Fun Airplane Quiz

You y frequently and you just got involved in a goofy PRA class. Because you y
so frequently, you are very familiar with airplanes, reliability and maintenance of airplane
engines and airplane pilot errors. In any case, the route you take has two dierent aircraft
that y within a short time of each other and you have a choice which to take. Both ights
arrive at the same time, but the ight plan is slightly dierent. Both ight crews are lovely
and gracious, the pilots are equally skilled on both ights.
But the PRA course ... you get to thinking about some stu you you know. You gure
the worst that can go wrong is an engine failure or an error on landing or takeo. You
start writing down some stu to get an idea of which ight plan is best.
Aircraft A
Two engines but it only needs one engine to stay airborne
Flies faster than aircraft B (so arrives at the same time) but uses more gas, so
it has to stop to rell
Uses a maintenance policy that takes into account redundancy so one of the
engines is not as reliable as the other
Data:
Port Engine currently has a failure rate of 5E-4hr
1
Starboard engine currently has a failure rate of 1E-3hr
1
Complications of two engines results in a takeo failure of 1 in 5,000 takeos
and a landing failure of 1 failure in every 10,000
Time in the air ying is 3 hours (one hour rell time), 1 hour on the rst
leg and 2 hours on the second leg
Aircraft B
Single engine
Flies slower than aircraft A but arrives at the same time because it uses less
gas and doesnt have to rell the gas tanks
Uses a maintenance policy that takes into account a single engine so the engine
is maintained to keep the failure rate around 1E-4hr
1
1
Data:
Engine currently has a failure rate of 1E-4hr
1
Single engine design results in a takeo failure rate of 1 in 10,000 and a
landing failure rate of 1 failure in 20,000
Time in the air ying is 4 hours
Which one of the ight plans should you choose for the safest ight? If you y 24 times
a year on this trip, what is the annual failure frequency? Do you really believe your data
are correct? What drives your belief one way or the other?
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