#1770: EscalAidor

Large transport planes fly fast with huge loads but are currently incapable of vertical take off and landing.

Today’s invention is to equip a large transporter plane with a set of strong hooks on its upper fuselage surface.

This would enable a handful of heavy-lift helicopters, flying temporarily from a remote mountainside, to take off, attach to the plane and fly with it until the airspeed was sufficiently low for them to land the transporter vertically.

The reverse process for subsequent takeoff of the empty plane would certainly require no additional helicopters.

In this way, remote regions could be serviced, with eg repeated emergency aid supplies, very rapidly and from very far away.

2 Comments:

  1. I should have said that this is particularly applicable to situations in which an airdrop won’t work eg with delicate cargo or when items need to arrive at a particular spot, rather than fall into the wrong hands 200m away.

  2. Assuming the helicopters are clamped directly to the fuselage, initially the plane could be flown a long distance to the target with them attached (blades folded). On arrival, the rotor blades would deploy at low air speed and the helicopters lower the plane to the ground on cables.

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