<story><title>Paris Air Show’s Slowest Plane Could Have Biggest Impact</title><url>http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/06/electric-taxiing-airlines/?cid=co9091394</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kevincennis</author><text>Does anyone have enough knowledge of commercial aviation to explain why this hasn&amp;#x27;t been done before? To an outsider, it seems like kind of an obvious feature.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>omegant</author><text>Airbus 320 pilot here. This is something I&amp;#x27;ve wondered myself for a long time. This same idea of a electric motor on the wheels powered by the APU(auxiliar small turbine for electricity and air presure, is the loud noise you hear when boarding the plane), is what some other pilots and myself have talked about for a long time. 
Just taking in to account that it makes you autonomous when pushing back and taxing, the long times you spend waiting for take of at the runway, it makes a lot of sense for this kind of planes that spend a lot of the daily time taxing on congested airports.
I don&amp;#x27;t know exactly the reason why it hasn&amp;#x27;t been done before, I don&amp;#x27;t think is a weight or technology reason. It surely has seated on a TODO list for a long time, just take into account that in aviation we are way behind in aplication of the latest technology. For example we are still using single chanel radio for comunications with control( this is terribly frustrating and ineficient, it&amp;#x27;s pretty common to have comunication jams due to excess of traffics on the same frequency).
Airplane computers even in new models are still 90s models (very slow but i suppose that stability is worth the boredom). There are a lot of other vintage technologies in aviation, after all every single release to production must be tested and approved by the FAA and EASA. It&amp;#x27;s the same for all major changes in systems and procedures. That makes all changes and improvements very slow and expensive.</text></comment>
<story><title>Paris Air Show’s Slowest Plane Could Have Biggest Impact</title><url>http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/06/electric-taxiing-airlines/?cid=co9091394</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kevincennis</author><text>Does anyone have enough knowledge of commercial aviation to explain why this hasn&amp;#x27;t been done before? To an outsider, it seems like kind of an obvious feature.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>neurotech1</author><text>Weight added to the aircraft (660lb). Another factor is reliability. Wheel or tire damage can bring down an airliner. The Concorde crash. Also a DC-8 crash in Jeddah in 1991 was due to a fire in the wheel well.[1] Even things like entertainment systems cause risk. Swissair Flight 111 went down due to a fire that started in the entertainment system rack, behind the cockpit. [2]&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Nigeria_Airways_Flight_2120&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Nigeria_Airways_Flight_2120&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Swissair_Flight_111&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Swissair_Flight_111&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>