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hahamrfunnyguy 2024-08-05 17:50 UTC link

As a paraglider pilot (unpowered), I will say that the technical aspects of flying the aircraft are only a small part of what's involved in a flight - as you point out.

It's a bad idea to get pilots in the air with less training. People can't safely pilot cars in two dimensions.

Making the avionics easier to use and more affordable sounds like the actual winning product.

daft_pink 2024-08-05 17:56 UTC link

I disagree with your assessment. I think that the core problem with GA is that most people in the United States want to travel distances beyond what an affordable GA aircraft can in a single flight. I live in the midwest and I generally want to travel to the East or West coast or Southwest or Florida and the range of a Cessna just isn’t going to cut it. The only practical vehicle would be a Phenom 300 or Honda Jet II, but I don’t have $8 million lying around.

Reality is that without North American continental range, it just isn’t worth it to go get a pilots license and buy a plane for the few trips that I can just easily drive. Maybe if I lived in Boston, General Aviation would be great, but for many Americans who live in areas in the middle that aren’t near large airports, the range of these aircraft just make them expensive toys that aren’t very useful for the size of North America.

bronco21016 2024-08-05 18:17 UTC link

So basically a GA Airbus. I think this is a pretty cool project, and while it may not achieve the lofty goals you’ve set forth, any improvement in safety is worthwhile.

As other commenters have point out though, where this stuff falls short is ultimately still the human. Ok, great… your aircraft won’t stall in Normal Law. However you’ve now lost a generator and a whole FCC and you’re in direct law. The 400 hr pilot hasn’t actually flown a plane with direct input since their primary training 5 years ago. They also don’t remember what the different flight envelopes do and do not provide. Essentially the system is more complex but normally it works so the complexity is hidden. They’re not equipped to handle flying the airplane anymore.

This is where GA really ultimately falls short IMHO, proficiency. Airlines are the safest they’ve ever been because the pilots make an entire career out of being prepared for every contingency. People using airplanes as a personal travel tool can be trained and proficient to the same degree but often they are not because flying an aircraft is ancillary to their primary mission.

stetrain 2024-08-05 18:28 UTC link

> In the US, trips that are 50-300 miles are almost all done by car because that distance is too short for commercial airlines and too far for public transportation.

A bit off-topic but this is a political problem, not a technical one. Trips of 50-300 miles are certainly within the operating range of fast and efficient rail travel as demonstrated in multiple places around the world outside of the US.

Majestic121 2024-08-05 19:18 UTC link

While I think the project is pretty cool, I can't shake the pollution side of things out of my mind.

Air transport is one of the most polluting ways to travel, and I would expect a single person airplane is even worse than a full A380.

Is there anything you're doing to alleviate this issue ?

dotancohen 2024-08-05 19:22 UTC link

  > Flying a small airplane is complicated, mentally taxing, and dangerous—about 28x more dangerous than driving a car.

  > Our system makes it impossible to lose control of the airplane, potentially solving 80% of today’s fatal accidents in general aviation.

So this system is still at least five times as dangerous as driving a car? Is that considered safe enough for you to take liability in case of an accident, as e.g. Mercedes does with their vehicular auto-driving system?

purplerhino 2024-08-05 19:28 UTC link

What are the environmental implications of transitioning people traveling by car/train to small planes? In addition to being louder and dispersing pollutants over a wider area, don't small planes generate significantly more GHG emissions than cars over the same number of miles?

Also, given that planes are not nearly as easy to electrify as cars and trains (energy density is significantly lower in batteries than liquid fuel), it seems unlikely the planet will ever be able to support significant volumes of personal air transit. What are your thoughts on that?

sethkim 2024-08-05 19:45 UTC link

Instrument-rated pilot (and engineer) here.

First - congrats on the launch! I think you're working on an interesting set of components that will prove useful to GA aircraft technology. Bringing fly-by-wire, and lowering the cost of maintenance/manufacturing are both great efforts.

That being said, my personal view is that stick-and-rudder control is one of the less critical components to improving GA safety. Everything else - flight planning, comms, automation, navigation, weather, inspections, procedures, regs, and most importantly - working in the federal airspace system - are the "hard" parts of flying and where problems tend to occur. It's common belief that single-pilot IFR is the most challenging type of flying, because of how much you have to do all at once.

It may sound snobby - but I'm not super excited about the idea of lowering the barrier to entry for GA on a foundational skill basis. Like the light-sport rating, it encourages more people to be in the (already congested) airspace system who haven't really gained all the other skills necessary or experience to be there.

To be clear - I think improving technology and lowering costs = good. Lowering early-skill requirements for pilots and pushing more people without all the other skills into federal airspace = very bad. In general, I'd frame this effort more as an effort to raise the bar for system technology, not lower the bar to become a pilot in the first place.

mattmaroon 2024-08-05 20:05 UTC link

I was shocked when learning to fly how much GA tech was stuck in some weird pre-World War II era state. Everything seems so needlessly complicated. Even small aircraft cost so much that I couldn’t imagine a computer controlled system and fly by wire would be cost prohibitive. Even a new C172 is close to $400k at the low end, and anything you’d actually want to fly is much more. A few grand in electronics seems worth it and can probably easily save itself back quickly in added fuel economy and maintenance, not to mention any monetary value you might place on your safety.

But then I watched as the ADS-B mandate (or whatever you want to call it) came into effect and GA enthusiasts started tossing around concentration camp metaphors. So many of the people in the industry are very old and just don’t want anything to change.

Also shocking is how expensive everything is. It’s like new blockbuster prescription drugs, and perhaps for similar reasons (FAA testing is maybe very expensive?) but with no expiration date. At least in 25 years that new drug will be cheap, adding a simple GPS to your plane is still going to cost more than your Lexus.

It feels like the real problem in this industry is lack of competition. There’s a chicken and egg problem: planes are expensive because so few people buy them, but so few people buy them because they’re expensive.

Light sport aircraft were supposed to be the solution, but the difficulty of flying (which you’re addressing) seems to have precluded that.

All of which is to say: you’ve got a wide open field here and I hope you do well at it, aviation needs this.

imoverclocked 2024-08-05 20:21 UTC link

Congrats on the launch!

> The core of what makes a good pilot isn’t stick and rudder skills; it’s good decision making and risk management.

At best, this is only half of the story. What separates GA operations from airline operations in terms of safety is much more involved than that:

- GA (Part 91) flight hours are not recorded so safety data can only be estimated

- Part 91 incidents follow much less scrutiny than part 121 or part 135 incidents

- Part 91 lacks consistent checklists/flows and rigorous training for many particular aircraft

- Passenger airlines in the US (Part 121) have

  - pilots that go through rigorous training and check rides on a schedule

  - chief pilots that oversee operations

  - chief pilots that continuously refine procedures 

  - data collection and monitoring for many variables of flight

    eg: exceeding an accepted bank angle while under manual flight control

  - ... and so much more that part 91 lacks

In practically every example so far in aviation, adding automation makes things harder, not easier. In general, the more complex the automation, the harder it is to understand and safeguard against failure.

One safety factor in a lot of small GA planes is that pilots can often lose all power (engine, electrical, etc) and still fly and land their aircraft. Fly by wire removes that ability. Not being able to competently fly the plane coordinated also removes that ability.

The question I think you are not addressing is: there has been a lot of effort to do exactly what you are doing. What sets your approach apart from those efforts?

Zak 2024-08-05 22:13 UTC link

This reminds me of programming languages designed with an English-like syntax in the hope that people would be able to develop software without learning to code. It also reminds me a bit of the Ercoupe, an airplane designed in 1937 with the ailerons and rudders mechanically coupled so that pilots would have fewer controls to operate and reduced ability to put the airplane into uncoordinated flight.

Neither approach has remained popular into the modern era. Of course it also reminds me of Airbus, which has a similarly simplified fly-by-wire control system that abstracts away the details of controlling the aircraft under normal conditions. Airbus promised that system, introduced on the A320 would make planes uncrashable, which pilots promptly disproved on that aircraft's first passenger flight[0].

Helping people get pilot's licenses without learning to fly coordinated turns does not strike me as particularly useful, but there is no doubt room for improved avionics and planning software.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296Q

epolanski 2024-08-05 23:03 UTC link

It's insane the length we go as humans (in the US at least) to not invest in the easiest, most cost-effective and environmentally friendly mode of transportation: trains.

Hyperloops, wider and wider highways, now personal airplanes.

Anything but goddamn trains.

It's mental to me.

Wish the best to the startup, after all they are filling a void someone else would, but still, not happy with the direction transport is going, which seems backwards sometimes.

_s 2024-08-05 23:27 UTC link

Sounds a lot like the Airbus's "normal law" flying!

My $0.02 - I'm a CPL ME/IR who gets wet a lot, and is upside down half the time. Background is Automotive and Mechanical Engineering, been in software since 2007.

Want to shake up GA?

  - 150kt Cruise, 4h endurance  
  - 400kg "useful" load for pax/luggage @ 4h endurance / batteries  
  - 3-axis AP that'll do coupled approaches + autoland  
  - BRS, FIKI, Oxy/Pressurized  
  - $100k fly away

The Cirrus SR20 is the closest we have to this, at 6-7x the cost. You can kit build a Sling or RV10, which will get you what you want at 3-4x the cost plus 2-3 years of time.

Garmin, Rotax, Vans etc ... the avionics, materials, plans and tech already exists. It's needing a few hundred million dollars to set it up to be produced at scale so the $100k avionics package can be had for $10k. The $100k equivalent Rotax or Lycoming can be had for $10k. Maybe it's electric vs avgas.

Foreflight, Garmin Pilot etc do so much of the planning - and integrate well with the "Connext" or Dynon etc already. They've like racked up millions of hours now, I know I've thrown in a few hundred hours worth of feedback to them.

Your closest competitor is Cirrus who are already very successful using off the shelf components customized (eg Perspective+ vs 1000Nxi) to their liking, and are running a pretty substantial wait list for their planes. Their training is top notch, customer service is excellent and have thousands of airframes now flying over the past 20+ years.

I'm glad you guys trying to shake up this space, and I'd like more than anything to be proven wrong - I genuinely hope there's enough runway and capital to setup manufacturing to bring these component prices down and actually deliver a plane at a comparable cost to a car.

dmitrysergeyev 2024-08-05 23:40 UTC link

Isn’t a better solution for the given distance - rail transport? It’s more affordable, ecological and can serve higher number of people from different economical layers. This seems more like an enthusiast toy rather than an alternative for 50-300 miles travel options.

calmbonsai 2024-08-06 02:26 UTC link

How are you going to address the insurance, ownership costs, and FAA certifications for this?

Atm, the real barriers to entry in the market are the insanely high regulatory and liability compliance costs--not flight aides, pilot training, or folks with the desire to fly.

- Look at the long path that Cirrus had to take with it's "Safe Return" auto-landing feature.

- Look at the decades-long adoption curve of even basic/obvious tech like 100LL avgas.

- Look at Bye Aerospace's struggles bringing a simple "go-kart" electric training aircraft to market

I'm not optimistic for ANY substantive innovation in this space without a serious overhaul of the regulatory environment.

iandanforth 2024-08-06 02:32 UTC link

The video and the pitch strike me as odd. The value proposition here is to grow the market for small planes by making them easy. You still need to be rich so this is basically an expensive toy. I'm not sure comparisons to what came before matter, the people who will buy this don't know or care about the existing way to control a plane.

All you have to do is show how easy your system is. To which end, why the hell would you put two separate hand controls rather than a steering wheel that also goes in and out and some pedals for speed up and slow down. It it's as easy as a car, make it like a car.

speedbird 2024-08-06 10:32 UTC link

I think you’re trying to solve the wrong problem, though with a lot of the right tech.

Basic stick and rudder skills aren’t that hard, save perhaps for crosswind landing/takeoff.

Envelope protection and emergency auto land are good, but I think already done by other companies.

Taking existing controls (stick and throttle) but giving them different names and making them command inputs rather than controls, but ones that vary what that command is subject to the IMPLICIT mode the aircraft believes it’s in (TOGA, land, cruise, taxi etc) are sowing the ground for confusion - look at all the analyses of Airbus incidents due to pilots not understanding what modes the aircraft thinks it’s in due to combination of control and sensors and control law fallbacks due to failures. The idea is sound but pilots lulled into complacency with normally simplified handling get into wild and sometimes fatal rides when things go amiss. Spend time on Mentor Pilot’s excellent channel.

Personally I think one of the biggest improvements to safety would be a decent AoA display and warning system for all aircraft.

Next up a solution to VFR into IMC, with subsequent loss of control or terrain / obstacle impact, which is effectively a use case of envelope protection and emergency autoland.

This tech exists, it’s just not in most of the fleet and not triple redundant.

Finally, rather than trying to make an aircraft more like a car, or only being confident flying your aircraft within a narrow regime, go do some aerobatics and unusual attitude training so you get a feel for how the wing really flies.

sdeframond 2024-08-06 10:37 UTC link

> The problem is that small airplane technology hasn’t innovated and is stuck in the past. Flying a small airplane is complicated, mentally taxing, and dangerous—about 28x more dangerous than driving a car.

I am surprised you don't mention fuel efficiency. Flying a small airplane is much less efficient than driving a car, especially on shorter trips due to take off and landing.

And cars are already burning too much fuel, so...

EncomLab 2024-08-06 12:09 UTC link

Great ideas - all destined to wither and die on the vine of certification and regulatory approval. A certified Dynon autopilot for a Cessna 172 starts at $26k just for the components - you expect a similar amount for installation and then ongoing maintenance, calibration, and servicing.

Designing and building the technology is the easy part - pushing that technology through testing and certification is the very hard (and very expensive) part. Even if certification is accomplished, all of the follow on risks of determining maintenance standards, component life cycle, and periodic inspection and replacement schedules has to be defined as well.

Then a doped up former major league pitcher decides to hop in your plane and fly it into the ocean and everything you have done is called into question and you end up buried in lawsuits.

erellsworth 2024-08-06 13:13 UTC link

>Freedom of Flight for Everyone

>*The full price of the Airhart Sling pre-tax is $500,000 with availability predicted for January of 2026.

"Everyone" is quite a stretch. It's hard for me to see this as anything but a new toy for rich people.

n_ermosh 2024-08-05 17:55 UTC link

The way we see it isn't less training, but training focused on the most important parts of flying: decision making and risk management. Given the current track record for accidents, they almost always culminate in the pilot failing to control the airplane, whether due to directly stalling or being distracted by another issue and then stalling. By eliminating loss of control as a failure mode, pilots can spend more of their minimum 40 hours on decision making and risk management training, rather than on stick and rudder training. Then when in the air, they put more of their mental load on ADM. We are just breaking down the barrier that stops people from even getting there in the first place.

mritchie712 2024-08-05 18:07 UTC link

I might be over estimating, but I'd also think taking off and landing will tack on a few hours to the start and end of your trip. Fueling, safety checks, dealing with the control tower, etc. all seem like they'd effectively take your time savings to zero.

n_ermosh 2024-08-05 18:08 UTC link

You're definitely right that the cross continental trip is a big and common one. however, 90% of long distance trips are made by car in the US with a median trip distance of about 200 miles. If we can make flying as easy as driving, the ability to make that trip in half to a third of the time, we believe that's a big win and incentive for a lot of people. There are 19,000 small airports in the US and 300M people live within 15 miles of at least one. So we totally think it's reasonable for that medium distance trip to be done by GA airplane rather than car.

n_ermosh 2024-08-05 18:28 UTC link

Thanks!

you're totally correct that emergencies are where the real issues lie. That's why we've built in multiple layers of fault tolerance so that a generator failure or a flight computer failure doesn't immediately revert you to a direct law control scheme (I'm assuming you're familiar with Airbus control laws given that you're using those phrases)

On top of everything, small GA aircraft have the luxury of being to use a ballistic parachute (which we will have) to bring the entire airframe to the ground in the event of a complete system failure. Which is always better than just letting the airplane crash into the ground.

I agree that proficiency is a fundamental issue. We want to make it easy to be and stay proficient. If flying becomes part of the primary mission, you do it more often and as a result stay proficient. The most dangerous pilots are the ones who haven't flown in 3 years and jump into a plane for an IFR cross country to an airport they've never been to before. We don't want that to happen either.

n_ermosh 2024-08-05 18:29 UTC link

100% agreed. I'd love a high speed rail system in the US. but we're engineers not politicians :)

n_ermosh 2024-08-05 19:23 UTC link

Our early model you see here will use unleaded fuel rather than traditional low-lead fuel used in aviation today. The master plan is to use the scale we will create in this new market and invest it into green propulsion tech for our future aircraft. A lot is going to change in that space over the next 5 years so I'm very interested to see where things go, but I suspect hybrid-electric will be the move for the first generation of green aircraft.

n_ermosh 2024-08-05 19:30 UTC link

Our goal is to get to the same level of safety as (if not safer than) automotive. There are some issues that we don't immediately address including engine failures, but at the same time, most of the stats are based on engines that were designed 50 years ago, while we are using a much more modern engine with better monitoring and data collection.

However, a large number of accidents are just "unknown"--we have no idea what happened. With the level of connectivity in our airplane we'll at least always have data to understand what went wrong if an accident does occur, regardless of if it's caused by our system or not. From there, we can refine to solve the issues that we currently have little insight into.

n_ermosh 2024-08-05 19:33 UTC link

Today, airplanes are not great when it comes to their environmental impacts. If we are successful in our bet that we can grow the GA market, we'll have the resources to invest into greener propulsion technology. That space is currently evolving quickly, with hybrid-electric, hydrogen, full electric and others all being explored. So it's in our plans to address that as well.

_jss 2024-08-05 19:34 UTC link

Take a look at the more economical modern GA aircraft. A Cirrus SR22 can run at 10 gallons per hour, with a ground speed of 160+ mph.

Yes, it’s more total fuel consumption than a car (but in an hour covering 2x the distance, and allowing to travel more directly) but not at all close to turbine or turboprops. At the extremely cheap (accessible to more pilots) side for pressurized planes, fuel burn is going to be 40gph and it just goes up from there.

There are many variables, and winds work for or against—but by doing good flight planning you use the winds to your advantage.

There is also a lot of research on better aviation fuels (100ll :(((). I’m excited about that part of it, more so than the current electric planes (although electric self-launching gliders are pretty neat)

MOSIAC is going to make light sport aircraft more useful, which will also help in this area.

Tons of interesting stuff happening here!

cameldrv 2024-08-05 19:59 UTC link

The other problem beyond range is dispatch reliability. Most light planes can’t go very high or fast to get around thunderstorms, and they can’t fly in icing conditions, and flying in low visibility with a single amateur pilot is still dangerous even with avionics improvements. This means that if you don’t want to die, you have to cancel a lot of flights at the last minute, which makes it only useful for trips where you have a viable alternate means of transportation.

From a speed perspective, one thing that would make a lot of difference is speeding up the preflight. Now you have to pull the plane out of the hangar, go to the fuel pump, fill multiple fuel tanks, check the oil, sump the fuel tanks, etc. Electronic sensors for oil and water in the fuel, a simpler fuel system, and a built-in electric motor for getting out of the hangar might save 20+ minutes per flight, which would actually be better than even a faster plane because these tasks are annoying and dirty.

Another thing that would be great is a bigger baggage compartment with electric power for folding e-bikes or scooters. America is amazing in the number of small airports we have, but most of them have no rental cars and are outside of town.

t0mas88 2024-08-05 20:01 UTC link

The general opinion in professional flying is that the pilot and operator (for something like Airhart the owner would be both I guess?) decision making has an immense impact on safety. You don't typically have a two sided crash where some other party is at fault like in a car. The vast majority of general aviation accidents happen because of bad deciding making. So it's much more in your control.

While the stats may conclude "loss of control" as the cause of the accident. Often that loss of control is caused by for example the decision to fly into instrument conditions (bad weather) while the aircraft or pilot is not suitably equipped, trained and experienced for it.

chinathrow 2024-08-05 20:07 UTC link

> Our system makes it impossible to lose control of the airplane

Thing in aviation is, that there are a couple of outside factors which might leed to a loss of control: bird strike and mid-air collision come to mind.

CalRobert 2024-08-05 20:11 UTC link

Interestingly I'm hosting my dad near Amsterdam for the week and to get from Sacramento to SFO (from where he flew to AMS) he... flew. Which I guess is logical, but seems insane to me when he lives close to Sacramento Amtrak which actually HAS good, regular service to SFO (via Bart, connecting at Richmond).

Even if you build the train some people won't give it a try, sadly. A lot of carbon was spewed in to the air to fly him and his suitcase over the capitol corridor tracks.

n_ermosh 2024-08-05 20:14 UTC link

> It feels like the real problem in this industry is lack of competition. There’s a chicken and egg problem: planes are expensive because so few people buy them, but so few people buy them because they’re expensive.

100%. We're here to try to break that cycle.

We definitely think aviation needs this too and I'm excited to connect with all the people out there who agree!

shafyy 2024-08-05 20:15 UTC link

A million times this. Modern and efficient train networks are the best way to travel, even for longer distances of a few thousand kilometers (night trains). Sure, there are still use cases for flying, but the dismissiveness of people who have never experienced great train travel against it just shocks me.

chinathrow 2024-08-05 20:24 UTC link

> Making the avionics easier to use and more affordable sounds like the actual winning product.

Garmin is the clear leader in the certified avionics class for general aviation aircraft these days. If you somehow manage to capture a part of their market, you win big time.

n_ermosh 2024-08-05 20:29 UTC link

thanks!

> In practically every example so far in aviation, adding automation makes things harder, not easier.

While somewhat unsatisfying as an answer, I think the industry has done it wrong, exactly because the result was harder, not easier. the UI/UX of modern glass cockpits is incredibly unintuitive and difficult to use. It's extremely opaque as to what the system's actually doing, if much. And no one has truly tackled the core problem of stopping our less trained, less rigorous part 91 pilots from losing control of their airplanes.

We definitely recognize that this creates a new failure mode. However, we're address those failure modes with redundant systems and following the same engineering standards as commercial aircraft. Many of them fly pure fly-by-wire and rely on the probably of a total electrical failure to be extremely low. We are doing the same.

If everything really does fail, there's the full airframe parachute to bring the airplane to the ground as a final layer of safety

bambax 2024-08-05 20:32 UTC link

Agreed! Learning how to fly alone is the easy part. The hard part is all the rest.

Also, this is inconsistent:

> large commercial airplane technology has developed to the point that the planes practically fly themselves

> We think stick and rudder skills are definitely a necessity for airline pilots flying hundreds of people on board for the extremely rare cases where emergencies do happen and many people's lives are at risk

So which is it? Do modern airplanes fly themselves or not? Pilots need to be able to fly. All pilots. Otherwise everyone's at risk.

Some of the worst recent accidents happenend when under-trained (AF 447) or misinformed (737 MAX) pilots didn't have a clear mental picture of what the airplane was doing.

It would seem this is solving for the wrong problem.

And the whole paragraph about "sexyness", aluding to sports cars and iPhones, seems very wrong to me. What makes flying sexy is the nerdiness, the skills involved, not shiny control surfaces.

lbrito 2024-08-05 20:34 UTC link

Was about to post the same. Passing no judgement on this particular project, which must have been the result of honest hard work and dedication, but it's truly bizarre that people in the US would rather double down on the failed personal vehicle concept rather than embracing public transit, as more developed countries have.

morsch 2024-08-05 20:35 UTC link

It's not just a question of whether they generate more GHG per mile, it's a question of whether they generate more GHG per hour. You wouldn't make a thousand mile trip over the weekend by car, but people don't bat an eye doing it by plane.

windexh8er 2024-08-05 20:36 UTC link

> It may sound snobby - but I'm not super excited about the idea of lowering the barrier to entry for GA on a foundational skill basis. Like the light-sport rating, it encourages more people to be in the (already congested) airspace system who haven't really gained all the other skills necessary or experience to be there.

I'm not a pilot, but I've always wanted to go down the path. In theory - this should be rather exciting to a person like myself so as to lower the barrier to entry and allow me to just start. In fact I don't really like the idea of this and my first thought was: "this seems like the plane that other pilots hate" simply because of a lowered barrier to entry and new breed of "lazy" pilots. I could be 100% wrong.

The thing that turns me off from this is that when I do chart the path I want to learn and be able to do - the traditional way. And in fact I don't want to rely on software or inconsistent controls vs the norm. I'm all for the idea of making the cockpit easier to navigate and have situational awareness, but I'm not a fan of abstractions as much as I used to be.

So as a non-pilot who aspires to become one in the next decade I agree with the parent comment in that I do really hope the goal is not to lower the bar to become a pilot.

morning-coffee 2024-08-05 20:44 UTC link

This. I liken it to the flawed approaches associated with self driving cars... software handles everything up until the point it can't then asks the user to take over in the last second. Not a great strategy.

As a software engineer and private pilot, I'll take mechanical controls connected to the flight surfaces and my competency as a pilot to risk my own life, rather than turn it over to other software engineers, hoping they get everything right, leaving me with no real connection to the flight control surfaces when the shit hits the fan.

I'd at least have to know what kind of engineering process and change management practices or functional safety procedures are being followed by the company developing this stuff before I'd even consider going for a ride in such a plane.

aeternum 2024-08-05 21:13 UTC link

Excellent points, it's really these other aspects that get pilots into trouble.

For example it's crazy that most pilots are still taught to calculate W&B using printed charts and approximate takeoff performance.

I think you could save more general aviation lives with a fairly minimal system.

A gas gauge sensor that calculates whether you have enough fuel to get to your destination + reserve. Avionics where you input your personal minimums like crosswinds and weather and it warns you if you're about to accept a landing or flight-plan that violates those. Encode that data and send it to ATC via transponder so valuable comm bandwidth is not lost asking for fuel status when emergencies occur.

A gear down warning. It's ridiculous that we still have so many belly landings and consider it a "good" to rely on training and human memory to prevent them. How much cheaper would complex airplanes be if we didn't have the crazy insurance rates due to this?

Angle-of-attack and spin warnings. It's ridiculous that even $1mil+ Cirrus planes can't detect when you're too slow in a base to final turn and sound a warning before you spin. We have the technology, it's foolish to depend on a decades old stall horn!

A system that parses all the hundreds of notams and filters out the important ones.

bigyikes 2024-08-05 21:37 UTC link

I’m begging for trains in the Texas triangle. It’s such a perfect use case. It’s ~3 hours between any of San Antonio-Austin, Houston, and Dallas-Fort Worth. Long enough to be a horrible drive, short enough to be a waste of a flight. There’s also not much density in between to contend with.

randomnumber314 2024-08-05 21:57 UTC link

I live in a suburb near a county airport. I cannot fathom a life with Tesla owners flying over where my kids and I bbq. This idea is great, but people should still be licensed for the real safety protocols e.g. radio and not crashing into others.

nikitaga 2024-08-05 22:06 UTC link

> It feels like the real problem in this industry is lack of competition. There’s a chicken and egg problem: planes are expensive because so few people buy them, but so few people buy them because they’re expensive.

Lack of competition is not the root cause. It's all the regulations. Certifying a new GA airplane takes a lot of time, and costs a fortune. This translates to high development costs, and certification costs, and ALSO is a huge barrier to entry for new companies, and a significant barrier for existing companies to develop new modern designs.

I could potentially muster enough resources to design and build an ultralight aircraft (that does not need any certifications), but a type-certified aircraft even as simple as a Cessna 152? Forget about it.

You could argue whether those certifications are worth it for safety, e.g. by comparing Canada's much more generous ultralight aircraft max weight allowance compared to US, or looking at the change in accident rates in European countries that recently deregulated ultralight aircraft, but whether it's worth it or not, regulation is the single most impactful market force driving the cost of GA aircraft.

Lack of competition is also sometimes directly enforced by the government. For example, several countries mandate the use of FLARM, a proprietary collision avoidance system for light aircraft. Governments gave this company a monopoly without requiring their protocol to be made interoperable, open source, and dis-encumbered from patents.

AdrianB1 2024-08-05 22:13 UTC link

Hard to tell. I have a frequent route that takes me ~ 2 hours of flight (13 liters/hour, 26 liters in total) or ~ 10 hours to drive with around 50 liters of gas. Flying means burning 50% less gas. But for others there may be better driving, how to calculate that?

BWStearns 2024-08-05 22:34 UTC link

Some of the LSAs I've flown are not actually that bad pollution/climate wise. Slightly less green per mile than my mini cooper, way more green than basically any common American pickup truck.

jhugo 2024-08-05 23:08 UTC link

The crash you reference was most likely caused by a pilot choosing to fly too low (they performed the flyover at 30ft instead of 100ft) and striking trees which had not been marked on charts provided to them. The pilot did try to blame the fly-by-wire system, but it wasn't very convincing.

n_ermosh 2024-08-05 23:31 UTC link

> 150kt Cruise, 4h endurance - 400kg "useful" load for pax/luggage @ 4h endurance / batteries - 3-axis AP that'll do coupled approaches + autoland - BRS, FIKI, Oxy/Pressurized - $100k fly away

Totally agreed. Our long term roadmap has basically this exact product on it. However, anyone who doesn't know about GA will have no clue what this even means. We want more people to get into GA so that there's enough of a market that building such a plane becomes a sustainable business.

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