Flight Times: Block and Stick

In fact, the “block” flight hours are plumper because they include the times for starting up, taxiing and shutting down, while the “stick” flight hours are the pure and simple time spent in flight, with the wheels off the ground.

“Block = Stick + Engine Start + Warm Up + Pre-Takeoff Taxi + Post-Takeoff Taxi + + Cool Down + Engine Stop.”

It’s called “Block” because when you start the engine they “remove the blocks” from under the wheels of the plane, while stick I don’t know… maybe because you pull the stick to take off!!

For example, pilots’ duty times are calculated with “block” times because when the doors close the commander begins to be responsible for his duties.

Plane tickets have “block” times written on them (also called block-to-block, meaning from when they remove the blocks to when they replace them at your destination) because passengers need to know when to board and disembark and they don’t care how long it takes you to taxi.

The “stick” times instead are used for maintenance because the engines and the fuselage are not subjected to particular stress during taxiing and do not age as much as when they are in flight (once it was measured with a switch on the nose gear now there are computers that even based on the flight conditions tell you if that minute of flight has aged (stressed) the machine 100% or more or less depending on the algorithms loaded by the manufacturer. Then there are the cycles… but this is another story!

Interesting?

Perhaps for those who are just starting to fly, this information is not immediately available, but it could be useful for those who want to buy a plane and understand how maintenance works, or for a student who sees a technical logbook for the first time!