The vacuum system

The vacuum pump, which gyroscopic instruments depend on it, and why its failure is easy to miss.

9 min read · The airplane: engine and systems

On airplanes with a traditional instrument panel, two gyroscopic instruments are spun by suction produced by an engine-driven vacuum pump. That design creates a single point of failure, and the failure is unusually quiet: on many airplanes, nothing sounds an alarm when the pump quits.

The rest of this lesson

  1. 1.How the system works
  2. 2.Which instruments depend on it
  3. 3.Detecting a vacuum failure
  4. 4.The relief valve and airflow path
  5. 5.Maintenance, redundancy, and modern avionics

These 5 sections, their figures, the checks along the way and the end-of-lesson quiz come with the PPL track. Paid once, yours for good.

See what the PPL track costsEvery module 1 is free to read, no account, no card.

Key terms

Try to recall each definition before turning the card.