the planes. The union guys will love it - they will sit on their ass and drive the ships around to/fro the runways. Convert the baggage handlers to tug drivers - to offset the automated baggage handling eqpt.

'soyAnarchisto

You've never seen these guys pulling a plane around the airport at Mach 2! I don't know if I want to be on that ride!

Seriously though, no batteries. As they said in the video, it is an electrical motor ran by the electricity ran off of the APU. Yes, there would be a little bit of weight for the motor, but it would be inconsequential...especially compared to the $$ saved from the fuel not burned. Also big savings on not having to return to the gate for more fuel because the taxi was longer than expected when everything gets screwed up. The Bus is all "fly-by-wire", so no extra controllers. I'm sure that it would be tied into wiring of the tiller, which is already controlled by electrical signals to a computer to control hydraulic pressure, which moves the nosewheel.

Compare that to the cost of the tugs, maintaining the tugs, gas the tugs burn, the yearly wages of the tug driver, the 401K contributions by the company to that employee, cost of training, cost of that employee's health care benefits, etc. etc. etc., and this becomes a pretty cheap option to order when buying planes...so long as it is reliable.

Cool! Maybe with the added weight of these, the airlines will spread the seat rows out a little. Or go the other way and limit only one checked bag.

No, it just means that instead of carrying thousands of pounds of fuel and/or cargo, we'll just carry 100 pounds less. I really think the weight of such a system will be inconsequential.