It occurred to me that the increased efficiency might find these a niche as rapid trans-oceanic transport, but 15 feet from the surface is too low for waves likely to be encountered in ocean storms.
Another problem would be all kinds of boats and other planes in ground effect. The see is two dimensional, unlike airspace, which makes it quite a bit harder for a fast moving Ekranoplan or similar to weave through slower traffic. It would be a continuous game of frogger with the occasional direct hit likely resulting in loss of both vehicles. The sea is not a very forgiving environment and avoiding collisions at the slow speeds normally used on the water is already hard enough. Imagine a plane in ground effect having to cross a busy shipping lane in bad weather.
Planes colliding is very rare but it does happen occasionally even though they have 3 dimensions to work with. If you'd compress that traffic to two dimensions and then add slow moving commercial vessels, sail boats and weather into the mix I fear it won't end well.
At some considerable increase in fuel consumption Ekranoplans can 'jump' up a bit, keep it up long enough and you won't have enough fuel to reach the destination. This is also how they make turns. There are also hybrids that can fly at some altitude like a normal plane that just exploit the ground effect to increase efficiency. As opposed to those that are almost always in ground effect.
These are super interesting craft, you can easily spend a week just reading about them.
Mid-air collisions are rare first and foremost because most flights happen in controlled airspace with assigned flight levels, routes and ATC monitoring the flights on radar (and TCAS as a last resort for collision avoidance). Mid-air collisions are far more common in uncontrolled airspace where light airplanes fly.
So the answer would be to provide controlled areas for the ekranoplans to travel and monitor those "seaspaces" for infringing traffic.
Midair collisions not near an airport are vanishingly rare. The takeaway from that for me is that concentrating traffic (such as would happen when you take one degree of freedom away) would materially increase the risk.
They're also rare in absolute terms, even including the near-airport ones.
Given the size of these ‘planes’, they could possibly even act as train ferries! Imagine your standard high-speed train going into a plane to get from, say, Rome to Barcelona (or Bari to Athens or Warnemünde to Helsinki…).
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It occurred to me that the increased efficiency might find these a niche as rapid trans-oceanic transport, but 15 feet from the surface is too low for waves likely to be encountered in ocean storms.
Another problem would be all kinds of boats and other planes in ground effect. The see is two dimensional, unlike airspace, which makes it quite a bit harder for a fast moving Ekranoplan or similar to weave through slower traffic. It would be a continuous game of frogger with the occasional direct hit likely resulting in loss of both vehicles. The sea is not a very forgiving environment and avoiding collisions at the slow speeds normally used on the water is already hard enough. Imagine a plane in ground effect having to cross a busy shipping lane in bad weather.
Planes colliding is very rare but it does happen occasionally even though they have 3 dimensions to work with. If you'd compress that traffic to two dimensions and then add slow moving commercial vessels, sail boats and weather into the mix I fear it won't end well.
At some considerable increase in fuel consumption Ekranoplans can 'jump' up a bit, keep it up long enough and you won't have enough fuel to reach the destination. This is also how they make turns. There are also hybrids that can fly at some altitude like a normal plane that just exploit the ground effect to increase efficiency. As opposed to those that are almost always in ground effect.
These are super interesting craft, you can easily spend a week just reading about them.
Mid-air collisions are rare first and foremost because most flights happen in controlled airspace with assigned flight levels, routes and ATC monitoring the flights on radar (and TCAS as a last resort for collision avoidance). Mid-air collisions are far more common in uncontrolled airspace where light airplanes fly.
So the answer would be to provide controlled areas for the ekranoplans to travel and monitor those "seaspaces" for infringing traffic.
Midair collisions not near an airport are vanishingly rare. The takeaway from that for me is that concentrating traffic (such as would happen when you take one degree of freedom away) would materially increase the risk.
They're also rare in absolute terms, even including the near-airport ones.
Don't discount the weather. Aircraft at 30K feet are in an entirely different environment than those skimming the waves of the oceans.
It might be useful in the mediterranean. There's plenty of traffic between Italy and Greece and places further away such as Cyprus.
Given the size of these ‘planes’, they could possibly even act as train ferries! Imagine your standard high-speed train going into a plane to get from, say, Rome to Barcelona (or Bari to Athens or Warnemünde to Helsinki…).
I’ll stop hallucinating now.