I’ve noticed lately that I fly more and more slowly and pay more and more attention to fuel flow. Clearly this behavior is related to the rising cost of fuel; as it goes up, the best speed to fly goes down. But that relationship – speed divided by fuel flow – must be corrected by a scaling effect related to one’s impatience, anxiety regarding disposable income, age, number of children in college and so on. No doubt one could construct a long equation, loaded with fractional exponents whose values would vary from day to day, and whose solution is the reading on my airspeed indicator.
At a first glance you might suppose that by slowing down I was doing nothing more complicated than trying to maximize my airplane’s specific range, or what in common parlance is called its gas mileage. If that is the case I’m not doing a very good job of it, because that number, which is about 25 nautical miles per gallon for Melmoth 2 at 12,000 feet – I usually cruise as high as I can without needing oxygen – is achieved at an indicated airspeed of 100 knots. I’m going slower, but I’m not going that slow.
