80% of all accidents happen during the first three minutes and last eight minutes of any flight.
Active Winglets provide an increase in the margin of safety during takeoff and landing, which are the two most critical phases associated with flight safety.
Today, I want to talk about engine failure during takeoff. How can pilots stay as safe as possible when things start off awry? The FAA has recommendations and regulations for both single and multi-engine aircraft.
If you lose an engine after takeoff in a single-engine aircraft, you will land right away. The FAA recommends that you fly straight ahead without making any turns in order to avoid hurting yourself and your aircraft substantially. If you try to turn back to the airport, the aircraft could stall and spin. The FAA (and everybody else) recommends that you continue straight ahead and find the best place to perform an emergency landing.
Multi-engine aircraft have different rules; they must be able to continue their climb at a certain gradient after losing an engine during takeoff (per FAA requirements). Considering most commercial and charter missions, multi-engine aircraft typically have more seats than single-engine aircraft, and more lives could be at risk in the case of engine failure. In this way, it makes perfect sense that the FAA requires a larger margin of safety.
The FAA’s climb requirements include maintaining a certain gradient depending on segment, gear, flaps, route of climb, and whether the climb is at V2, V3, or somewhere in between. These are very specific and planned-out gradient performances that must be met.
There are other safety concerns to keep in mind here. For instance, if you take off from an airport higher than sea level on a hot day, your climb performance tends to suffer. This is because your engine produces less thrust and the air density is lower, which reduces the number of molecules going over the wing at a given speed. Less air over the wing reduces lift, so your climb gradient becomes limited. That’s why WAT (Weight, Altitude, Temperature) tables are in place – and why you must comply with legal climb gradients.
We can use Telluride on a 35-degree summer day as an example, which is at approximately 9,000 ft above sea level. Climb is greatly affected in these conditions, and the WAT table may limit you to 9,000 lbs. However, if your aircraft weights 7,000 lbs. and you have 1,000 lbs. of payload, you are left with only 1,000 lbs. for fuel - and with a 600 to 800 lbs. of fuel reserve, you will not be going far. Sometimes, you are simply too limited to make your trip – and that is the pain of flying out of a high/hot airport.
However, flying out of Telluride with Active Winglets does not look the same. You can take off at 1,000 lbs. heavier and still make gradients, which increases your safety margin considerably. Now, you can deploy more reliably, instead of having to leave at inconvenient times before sunrise to beat the heat. Your options dramatically increase with Active Winglets, which in turn increases the utility of your aircraft; each flight can carry increased payload or fuel and maintain a safety level above and beyond regulatory expectations.
When I fly demo rides on hot days, I often start at 10,000 ft. and put an engine on idle - and we will still climb from 500 - 1,600 feet per minute at V2 or VENR. Experiencing these benefits in extreme conditions like summer in Telluride can help illustrate just how large our everyday safety margins are. Active Winglets provide amazing certified single-engine climb performance (CJ, CJ1, CJ1+, M2) even on milk runs – your everyday flight is now more reliable than ever, even in engine loss situations. People are blown away by these aspects of flight that we do not see every day, happening behind the scenes with Active Winglets.
Flying smarter is not just about saving money – it’s about being able to have that extra safety margin. Active Winglets are robust, giving you ultimate deploy-ability with maximum safety. You now have greater ability to take off on a given day, without ever having to leave a passenger behind. When it comes to fuel savings, range, and safety, Active Winglets provide a flying experience that every pilot deserves.
