The seat is easy as long as the airplane isn’t full. Board last. The rest of it is baffling. Had to be two failures on American’s part - both the gate agent scanning passes and the F/As doing the headcount. I have been on *countless* flights, pardon the pun, that have sat at the gate while they figured out why the…

This is the wild part. I have to think that she had a boarding pass of some kind. Because it’s scanned, and then the F/A’s count heads. And if the count doesn’t match you don’t go anywhere until they figure out why it doesn’t. BTDT. But once you are through security, there is no match of a particular boarding pass to…

TSA “only inconveniences people”

Getting past the security checkpoint is one thing, but how the hell do you get on the plane without a ticket? I mean they scan all of the boarding passes on your way onto the plane.

Feels kind of like piracy off the horn of Africa now (or recently, anyway). Ship’s captured, ransom’s paid, everyone goes on about their business.

The Golden Age of Hijacking wasn’t that much of a problem. You got a week in a tropical vacation, and then an all expenses paid trip back home. As long as the authorities didn’t overreact and try a military solution. That was what really killed it, the military overreactions. 9/11 just put the final seal on the…

Most of the security is theatre. Someone who’s determined to get on board for a nefarious reason will more than likely manage to do it with some planning. Otherwise, it’s remarkable where you can go if you just look confident enough, as though you belong there. I know that directly from some of my previous work…

Many hybrid systems have electric AC compressors, which still turn independent of the ICE.

I like this joke. but that’s 70 years.  That would factor for their 50% margin of safety though.

Two things:

Yes, there were corner shops that would rewind starters and generators/alternators. 

Only issue I’ve ever had with a start/stop system is on super hot days. The AC compressor is no longer turning. That’s bad mmmmkay. It is much harder to play catch up with AC vs maintaining a temp.

I am an old, I remember when starters were a once a year to once every two year repairs on 60s-70s American cars.

They don’t do anything differently for the engines themselves (oily bits anyway). They do use a beefier starter motor to account for the extra cycles, and either a bigger battery or a second one, mostly to account for running all the accessories when the motor isn’t running and producing electricity. Starting a hot…

Nothing, because no stop/start system works when the engine is cold. It’s only ever HOT starts, the engine won’t be off long enough for the oil to drain anywhere, and especially with modern direct-injection engines hot starting takes about nothing. My M235i would restart faster than I could get my clutch foot to the…

The engines are designed and tested for this. Usually involves sleeved cylinders that should be very strong

It throws a CEL and doesn’t do stop-start but will still start normally... did you read the article?

It’s start, you’ll just get a CEL

“In reality, it’s hard to measure how much fuel this function saves”

HALT testing.