This article may either excite you or annoy you.
I understand. I have mixed feelings about a new class of airplanes I don’t understand as well as familiar, legacy ones.
Perhaps like you, I’m annoyed because I didn’t foresee this and because these new proposed machines are not my experience over many decades of flight. Nonetheless I’m also excited as I enjoy new technologies and how they can help us in myriad ways.
However, it may not matter what you or I think.
You and I may be the veteran pilots of the USA (and perhaps the world). We have years of experience. Americans account for around half of all the pilots, half of the airplanes, and half of the flight hours in the world.
Yet much like veterans of the auto industry, we are in danger (or is it a benefit?) of being upended by the world of tech. The Information Age is upon aviation in ways we never envisioned.
Tech’s Many Benefits
Those in the Light-Sport Aircraft world — and a growing number of GA aircraft — now have gorgeous screens in our cockpits that are quite inexpensively replacing a panel of round dials, while also supplying us with much more information, even synthetic vision.
Every pilot can use an iPad to dynamically plan and map his or her flight in ways we couldn’t envision just five years ago.
Airframes are increasingly made of composite, often carbon fiber. Titanium has found increasing use as well.
Everyone has a GPS and more are acquiring ADS-B technology that delivers real-time traffic and weather to the cockpit.
Airframe parachutes and safety cell (crush zone) technology are making pilots safer than ever.
Autopilots and angle of attack indicators on contemporary sport planes are inexpensive and work well. They allow “Level” and “180° Turn” buttons that respond with a single tap.
Highly fuel efficient, computer-controlled powerplants are common in LSA. These engines output far less emissions. They are also significantly quieter. You may not care about that, but airport neighbors certainly do. Imagine what happens if aircraft of the future all go electric.
In short, the entrepreneurs, scientists, engineers, and visionaries of aviation have delivered much better aircraft while lowering the price points (at least for some aircraft types).
Most of these developments — and technologies well beyond these — may be incorporated in the aircraft of tomorrow. Will you assimilate these changes? Is resistance futile?
What’s the Plan?
While I doubt airliner behemoths Boeing or Airbus are aiming to create aircraft you might buy, their work, along with other developers, may nonetheless lead to something new in the future for recreational aircraft pilots and buyers.
On the last day of January 2018, the Airbus-funded Vahana Alpha One spent 53 seconds aloft, under its own power and autonomous control. It reached a height of 16′.
Big deal, huh? While a 53-second flight may not sound like much, look what followed after the Wright brothers’ even shorter flight a century ago. Humankind went from primitive powered flight to landing on the moon in 66 years and the pace of development is vastly faster today.
Executives from Airbus, Boeing, and several other billion-dollar companies say the flights of the experimental aircraft seen with this article mark “the start of a fundamental change in the way we get around.”
Alpha One’s brief flight represents a full-scale demonstration of a single-person, vertical takeoff and landing aircraft.
“The idea is to remake the way we fly,” say developers.
They are talking about autonomous transportation, but what if these aircraft get (relatively) cheap and become available to pilots who want to fly them by their own hand — or at least by their own decisions?
Instead of piling dozens or hundreds of people into big jets that fly back and forth between airports, these little VTOL aircraft would work much like personal cars, taking a few people (or just one) on short trips in and around cities.
Thirty Vahana engineers, funded by $150 million from Airbus, worked for two years to make their aircraft ready for its January flight. This investment is a staggering sum in the world of light aviation. That’s more than Cirrus spent to develop and certify its SR series that has become aviation’s biggest selling single-engine piston aircraft — all to provide one single-seat demonstrator.
Sooner Than You Think?
In another story, through a pairing with Boeing, ride hailing pioneer Uber reportedly plans to launch air taxi networks in Dubai and Dallas — as soon as 2020. Again, we’re talking autonomous, but these aircraft could easily be configured for on-board-human operation.
You are most unlikely to buy an air taxi… even if you might take one sometime in the future, just as we’ve learned to do with the Ubers and Lyfts of the world. Air taxis, whatever their size, will serve a transportation role. In addition, to pass regulatory approval, they will surely be more expensive than one flown by a decision-making human.
You may see nothing wrong with the transportation role, but those of us involved with recreational flying prefer to do the piloting, to enjoy the skies in our own personal way.
Yet does that mean you would refuse to fly a quad- or octocopter, especially if it was mass produced, affordable, safe and enjoyable to fly?
What if this thing could be flown with regular controls like the aircraft you presently love? What if it turned out to be a hoot to fly? What it if had capabilities beyond your present aircraft?
My radio-controlled drone flies well in wind. Its gyro-stabilized camera is amazingly smooth even in gusty conditions …and mine is already an antique, a whole two years old.
Will the future of recreational flying be transformed the way Vahana developers and Uber envision? A glance at electric autos lead by Tesla with its autopilot capability suggests driving in the future may be remarkably different, possibly safer, possibly more eco-friendly, possibly even more fun in ways we cannot currently imagine.
Could tomorrow’s sport aircraft be radical revolutions? Or will this all die down and we’ll just keep flying the aircraft we have today?
I feel fairly sure recreational flying isn’t threatened by these new developments but the aircraft we fly might evolve to become vastly different than what we have at the start of 2018. Stay tuned…!
Recreation or Transportation?
Ride-hailing services have upended the taxi industry and, no matter how you feel about it, that service is unlikely to change because users love them. Uber and Lyft in this country and copycats around the world are changing the way we hire an automobile to carry us around town.
Aircraft, like the ones shown in this post, may completely change how people move around big cities.
Indeed, Uber has announced its vision for a future in which metropolitan areas are served with “vertiports” — tiny airports where small VTOL airplanes take off and land. I imagine these aircraft landing in your driveway to haul you to an important meeting or a doctor appointment across town. Your driveway may be big enough if your neighbors don’t object.
In Uber’s vision for a decade from now, someone traveling from San Francisco to San Jose (a trip that can take two hours in traffic) might take a short self-driving Uber car ride to a vertiport, hop on a self-driving VTOL airplane that takes a 15-minute flight to a San Jose vertiport, and then catch a second self-driving taxi to their destination. Uber estimates such a flight will initially cost $130, but it could become as cheap as $20 in the long run.
Less ambitious goals include enabling more affordable short-haul flights between regional airports.
Not only can short-range electric airplane flights be more energy-efficient, but self-flying airplane technology may eventually eliminate the need for pilots on small, short-range flights. This could allow the flights to be even cheaper and might revitalize smaller airports where operating large conventional commercial airplanes doesn’t make sense, aviation visionaries suggest.
Hello … My name is Carlos and I found your website by accident while looking for another aeronautical topic of my interest. I am 70 years old and I was born and raised, grew up, did most of my studies and jobs in my country. I got married and lived most of my life in Argentina (mainly in the city and province of Córdoba). Currently, I am 70 years old and retired but I was able to join a private pilot with an IFR rating, to work in the technical sector of an aircraft factory and as an independent external consultant in a private airline. I also performed other interesting aeronautical activities in Brazil where I was able to log a significant number of flight hours. In college, I took 75% of a systems analysis course, to which I added 3 “estágios” on computer topics and some robotics. I also was a private teacher of foreign languages (English, French, Italian and Portuguese as well as Spanish for foreign students), mathematics and computer science and also worked for more than two decades in an official bank. During all that time I could notice that my interest in topics related to aviation, airplanes and flight remained intact but for reasons beyond my own wishes, I was forced to move away from piloting activities 23 years ago and to accept to use flight simulation software on a personal computer, but as many times as I can I accept invitations from friends to go flying from people who are still active. I am confident that having joined your website will allow me to keep in touch with facts and news from the beautiful world of aviation. Thank you for reading this long, long self introduction. I formally promise that my subsequent messages will be much shorter.
If they make one who will be able to afford it? I will take a 50 year old Cessna 150.
Yes, the C-150 is a rugged classic that puts many thin-skinned LSAs to shame, at a fraction of the cost.
FAA – Forget About Advancement!
“Airframe parachutes and safety cell (crush zone) technology are making pilots safer than ever.”
No – they are making the aircraft more crash survivable. Not pilots safer.
And if the auto industry with multiple airbags, crush zones, safety cells, belt tensioners and the like is anything to go by – people still crash cars just as much because they have a feeling of invulnerability brought about by these “safety” enhancements. In fact there is evidence to suggest they take bigger risks because of these features.
Let’s call airframe parachutes and safety cells what they really are. Emergency survival design devices – but let’s not credit them with making pilots “safer”.
You are mincing words.
The safety technology in a Cirrus (blue level button, chute, anti-stall wing, FIKI, g-seats, airbags, ADS-B, terrain warnings, IR camera). EVERYONE in the plane safer, pilot included.
Need a definition of safety? “the condition of being protected from or unlikely to cause danger, risk, or injury.”
So if your engine suddenly goes silent you wouldn’t want an airframe parachute or safety cell technology in your aircraft??
With regard to auto technology, from 1979 to 2005, the number of deaths in auto crashes per year decreased 14.97% while the number of deaths per capita decreased by 35.46%.
FAA will approve electric flight when significant players put significant pressure on them. The FAA has proved to be flexible in the past, with ultra-lights, LSA, Part 23 rewrite, even Icon’s weight waiver. And they were pushed into Basic Med. If Boeing and Airbus are serious about electric-powered air taxis, they’ll find a way to put pressure on the FAA and/or Congress to approve their operation.
On the other hand, the grassroots GA community has fought against 100LL replacement tooth and nail for decades, so the FAA is in no rush to approve a fuel that would cause an uproar.
(I like the Lilium jet concept. No big blades.)
Please elaborate on your contention that “grassroots GA” has fought against a replacement for 100LL. Id love to know how you arrived at that conclusion as the reason a replacement has yet not been approved.
If the FAA’s approved new fuel isn’t the greatest thing since sliced bread, the howls from GA pilots will be fierce. Not from all, but from enough that you’ll hear it loud and clear. Every time their engine so much as runs rough, they’ll blame the fuel. If the fuel seems to cause any problems with any engines anywhere, the lawsuits will be plentiful.
For years I’ve heard snide comments from GA pilots about how the lead in 100LL doesn’t hurt anything, that it’s all a plot by the EPA tree huggers, that their trusty Lycoming engines are just fine with the tried and true fuel, that any replacement would cost more, etc. etc. etc.. The commercial suppliers dragged their feet for decades on the lead issue and the GA community didn’t do anything to push for change and claimed that any change would be too costly for struggling FBOs. Add the constant background grumbling about the FAA and government in general about this, that, and everything else.
Nevertheless, the FAA finally stepped in and took over the no-lead replacement issue. Sure, they’ve been systematic and slow, getting proposals for fuel, winnowing them down, getting them thoroughly tested. I’d like to see the new fuel certified sooner than later and put into production as soon as possible. The FAA’s schedule shows completion of testing in December, 2018.
It’s easy to throw out a remark that implies that the FAA is bumbling the unleaded fuel effort. It’s almost as easy to look up their plans and schedule, and see what to expect.
The very tone of the comments that the FAA is incompetent for not making the new fuel appear, shows how careful they have to be. I never hear “we demand no-lead fuel”; it’s always “the FAA can’t do anything right”.
“Fought tooth and nail” is too strong for you? How about “shooting ourselves in the foot” or “stuck in the mud” or “living in the past” “curmudgeonly”, or “just plain contrary”? I see all those.
The only problem with your contention is that the FAA is ultimately responsible for approving the fuel that can be used in GA engines, not GA pilots, EPA or the state of California. If anyone has been foot dragging here it’s FAA not the fuel suppliers or the market. In my part of the GA world I don’t hear any bellyaching about unleaded fuel in fact most pilots I know are looking forward to it. I’ve freighted 94UL from the local convienience store to my old airplane for years and I’d love to have the option for my 100 octane engine too.
We should have an “FAA Appreciation Day” each year (FAAADay). Their bureaucracy has done so much to aviation. It’s about time somebody comes out and defense the accomplishments or the possible future accomplishments of the FAA. Who knows what great plans the FAA has in store for the dying aviation industry?
Only congress knows….
There are other alternatives:
1) Sit in our hangars and grumble about how the FAA is the cause of all of GA’s problems, or
2) Do what all the effective lobbyists do, and lean on the FAA & Congress to fix the regulations that are causing real problems.
Every once in awhile the FAA (and/or Congress) move in a direction that’s favorable to GA. Like the Part 23 rewrite, Basic Med (half a loaf), even the much-resented Icon A5 weight limit waiver. Most bureaucracies will move if pushed in the right way. It’s a lot more work than just grumbling, but it’s a lot more effective.
You think anybody reading this article will see the day the FAA certifies one of these concepts?
How’s that 100LL replacement working out?
You think the FAA will approve electric flight in less then twenty years? I’ll like to bet someone but I won’t be around to collect. There’s not even a homebuilt example of these autonomous electric ideas. Keep dreaming……
The Lillium Jet makers showed us a video of their entire first flight. Good for them.
Vahana showed us the last few seconds of their first flight. Did they perhaps experience ground effect feedback roll on takeoff? R & D is going to take a long, long, time.