The website recently received a email with a great question that should be answered in a blogpost more than just a personal response.
How well can I rely on the information provided from your website and analysis?
First, the website is composed of two types of information.
Airline/Pilot Career dedicated information and General Aviation information.
Airline/Pilot Career information rely’s on three specific categories of information.
- Pilot Mandatory Retirements – which rely on updates I receive periodically from volunteers.
- Aircraft Retirements
- Aircraft Orders
The Aircraft Retirements/Orders relies mostly on information made publicly available by airlines themselves. It creates a mosiac/picture of future aircraft retirements and orders. Sometimes some guesses have to be made to complete the picture. With some airlines this has to made with the help of volunteers who may have a connection to that airline.
The General Aviation information has varying levels of accuracy. The highest level of accuracy is Audries Certified Aircraft. These are aircraft where the POH/AFM has been looked at for the specific model of aircraft. Performance Stats and Limitations have been gleaned from these POH/AFM’s. The charted performance data from these POH/AFMs is what composes the optimum flight profile calculator where users can plug in various parameters and determine the most fuel efficient climb profile, power setting and altitude for a given cross country.
In addition to this all of the Type Certificate information and the STC data has been pulled directly from the FAA, so barring some currency issues as it is update every few months it should be pretty reliable.
The remaining GA aircraft performance specs have been gleaned and compared from various sources, and in many times averages have had to be made or numbers that were the most consistent chosen. This is the least accurate information. It is the websites hope to update all of the GA aircraft with verified POH/AFM information.
With any venture of this sort especially where the majority of the information is presented for free, such things as update frequency, interpolation can limit accuracy. The Pilot/Demand report put out in February this year makes transparency a priority in the hopes the reader will be able to verify for themselves data as it provides sources for the majority of the data.
The viewership of this website owes a lot to the various volunteers that act as sources regarding specific airlines and aircraft. If anyone is interested in volunteering please contact the website at audriesaircraftanalysis at Gmail.
