how meany hours does a pilot have

The requirement for a pilot to obtain an FAA Airline Transport Pilot certificate is 1500 hours. That’s a lot of hours, and that’s just the minimum number required! Factor that in with the number of pilots in the job market and you’re left wondering if you’ll ever gain enough experience to fly for an airline

what to do if a planes engine fails

An aircraft will glide perfectly well even if all its engines fail. In fact, the chances are that if you’ve flown in a plane, you’ve seen it glide at some point (more about this later). Aircraft are able to fly through the movement of air passing over the wings. As long as this process continues the aircraft will continue to fly. If both engines fail, the aeroplane is no longer being pushed forwards, therefore in order to keep the air flowing over the wings, the aircraft must exchange energy through losing altitude to maintain forward airspeed. The aircraft doesn’t have to lose altitude particularly rapidly to keep flying and therefore it both engines were to fail a high altitude, the aircraft may have as much as 20 – 30 minutes aloft to find somewhere to land.

Here’s an example. A typical commercial aircraft has a lift to drag ratio of around 10:1. This means that for every 10 miles it travels forward it looses 1 mile in altitude. If an aircraft is at a typical cruise altitude of 36,000 (which is 6 miles up) and looses both engines, it can travel a forward distance of 60 miles before reaching the ground.