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Over my checkered career, I have worked mostly structures. I actually quit one position because they were going to make me work interiors stuff like galleys and lavs because I wanted to do structures. It didn’t work. The job I took next had even more interiors and the job I took after that was ALL interiors. I finally gave up and went over to procurement, which was an even bigger mistake (the data would suggest that I am in the running for the worst procurement agent of all time). But, I digress. One of the things that I found out is that the flight deck crew eat their dinner in their lap or place it on the glare shield. I was and am horrified. The glare shield is that bit of bent up and painted sheet metal above the instrument panel. It is very light weight and can’t even be used to help you get in and out of the seats without bending. Worse, anyone else remember the United 777 that had to divert and land after a pilot spilled his coffee on the center console? Brother, can you spare a cup holder? Seriously, now, spilling coffee or some other liquid all over these complex and hideously expensive radios and flight management computers is really bad news. I personally worked a problem where we had blown or burned up five flight management computers. In a row. On the same airplane. At $125,000 a pop, it was a concern--though to be fair, no one told the engineer anything until we were in the hole a half million dollars. This one was not due to coffee spillage, thankfully, but it easily could have been. OK, one could have been, not the other four (surely someone would have mopped it up before plugging in the next one, you see), but you know what I mean. Moreover, while a miss-pinned connector--the fault we had--can break the same box over and over, a big cup of coffee could conceivably put much of the center console out of business. The center console is (usually) where the controls are located for all the communications and navigation radios. The center console is that end table looking thing sitting between the two pilots, the one with all the knobs on it, sometimes called the pedestal. Cup holders and cockpits Most cockpits, if not all, do have cup holders--usually on the side. So, I really don’t expect a repeat of the United coffee incident (speaking of United coffee incidents, I once worked on one where the galley sink drain came loose, and there must have been ten pounds of coffee grounds in the bilge of the forward cargo compartment - what a mess!). But there isn’t a tray table on any of the flight deck seats I have seen; no place for the pilots to put their (hot!) meal except their laps or the glare shield. The Airbus heavy jets with sidestick controllers have a center tray table that is useful for dinner. It keeps the food off the glare shield, which is very nice, but most business jets have rather tiny cockpits with control columns and wheels (not sidestick controllers) which are not easily adapted for dinner tables. Who needs to eat? Let me back up a step. Pilots on short flights don’t need to eat in flight. No one does, really. That doesn’t mean the passengers don’t get dinner. Due to issues with times and schedules, it may make perfect sense to feed them on the way to the next stop. But, the flight crew could skip. This not true on longer flights, and with today’s incredibly long-ranged aircraft, this is simply not an option. The crew must eat. The question then becomes how can we improve the safety of this necessary operation. Glorious solutions Back in the glory days of aviation, when Pan Am was pioneering scheduled flights around the world in the glamorous Boeing 314 Clipper flying boat, the flight crew (seven of them at minimum up to perhaps a dozen with relief pilots and mechanics) could just walk downstairs to the galley, or sit in one of the lounges or the dining room, or have a meal up on the truly spacious flight deck--literally larger than the entire cabin of many bizjets. That isn’t an option anymore, not even on the Gulfstream G650. The current practice is that the flight deck crew eat off the glare shield or out of their laps. I’m going to say this isn’t as safe as it might be. If we could get them one of those tray tables that insert in the arm of the seat, that would enhance inflight safety. Surely, we can do that. Beating the (icy) drum The other issue that continues to leave me agog is the lack of a refrigerator onboard the aircraft. What’s up with that? Yes, I know--who needs a refrigerator when you have garbage bags of ice in the forward lav, right? Seriously. I cannot tell you how horrified I am about that. Why not a refrigerator? I did some asking around and the consensus answer (excluding corporate inertia) is that onboard refrigeration costs too much in terms of weight, power, and heat. That sounds really impressive, I know. I mean, if you have a refrigerator, you know for a fact that it has weight, uses power, and produces heat. It also has a door. I was surprised no one criticized the door. I do not say this to harass those poor souls who were simply acting as the messengers, regardless of our long tradition here in the West of shooting them when they bring unhappy news. No, I have an actual reason for mentioning it. Cold facts To discuss the weight issue, I should probably preface this by remarking that I’m talking about one of those little dorm room refrigerators, or a bar refrigerator - a mini-fridge, not a chef’s walk-in cooler. I have one. It might weigh twenty pounds (about 9kg). I’m going to suggest that we probably have more than twenty pounds of ice stuffed in garbage bags in the forward lav, keeping the sushi cool. Worst case, I’d call it a wash (that’s an engineering term meaning no advantage to either option). But, the refrigerator doesn’t melt and drip all over the carpet, or get caught between the drain pan of the lav and the floor beams, corroding both. Moreover, I don’t have to get a new refrigerator at each stop, nor do I have to wonder what sort of water was used to make it and is it safe to put in a beverage, nor am I confounded if the FBO is out of refrigerators. I have my own. It’s a permanent part of the airplane and it works all the time. Power consumption Power consumption sounds very ominous and technical, but really, how much is a mini ‘fridge really going to use? Generally speaking, about 90 watts. Yes, about a light bulb’s worth of energy. Surely, we can afford that. The total heat dumped into the cabin will be less than twice that of the power used (the wonders of the refrigeration cycle!). We can be generous and call it two light bulbs in total (one for power to operate the cooling system and one (less, really) for heat removed from inside and rejected into the cabin). I am not a air conditioning engineer, but I would truly be surprised if we could not handle that amount of extra heat. Better technologies Interestingly, there are a plethora of different technologies that can be and are used in refrigerators. Many are very quiet (not as big an issue on a jet aircraft as you might think) and extremely energy efficient, far more so than the conventional vapor compressor type discussed here. There is the Peltier absorption system, acoustic cooling systems, Stirling cycles, Malone refrigeration, and something fascinating called magnetic cooling. While I’m sure a specialized aircraft-grade refrigerator will be a bit more expensive than garbage bags of ice in the forward lav, I think we can work it into the price constructively. Improving safety I firmly believe that getting the food out of the forward galley and into a refrigerator is one of the biggest and best things we can possibly do to improve food safety onboard business aviation aircraft. I do not believe that the technical issues are insoluble. Truly, if we can feed the flight crew safely and store the food in a secure, refrigerated compartment, we will have enhanced aviation food safety more than any other development since the boxed lunch. While I really don’t expect anyone to rush out and fix these issues tomorrow, I do wish those responsible could look at the issue a bit more closely with an eye on how things are actually done in the real world to see what the real cost would be (and compare that to the cost of poisoning our passengers), rather than simply waving hands and saying it can’t be done efficiently. If we can put a man on the moon, surely we can put a refrigerator in the galley. Terry Drinkard is a Contract Structural Engineer based in Jacksonville, Florida whose interests and desire are being involved in cool developments around airplanes and in the aviation industry. He has held senior positions with Boeing and Gulfstream Aerospace and has years of experience at MROs designing structural repairs. Terry’s areas of specialty are aircraft design, development, manufacturing, maintenance, and modification; lean manufacturing; Six-sigma; worker-directed teams; project management; organization development and start-ups. Terry welcomes your comments, questions or feedback. You may contact him via editor@blueskynews.aero Other recent articles by Terry Drinkard:
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