Assembling data from a number of sources and developing a few estimates, we have this estimated breakdown of the program through month end November.
With the tests in Wichita not easy to track, we believe this is a reasonably close approximation of how the program has been doing since tests started again.
Our sources suggest that November was indeed a very good month. All four aircraft flew and did similar numbers of hours. The three month gap was clearly a setback. Had those months seen flight tests, the curve would be a more pronounced “hockey stick”.
Based on our estimates of ~650 hours to date, we have 1,740 hours to go to reach 2,400. This means each of the four FTVs needs to generate 43.5 hours per month for the next ten months. Now throw in the CS300s to be added to the FTV fleet, and you can see how quickly the hours can build.
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It’s interesting to see the decrease in flight test hours in March-April-May 2014 (engine blew on May 29). Could this indicate that trouble was brewing with the engines during that time? Then, the May 29 failure might have been the culmination of continuing unsuccessful attempts to fix the now-acknowledged design problem in the lubricating system.
What’s happening with FTV 5? It has been fitted out with airline seating and apparently engines have been installed. Is it flying at all?
Are you confident in the robustness of your source’s data? For example FTV2 flew 68 hours in November but that doesn’t seem to have been captured in your graph.
We have 30 hours for FTV2 in November
Where did you get 68 hours from?