How Aircraft Stay In The Air

In ,
Sarah Hotdesking radiated
into the WorldWideWait:

I received this today:-

There are still people in this company who think we weigh aircraft
to find out how much they weigh, not to calculate stresses. Of
course we need to know how much the thing weighs. How are we ever
going to know how many Thrust Pixies we need to get the thing off
the ground if we don't know the weight? Or should that be "Lift
Demons"? Pixies have largely fallen into disrepute - something
about Bernoulli not being representative in unbounded conditions
and cause and effect being transposed in the Newtonian model.

In fact the use of Lift Demons on civil aircraft programmes is
generally not that good an idea. The Demon binding contract tends
to specify payment in blood or souls. This is readily achievable
with aircraft of military function, but frowned upon in civilian
circles as they may attempt to acquire payment outside of the terms
of their binding contract. Lift Demons are not used on Elf bombers.
We don't talk about Lift Pixies too often as it seems to upset the
self-loading cargo.

Pixies require payment in cakes, flowers or nice thoughts. These
are readily sourced either from the in-flight catering, or provided
cost-free by the passengers. Clearly this would not work well
within an operational military environment. Air force cooking is
not renowned for the "light and fluffy texture" that Thrust Pixies
demand, the availability of flowers might be problematic in desert
operations, and nice thoughts may also be hard to find during times
of active operations.

There is also a scalability issue. While one rampant Lift Demon
would have few problems supporting a fighter aircraft (particularly
if there is an immediate prospect of blood), it'll struggle to
achieve level controlled flight of a 560tonne Airbus A380. Use of
more than one Lift Demon on the same flight vehicle is
contra-indicated (they squabble and eat each other). Communities of
Thrust Pixies can be encouraged to work together on the same
aircraft by the provision of advanced technologies such as Lemon
fondant icing, variegated tulips or in-flight romantic comedies.

Ryanair once requested Leprachauns be installed in place of Lift
Pixies, but leprechauns have a mission statement which indicates
their desire for monetary gain, and their willingness to search all
over the world for it. This makes Lift Leprechauns expensive to
keep (gold vs lemon fondant icing), and makes it difficult to
establish a regular route network as the Lift Leprechauns don't
like to continuously visit the same locations. By law, aircraft
also have to have a full complement of In-Flight Gremlins, but
these are generally not a problem unless you feed the Wingtip
Vortex Faeries after midnight.

Uh-huh. Oookaayyy...
--
From the one-and-only Holy Moses®