Question

Find out about the nominal cruise altitudes of any three aircraft types (you can also give a range of values, and cite the references). When you do the flight performance analyses at those altitude, you will need to use the gravitational acceleration and in most cases the sea level value g0 is used. Let us know what you think about that.

Answer 1

Nominal Cruise Altitude of 3 aircraft types:

1.) Small Charter Planes/ Private Jets have a cruising altitudes in the range of 25000-40000 ft.

2.) Helicopters have cruising altitudes in the range of 10000-25000 ft.

3.) Light Sport Aircraft have cruising altitudes upper limit of around 10000 ft.

In my opinion, when doing flight perfonce analyses at those high altitudes, the value of gravitational acceleration at sea level should not be used because the value of 'g' varies with height and In cases such as flight (or aircrafts) where reliability is one of the most important concerns, value of 'g' should not used what at the sea level. It can significantly vary the final results.