Quote:
2. -Aircraft 40 nautical miles away, at 30,000 ft descending at 3000ft per minute and travelling at 240 knots.. can it make it?
Can anyone show me how to do the equation for this question please?
Does stage 1 get harder than this?
Ok, this is a fairly straight forward bit of maths dressed up in a scenario.
The easiest way to think about these is to ignor the story and look at the numbers.
There are two key questions, which are:
1/ How long will it take the aircraft to reach the airport?
and
2/ How long before the aircraft hits the ground?
The aircraft is travelling at 240 knts, which is 240 nautical miles per hour. by deviding by 60 (minutes) you get the aircrafts speed per minute in knts. In this case every minute the aircraft will travel 4 miles. So the answer to question 1 is 40 (distance) / 4 (Speed) = Time =
10 minutes
Now for the second question, the aircraft is falling at 3000 feet per minute. This is just another speed/distance/time question dressed up differently. The units have changed (feet per minute rather than miles per hour) but the maths is the same. so you know the speed, you know the distance, so again what you need is the time. So the answer to question 2 is 30000 (distance) / 3000 (speed) = Time
= 10 minutes
So to answer the main question, the aircraft will take 10 minutes to cover the 240nm to the airfield, and it will fall out of the sky in 10 minutes, so the answer is they will make it, if only just.
Most question you will get will be like this. The key is not to panic and just see the two simple maths equations rather than one complex one.
Simples.