What If The Airplane Won’t Let You Lose Control?

What if we designed aircraft, and their systems, to prevent loss of control accidents? What would that look like?

Something like Cirrus Aircraft’s Safe Return Emergency Autoland…But more. Lots more.

Auto manufacturers have added various levels of self-driving systems in today’s cars. Why not aircraft?

Sure, we have autopilots, and the aforementioned Autoland in certain aircraft, but I’m thinking of holistic aircraft and systems that won’t let the aircraft harm its occupants or those on the ground below.

This needn’t be a “2001: A Space Odyssey” moment. Hal will indeed open the pod bay door, he just won’t let you stall the aircraft.

For those unaware, like I was until very recently, Skytron is a small team of developers seeking to bring a new four-seat, twin-engine plane to market.

From the company’s website: “Full envelope protection won’t let you stall, spin, or fly into terrain. Prevents the piloting mistakes that cause 80% of accidents.”

That is a bold statement. 

But why not?

If you get to start from a clean sheet of paper and have access to a recently updated certification pathway, courtesy of MOSAIC, why can’t this become a reality?

The company’s videos and website lay out some of how it plans to accomplish such a lofty goal:

• Redundancy. Check.
• Airframe parachute. Check.
• Three flight control computers. Check.
• Loads of sensors and data paths. Check.
• Multiple independent power supplies. Check.
• Two engines. Check.

Out of the gate, Skytron officials state fly-by-wire and autonomy are at the heart of the aircraft. 

“You cannot build this by taking a 1970s cockpit and taping AI onto the panel,” says Greg Mercer, Skytron’s co-founder.

The same likely goes for the airframe. It needs to be designed with the operating system in mind.

The company has selected Rotax’s 916iS engines, which produce 160 horsepower and are turbocharged. But most importantly, the engines come equipped with FADEC (Full Authority Digital Engine Control). 

I wish I’d had FADEC on the Cessna 205 I was flying when the engine hiccuped. I was a distracted pilot, in a very busy cockpit flying through busy airspace, when I failed to properly lean the engine as we climbed. Everything turned out fine. 

Skytron’s system would never let the hiccup happen in the first place.

When I wrote about it, I recall a few readers taking me to task for allowing myself to become distracted. I expected that. But one person said they prefered to manually fine tune the mixture for optimum performance. Good for them, but I’d rather let a computer optimize the fuel flow. 

But that’s just me.

Will Skytron make it to market? Time will tell.

If it doesn’t, hopefully all the time spent at the keyboard designing the operating system that will make it all possible won’t go to waste.

But if it does succeed, all the better.

To be clear, this isn’t a system for the 1946 Piper J-3 Cub I have the privilege of flying. This will be for a whole new class of aircraft.

To the good folks at Skytron, keep me posted. 

I’m rooting for you.