Reading the comments on this photo, a couple of questions came up. It says:
Quote: At left is 149950/NK-506 a Grumman A-6E Intruder of VA-196 "Milestones". Delivered 1 Nov 1963 as an early A-6A Intruder, later converted to A-6E. At retirement it had completed 4214 flight hours, 827 catapult launches and 837 arrested landings.
Is this an average number of cycles / hours for military, or specifically Navy aircraft? To me this seemed to be a relatively low number, I would have thought they would go beyond 10,000 hours on a regular basis.
How many deployments would an USN aircraft go through in its entire life-cycle? And how many arrested landings / catapult take-offs would be conducted? Somewhere I picked up that USN aircraft would fly on average twice a day during deployments (depending on type / contingency situation). Is this a realistic number? That would equate to around 360 landings / take-offs on a 6 month deployment, meaning this A-6E would only have been deployed approx. 3 times in its entire life?
And my last question, how can the number of take-offs and landings be different? What other means of getting off the ship are common practice?
Thanks for any suggestions.
ZANL188 From United States of America, joined Oct 2006, 3250 posts, RR: 0 Reply 2, posted (4 years 1 month 1 day 6 hours ago) and read 3549 times:
Quoting Bennett123 (Reply 1):
As to the figures, if you fly from a land base to a carrier you get an arrested landing but not catapult launch.
But you get a cat launch without an arrested landing when you fly back to the land base...
Carrier aircraft occasionally get "launched" by a crane if they are unserviceable at the end of the cruise. Further it's posible to get an arrested landing ashore, most military bases have arresting gear, and few if any bases have catapults.
Quoting Loran (Thread starter): Somewhere I picked up that USN aircraft would fly on average twice a day during deployments (depending on type / contingency situation). Is this a realistic number?
I'm not Navy and I've never been aboard an operational carrier. But my experience with military aircraft suggests that your figures are wildly optimistic. I bet 2 or 3 times a week is more likely.
Link below suggests that in 1998 only 80% of deployed Navy aircraft were even airworthy on a given day let alone flying twice... (IMO 80% is actually a fairly decent MC rate BTW)
ZANL188 From United States of America, joined Oct 2006, 3250 posts, RR: 0 Reply 3, posted (4 years 1 month 1 day 6 hours ago) and read 3541 times:
Quoting Loran (Thread starter): That would equate to around 360 landings / take-offs on a 6 month deployment,
You're assuming the carrier conducts flight ops every day during a deployment... This is not possible. Some days the ship will be in transit and the winds will not be favorable, some days the ship will be on a port visit, and then there is the occasional steel beach party....
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474218 From United States of America, joined Oct 2005, 6340 posts, RR: 10 Reply 4, posted (4 years 1 month 1 day 4 hours ago) and read 3505 times:
Quoting Loran (Thread starter): At left is 149950/NK-506 a Grumman A-6E Intruder of VA-196 "Milestones". Delivered 1 Nov 1963 as an early A-6A Intruder, later converted to A-6E. At retirement it had completed 4214 flight hours, 827 catapult launches and 837 arrested landings.
These numbers are about average for a military aircraft. You can compared the numbers above with the numbers for the A-6 BUNO 152603 shown at the bottom of the following site:
Loran From Germany, joined Jul 2005, 436 posts, RR: 2 Reply 5, posted (4 years 4 weeks 1 day 6 hours ago) and read 3292 times:
Quoting ZANL188 (Reply 2): Carrier aircraft occasionally get "launched" by a crane if they are unserviceable at the end of the cruise. Further it's posible to get an arrested landing ashore, most military bases have arresting gear, and few if any bases have catapults.
Didn't think of the land bases, thanks.
Interesting information. Still, what would be a reasonable figure for the number of deployments of an average USN aircraft during its life-cycle? And in what intervals do the squadrons deploy on a carrier?
Dragon6172 From United States of America, joined Jul 2007, 1160 posts, RR: 0 Reply 6, posted (4 years 4 weeks 6 hours ago) and read 3172 times:
Quoting Loran (Reply 5): Still, what would be a reasonable figure for the number of deployments of an average USN aircraft during its life-cycle? And in what intervals do the squadrons deploy on a carrier?
If you figure a squadron deploys for 6 months out of every 24 months, with an aircraft life of about 12-16 years (airframes have various life limits, so this number may be corrected by someone), that would give you 6-8 deployments in the aircrafts life. I would say that while deployed, each squadron probably schedules 2-4 aircraft twice a day on average. Obviously more during some operations, and less during open ocean ops.
I worked on helicopters while I was in, most of our airframes were in the 10-15 thousand hour range, and upwards of 20k landings.
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