Does Santa fly RA or GA?

[pmccarthy]

A miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer - would that be more than 600kg? I guess he flys IFR ( I follow reindeer) so that would make it GA. Is the sleigh a home built? Any ideas?

 

 

[rankamateur]

Night flight GA is a given, Experimental I would think!

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Presumably the authorities have been doing their best to apprehend this flagrant violator of airspace rules.

 

 

[facthunter]

They have been trying to ground him for a bad BMI for years and hypertension (red face). Nev

 

 

[SDQDI]

I believe I have a pic of him in the left hand seat of a RAA plane on a scouting run no doubt

 

 

[mothra]

Presumably the authorities have been doing their best to apprehend this flagrant violator of airspace rules.

Nah, the cunning old bugger has a fist full of exemptions from regulators around the globe. Its a conspiracy I tells ya.

 

 

[PA.]

 

 

 

 

[Marty_d]

His drivetrain alone blows the 600kg limit. According to that source of all knowledge (Wikipedia), female reindeer are 80-120kg and males are 159-182. Common wisdom gives him 9 reindeer (Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen and Rudolph). If we assume a reasonable level of gender equality and an average weight, that gives around 1250kg for the "engine", not including harness etc. Then you've got that solid-looking sleigh and the fat b*stard himself, and he looks as if he's well over 150kg.

 

However the biggest weight is the cargo. If we assume there's around 1.8 billion kids in the world (age 0 - 14, about 25% of total population), that Santa ignores all cultural / geographical / religious divides and delivers to all of them, and that each gift averages 2 kg... well, you can do the math. Safe to say it's over 600kg.

 

But the sleigh's performance blows away any other aircraft. Assuming an average of 2.36 children per household (this is from Total Fertility Rates calculated by the CIA) that means Santa has around 763 million deliveries to make within 24 hours. Even if he were able to do his "down the chimney" trick in absolutely no time at all, he'd still need to travel at a fair proportion of the speed of light, without allowances for acceleration or deceleration, to do them all. (Not sure if the 600kg limit includes allowances for relativistic mass increase).

 

Soooooo.... either Santa operates outside of normal space and time (in which case there is no government agency with jurisdiction over him) or *gasp* he doesn't exist and it's the parents in western countries that sneak the gifts under the tree. In either case, he's not flying under either RA or GA rules.

 

 

[Admin]

 

 

For info on thru sleigh go to:

 

http://www.airservicesaustralia.com/santa/2013/12/12/explore-santas-sleigh/

 

BUT you won't be able to use an Ipad or Apple device to see it

 

 

[flying dog]

Marty_d I think has it!

 

Santa operates outside time/space! Oh no! I wonder if, somewhere in the sleigh, is a blue police box hidden?

 

Maybe "The DOCTOR" is in cahoots with Santa and helps him??!!

 

Wouldn't that make a good episode for one of the Christmas specials?

 

Though I guess it sort of has been done already.

 

 

[ayavner]

[Gnarly Gnu]

Santa Claus is a cross-dressing transgender fairy* so he just floats along.

 

* Santa = female saint. San = male saint

 

 

[facthunter]

CASA could just add another clause to some CASR. Easy fixed. Merry Christmas folks Nev

 

 

[Nev25]

[Ultralights]

im surprised he can afford to come to OZ now with the costs of all those Airservices charts he needs! and i call fake on the flight plan video, its IMPOSSIBLE to submit a flight plan via NAIPS that quick, or without changing errors into codes you can never understand. i call BS! he would have had at least 10 errors before it was accepted.

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

I'm not so sure that the weight thing is an issue. Each Reindeer would appear to be a self contained aircraft ( when released from the leather bondage can they self sustain flight? I think so...but Im no expert in bondage and have no desire to become one!) and as such the whole sleigh thing appears to me to not be a single aircraft but rather a close flying formation thing.... Which of course requires YAE! (Yet Another Endorsement)

 

What I want to know is that at the speed required to cover the needed distance in the required timeframe, the reindeers must have been trained to produce no No2's in flight........If I was a reindeer, I'd want to be in the front rank......If I was Santa I'd be investigating a pusher design rather than the currant tractor config.

 

Andy

 

 

[timothyb]

Don't know about MTOW on sleigh/reindeers but it does look like he has an aircraft. Looks scratchbuilt to me.

 

 

 

[ayavner]

Looks like a "scratch" is the last thing he'd want in that!