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Re:Aviation Is on a Low-Carbon Flight Path by VBprogrammer on Thursday November 07, 2019 @12:51PM (#21475433)
Useable in the loosest possible sense of the word since charging it would then take a few hours. By which point lack of daylight or a change in the weather would probably mean no more flying for the day. And even if that could somehow be made to work (perhaps with swappable batteries), it ignores the fact that anyone trained in flying an electric aircraft would be poorly equipped to fly a conventional light aircraft with issues like carburettor icing, shock cooling, leaning with altitude etc.
Re:Aviation Is on a Low-Carbon Flight Path by cjrp on Friday November 08, 2019 @05:08AM (#21481060)
I imagine there'd have to be swappable batteries, but you're absolutely right that you'd be missing out on learning all the other aspects of flying. Although by the time electric aircraft become mainstream for training I'd hope we'd seen the end of carbs!
Re:Aviation Is on a Low-Carbon Flight Path by iguy on Thursday November 07, 2019 @02:31PM (#21476481)
I thought these were in use at flight schools already. With spare batteries being charged on the ground. Perhaps you can't practice quite everything, but as a cheaper way for people to get some of the hours it sounds great.
Re:Aviation Is on a Low-Carbon Flight Path by VBprogrammer on Friday November 08, 2019 @05:06AM (#21481051)
I had a bit of a look, I found one flight school that had committed to buying some electric aircraft and had apparently trialed them before. No real indication of how it works practically. Bearing in mind that a Tesla battery pack weighs 500kg (1200lb) or so. Changing them over wouldn't be a simple operation.
Re:Aviation Is on a Low-Carbon Flight Path by iguy on Friday November 08, 2019 @08:22AM (#21481921)
Looks like this is what I was remembering:

https://www.pipistrel-aircraft.com/locations/#tab-id-2

https://www.dw.com/en/electric-flight-finds-its-wings-at-slo...

They have electric planes, and they have flight schools, but whether the two actually intersect or not isn't immediately clear.