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Skyfly Announces New eVTOL Aircraft, Plans to Begin Production in 2024

Skyfly, based in the U.K., has designed an eVTOL aircraft called the Axe. The company plans to certify the aircraft and begin production within the next two years. (Photo: Skyfly)

U.K.-based aerospace company Skyfly has announced the launch of the development program for its electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, the Axe, which is now available for pre-orders. The vehicle is a two-seater with a 100- to 200-mile range and a cruise speed of 100 mph. Eight 35KW electric motors power the Axe, and in addition to vertical take-off and landing capabilities, the fixed-wing design enables the aircraft to perform conventional take-off and landings when a runway is available. Skyfly expects to start production in 2024.

The company’s founder and CEO, Michael Thompson, told Avionics International that Skyfly has been testing and making modifications to a smaller-scale prototype for the past two years. The team is now working to build and certify the full-scale aircraft in partnership with the Light Aircraft Association, the representative body in the UK that oversees amateur aircraft construction and recreational flying under the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) approval. Once certified, the Axe can be operated in most countries in Europe.

Skyfly’s Axe was co-developed by Michael Thompson and William Brooks, an aeronautical engineer and designer. It includes two sets of short wings, along with non-rotating engines mounted at a 45-degree angle. Thompson commented in the launch announcement, “The rotating engines or rotating wings the competition uses are heavy, complex, expensive, less safe and require maintenance.”

Says Skyfly CCO Jaap Rademaker: “The Axe is so quiet and compact that, combined with its option to autoland on a ‘homing patch’ attached to the top deck of a yacht, it will allow passengers to fly themselves to and from the shore while staying dry and comfortable, and with a small eco-footprint.” (Photo: Skyfly)

The targeted customers for Skyfly’s eVTOL model are existing pilots and aircraft owners. The Axe can be kept at their home and used for direct flights to their destinations, eliminating the need to rent a hangar next to an established aircraft runway.

Other groups that have expressed interest in the Axe are yacht manufacturers and owners—for flying passengers from the yacht to shore—and private jet operators who need to quickly transport clients from home to the airport.

The company has already picked out three suppliers to provide different components for the Axe, but Skyfly has not yet chosen a battery supplier for their eVTOL aircraft, said Thompson. The Axe will include removable lithium batteries, and the battery system is designed with multiple redundancies to enable continued flight even in the case of a battery failure, according to the company. Thompson stated that they have selected Geiger Engineering, a company that manufactures electric motors primarily for fixed wing aircraft, to provide the Axe’s eight brushless motors.

Spanish company Embention is supplying the quadruple-redundant flight control system for Skyfly. Embention has collaborated with another eVTOL developer, Lift Aircraft, to provide the 4x Veronte Autopilot for Lift’s Hexa. A third supplier selected by Skyfly, Rotron Power, will contribute a hybrid generator system for the Axe.

As eVTOL aircraft enter the market, there will be a need for pilots that can operate the larger commercial eVTOL vehicles. Thompson explained that there are not currently any cost-effective options for training eVTOL pilots, but their Axe will be an affordable option for a general aviation platform that pilots in training can use to fulfill the requirements. The base price of the compact Axe aircraft will be $180,000 (£150,000).

Pilots will have previous experience operating either fixed-wing or rotary aircraft, Thompson said. To train these pilots for eVTOL operations, “they are only going to have to learn one or the other,” he commented. “The controls for fixed-wing, and the controls for helicopters, are exactly the same as in the eVTOL.”

The Axe’s potential for the eVTOL training market is huge, according to Chief Commercial Officer Jaap Rademaker, commenting on the launch of their eVTOL. “Because commercial air taxis will not be autonomous for a decade or so, they will require pilots, and those pilots will need to be trained to fly eVTOLs,” Rademaker said.

“The design is kept simple and very light and robust – because Skyfly believes the only criterium is kilowatt hours per passenger mile: using as little energy as possible to cover a passenger for a mile.” – Michael Thompson, Founder and CEO (Photo: Skyfly)

Public acceptance is central to Skyfly’s strategy, Thompson noted. “If people get comfortable with what Joby’s doing, they’ll get comfortable with what we’re doing. We have to work together to get this market into play.”

He also believes that there are too many eVTOL developers targeting the same market. “The reputation of the industry is sort of in jeopardy,” he said, adding that there is not enough room for all of these companies to succeed. “There’s a lot of money being raised for things that aren’t going to ever work.”

The post Skyfly Announces New eVTOL Aircraft, Plans to Begin Production in 2024 appeared first on Aviation Today.

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Lilium Selects L3Harris Extra Light Data Recorder for eVTOL Aircraft

L3Harris’ new extra light data recorder was selected by Lilium to use in its eVTOL aircraft. (Photo: Lilium)

Lilium, developer of electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, recently confirmed its selection of L3Harris to supply extra light data recorders for the Lilium Jet. The standard version of the light data recorder designed by L3Harris is currently fielded in 15 aircraft models. The extra light data recorder, or xLDR, complies with global recommendations and requirements for recorders on smaller aircraft. In 2023, the company expects to release the production version of its xLDR.

According to L3Harris, their extra light data recorder weighs 2.43 pounds, and it has a large storage capacity for audio and flight data within a crash-protected memory module. “Our xLDR leverages our field-proven platform to reduce weight and provide other enhancements specific to the eVTOL market and small aircraft specifications,” noted Alan Crawford, President of L3Harris Commercial Aviation.

Flight data recorders (FDR) perform the same general functions for a range of aircraft, but there are a couple of differences between an FDR designed for the commercial and business aviation markets versus smaller aircraft, like eVTOLs. Darshan Gandhi, Business Development Manager at L3Harris, explained that larger aircraft will typically use two flight recorders, one for voice and one for flight data. “They are spatially separated to provide redundancy,” he told Avionics. In comparison, an eVTOL aircraft would only need one FDR because it is a much smaller vehicle.

The L3Harris SRVIVR25 series of 25-hour cockpit voice and data recorders received TSO certification from the FAA in May 2020. (Photo: L3Harris)

Another difference is how crash-resistant the recorder needs to be. L3Harris’ recorders for commercial and business aviation, for example, can support pressure depths up to 6,000 meters, according to Gandhi. He adds, “You don’t have the same level of stringent requirements with eVTOL aircraft. The standards are a bit vague.”

In developing a smaller aircraft like an eVTOL, every component and additional unit of weight needs to be considered. The xLDR has to be designed in as small of a package as possible while still maintaining requirements for survivability in the case of an accident. “That is the balancing act we’ve taken with our recorders, and particularly with the one we’re doing with Lilium,” Gandhi noted.

One of the reasons Lilium selected L3Harris to provide the xLDR is the well-known reputation that the company has for its flight data recorder hardware. ”It’s our division’s bread and butter,” he said. He also remarked that they have worked to reduce the weight of the system even further for the Lilium Jet, while still maintaining compliance and ensuring safety.

The high-level function of a flight data recorder does not change much when designed for aircraft that use electric power. However, because of the higher level of electrification, there will be more sensors, which results in more data and real-time monitoring. Higher quantities of data produced by eVTOL aircraft will be used to monitor things like system performance and battery degradation on an ongoing basis. It will also be useful to analyze any trends in the data that indicate needed improvements for flight operations.

Pictured above is the Lightweight Data Recorder that L3Harris developed for small aircraft, providing crash-protected audio, image, and flight data recording. (Photo: L3Harris)

Christopher Jesse, Chief Technical Officer for L3Harris Flight Data Services, explains that the team collects data from numerous sources like flight simulators and weather data, but flight data recorders provide the richest source of data. Their systems receive data from thousands of aircraft, and Jesse expects that their database will record information from 6 million flights in 2022 alone.

The information collected by the data science team at L3Harris is used for multiple purposes. The first one Jesse mentioned is compliance—making sure the flight data recorders are working effectively. “If you have an incident, you want to rely upon that data in the recorder to find the cause of that accident,” he explained.

Secondly, by analyzing large amounts of data, it is possible to predict component failures and perform preventive maintenance. This will be particularly important for eVTOL aircraft, since it is an entirely new type of aircraft with new equipment and hardware, Jesse remarked. “How those are all linked together and work effectively will be very interesting to see,” he said. “It’s a similar framework, processing, and analytics, but the results and insights will be different.”

L3Harris also enables efficiency improvements by collecting and analyzing data. Efficiency usually means finding the best route for fuel conservation. The team looks at weather forecasts, temperatures along the planned route, and any shortcuts that might be cost-effective. For eVTOL aircraft, the focus will be on battery usage and maintaining the efficiency of batteries.

“On the data analytics side, it’s very important to us to make sure that the safety of operation is paramount,” Jesse stated. “A lot of that is monitoring adherence to SOPs.” They look for any anomalies indicating deviations from the standard operating procedures. Even though eVTOL aircraft will use a significant amount of automation to determine optimal flight paths, the data analysts can evaluate how well a pilot adheres to the recommended route. And a lot of issues detected by flight data recorders or flight simulators can be addressed with improvements to pilot training, Jesse commented.

The post Lilium Selects L3Harris Extra Light Data Recorder for eVTOL Aircraft appeared first on Aviation Today.

New Report Compares EASA, FAA Approaches to Certifying Commercial Airplanes

A new report published by the U.S. Government Accountability Office compares regulatory approaches to certifying new airplane designs, such as the A321XLR pictured during its first flight here, by EASA and the FAA. (Photo courtesy of Airbus)

A new report published by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found key differences in the approaches used by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and Federal Aviation Administration toward compliance and verification engineering activities for the certification of new and modified commercial airplane designs.

The 48-page report was compiled by GAO based on interviews primarily with officials representing both civil aviation regulatory agencies, Airbus, Boeing, and other aviation industry OEMs. One interesting discovery reported by GAO’s researchers pertains to the difference in how EASA regulates Design Organisations (DO) versus FAA’s regulation of companies that have Organization Designation Authorization (ODA) approvals.

“FAA is responsible for making airplane certification compliance determinations but generally delegates the vast majority of these determinations for manufacturers to make on its behalf,” GAO writes in the report. “However, EASA officials told us manufacturers in Europe are themselves responsible for making all compliance findings and verification under oversight of EASA.”

EASA prohibits its own compliance verification engineers from providing verification compliance services on systems or designs that they have worked on as an employee of that manufacturer. The European agency also requires Design Organisations to feature participation from all engineering units of an OEM’s company that contribute directly to a product’s design, type certification, and compliance activities. Aviation OEMs in the U.S., however, typically only have certification compliance activities completed by those experts who have been delegated to complete them within a specialized ODA unit of the company.

Based on interviews with multiple aviation stakeholders about this difference between how DOs and ODAs are structured, GAO concludes that “because a Design Organisation includes more parts of the manufacturer’s company, this means EASA evaluates more aspects of the manufacturer’s company when approving and overseeing the Design Organisation than FAA does for ODA holders.”

Several steps are being taken by the FAA to improve its certification process and the level of approval and oversight administered to ODA units for compliance and verification activities, according to findings reported by GAO. As an example, in February, the FAA announced plans to expand its use of Technical Advisory Boards that conduct independent technical reviews of certification projects for new and modified commercial airplane designs.

The FAA is also developing a new set of metrics that will measure the performance of its aircraft certification process, according to the report.

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Eurazeo Completes Sale of Orolia to Safran

On the left is Orolia’s GPS master clock and network time server, “VeraSync.” On the right is Safran’s inertial navigation system, “Geonyx.” Safran wants to use its acquisition of Orolia to become the “world leader” in providing position, navigation, and timing (PNT) technology.

Safran Electronics & Defense announced its acquisition of Orolia, the Paris-based supplier of position, navigation, and timing (PNT) electronics from global investment firm Eurazeo.

The sale of Orolia to Safran generated “cash proceeds of €189 million” for Eurazeo, according to the company. Safran first confirmed it was pursuing the acquisition in December, with the goal of establishing a “world-leading position in all aspects of PNT, inertial navigation, time and GNSS receivers and simulators, covering aerospace, governmental and high integrity applications.”

Orolia, a company that employs more than 435 people across its facilities in Europe and North America, is most well known in commercial aviation within recent years for its emergency locator beacon, a technology that gained prominence and attention following the disappearance of MH370 in 2014, an incident that remains unresolved. In a move inspired by a European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) mandate developed in the wake of MH370, Airbus will equip all of its in-production commercial jet models with Orolia’s Ultima-DT emergency locator starting in January next year.

Jean-Yves Courtois, CEO of Orolia, commenting on the acquisition says, “Orolia could not imagine a better fit than with Safran to secure its growth and leverage its PNT leadership positions.”

Safran, over the last year, has continued to roll out new technology development programs across multiple business segments. These include agreements reached with Astronics and ThinKom last month to supply the modems and antennas for the next-generation Ka-band in-flight connectivity terminals being developed by the company. The Orolia acquisition also comes a year after Safran launched the RISE program in partnership with GE Aviation to develop what could become the industry’s first hybrid-electric engine technology for single aisle aircraft.

In a July 8 press release confirming the acquisition, Safran described its expectation of Orolia’s PNT technology to help improve the way it addresses the “challenges of positioning, navigation and synchronization in contested and vulnerable environments.”

“In most situations,” according to Safran, “GNSS systems are the reference providers of time and position data, but they need to be secured by combining them with accurate, high-integrity autonomous time or inertial references.”

The post Eurazeo Completes Sale of Orolia to Safran appeared first on Aviation Today.

Aurora to Design New Motherships for Virgin Galactic Space Flights

A computer-generated rendering of the mothership that Aurora has been contracted by Virgin Galactic to build for future spaceflight missions (Photo courtesy of Virgin Galactic)

Aurora Flight Sciences has reached a new agreement with Virgin Galactic that will see the Virginia-based Boeing subsidiary become a partner in the design and manufacturing of Virgin’s next generation motherships.

Virgin Galactic’s new agreement reached with Aurora comes two months after the company reported its first quarter 2022 results that confirmed its next VSS Unity test space flight is expected to occur in the fourth quarter of this year. Virgin’s work under the partnership agreement with Aurora has already begun, as the two companies have been spending the “past several months” developing design specifications and workforce and resource requirements for the two-vehicle contract.

“With Aurora, we are accessing the best of the nationwide aerospace ecosystem,” Swami Iyer, President of Aerospace Systems, said, commenting on the new agreement. “As a subsidiary of the world’s largest aerospace company, Aurora has some of the industry’s top engineers and manufacturing facilities.”

The motherships that Aurora is developing will provide the air launch capability needed by Virgin’s spaceship spaceship to be released into suborbital flight at an altitude of approximately 50,000 feet.

Virgin Galactic Chief Executive Officer Michael Colglazier, commenting on the Aurora agreement, said the motherships under development are “integral to scaling our operations. They will be faster to produce, easier to maintain and will allow us to fly substantially more missions each year. Supported by the scale and strength of Boeing, Aurora is the ideal manufacturing partner for us as we build our fleet to support 400 flights per year at Spaceport America.”

Aurora’s new partnership with Virgin Galactic comes a year after the “Unity 22” sub-orbital spaceflight of their SpaceShipTwo-class VSS Unity that occurred in July last year. Since then, Virgin has committed to launching its next “Unity 23” mission in 2022 that will carry three paying crew members from the Italian Air Force and the National Research Council. Their focus with Unity 23 is to measure the effects of the transitional phase from gravity to microgravity on the human body.

Virgin has also established limited availability for purchasing of tickets on future space flights for a total price of $450,000. As of April 25, 750 people have made reservations for their piloted flights, according to an article published in the June 2022 edition of Via Satellite, a sister publication to Avionics International.

Manufacturing activities for the motherships being built by Aurora will occur at the company’s Columbus, Mississippi, and Bridgeport, West Virginia, facilities, with final assembly occurring at Virgin Galactic’s facility in Mojave, California.

The first new Aurora-built mothership is expected to enter service in 2025, the same year Virgin Galactic’s first Delta-class spaceship is expected to begin revenue payload flights. The company’s upcoming commercial missions are expected to begin by the first quarter of 2023.

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Iris Automation and Sagetech Avionics Combine Technology to Enable Collision Avoidance for Drones

The Casia Detect and Avoid (DAA) system is Iris Automation’s noncooperative sensor solution, pictured above. (Photo: Iris Automation)

A pioneer of collision avoidance technology, Iris Automation has just announced a partnership with Sagetech Avionics that will offer uncrewed aircraft a comprehensive air risk mitigation solution. Sagetech specializes in developing avionics to enable situational awareness for crewed and uncrewed aircraft.

Iris Automation’s detect-and-avoid (DAA) system, Casia, is a noncooperative sensor solution. According to the company, drone customers using Casia’s noncooperative detection ability have enhanced operational safety and have been able to secure approvals from the Federal Aviation Administration. Sagetech is contributing its Airborne Collision Avoidance System (ACAS) for smaller unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that enables an aircraft to autonomously avoid other aircraft and obstacles in the airspace.

Through this new partnership, the TSO-approved MXS ADS-B transponder from Sagetech Avionics will be integrated with Casia via Sagetech’s ACAS X sensor fusion and collision avoidance module. This integration results in a complete air risk mitigation solution for detection and avoidance.

The process of integrating the systems from both companies “involved passing messages from Casia—such as heartbeats for system status, and intruder alerts with intruder position and classification—and delivering them via a serial connection,” a source from Iris Automation told Avionics in an emailed statement. “In turn, telemetry information from the onboard autopilot is fed back to Casia via Sagetech’s module,” the spokesperson added.

The Airborne Collision Avoidance System (ACAS) for smaller unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from Sagetech Avionics (Photo: Sagetech Avionics)

The integration of systems from Sagetech and Iris is intended for use cases such as package delivery, power line and pipeline inspections, and emergency response missions, the representative from Iris Automation stated. “When flying BVLOS, UAS need to be able to see and avoid all other aircraft,” remarked the representative.

Essentially, Sagetech will be able to create a certifiable ACAS X-based avoidance system to incorporate Iris’s noncooperative detection along with Sagetech’s ADS-B in/out system, which recently received certification. “In our partnership with Sagetech,” the source shared, “Iris will be doing the ‘seeing’ and Sagetech will be handling the ‘avoiding.’”

Because a significant percentage of air traffic in the U.S. airspace falls into the noncooperative category, the FAA has stated that it is necessary for operators of UAVs to have the ability to detect and avoid both cooperative and noncooperative aircraft. For operations occurring beyond a visual line of sight (BVLOS), combining a cooperative surveillance and avoidance module with a noncooperative traffic detection system enhances safety for UAVs.

Jason Hardy-Smith, VP of Product at Iris Automation, commented in the company’s announcement that the agreement with Sagetech “really jumpstarts both of our abilities to offer a superior safety solution through real time determination of the optimal conflict resolution when noncooperative air traffic is encountered.”

Earlier this year, the FAA granted approval to Iris Automation for BVLOS operations in a specific region near Reno, Nevada, using its Casia detect-and-avoid technology. This followed collaboration between the FAA and Iris to develop its DAA technology for risk mitigation as well as facilitating UAV integration into the airspace.

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EASA Proposes New Regulatory Framework for Air Taxi Operations

EASA published a Notice of Proposed Amendment to recommend a comprehensive new regulatory framework for urban air mobility, including uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) and vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft. (Photo: EASA)

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) proposed a comprehensive new regulatory framework for operating air taxis in cities. Manufacturers of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft have worked with EASA in developing regulations since 2019, a representative from EASA told Avionics. The proposed rules are open for public consultation until October 1. Following any necessary revisions, the European Commission will review EASA’s regulatory framework in 2023 before making a decision.

EASA published the Notice of Proposed Amendment (NPA) on June 30, including recommendations for creating new amendments as well as updating existing regulations in the EU. Key areas of focus in the NPA are airworthiness certification for uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS), and operational requirements for crewed VTOL aircraft.

The NPA outlines some specific objectives, including ensuring a high level of safety for UAS and VTOL operations; establishing an efficient regulatory framework that allows for innovation and developments in the UAS market; and eliminating any inconsistencies in the regulations across the member states of the EU.

EASA also introduced concepts for standardizing the definitions of urban air mobility (UAM) and for VTOL-capable aircraft. The agency will regulate UAS and VTOL operations not only within urban environments, it states, but also those operations where the aircraft is traveling in or out of an urban environment. EASA’s definition of VTOL-capable aircraft is “a power-driven, heavier-than-air aircraft, other than aeroplane or rotorcraft, capable of performing vertical take-off and landing by means of lift or thrust units used to provide lift during take-off and landing,” according to the NPA.

The document explains that this proposed definition of VTOL aircraft also necessitates limiting the definition of “helicopter” as follows: “heavier-than-air aircraft supported in flight chiefly by the reactions of the air on up to two power-driven rotors on substantially vertical axes.” Helicopters should be considered a subcategory of rotorcraft. Aircraft configured with more than two power-driven rotors must be initially classified as VTOL-capable, according to EASA.

EASA lays out tasks to ensure continuing airworthiness of uncrewed aircraft, including pre-flight inspections of the aircraft, scheduled and unscheduled maintenance, compliance with any airworthiness directive issued by the agency that is applicable, and maintenance check flights as needed. The UAS maintenance program will undergo a review at least every year to evaluate its effectiveness.

The NPA recommends requirements for VTOL operations with a single pilot under Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) or at night. This includes pilot training related to engine management and emergency handling as well as air traffic control (ATC) communication, autopilot management (when applicable), and using simplified in-flight documentation. EASA also proposes that the pilot should have 25 hours of total IFR flight experience and 25 hours of experience flying a VTOL aircraft as a single pilot.

Because aircraft capable of vertical take-off and landing will introduce novel technologies, and will operate differently than conventional aircraft, the NPA states that there needs to be a requirement for installing recorders as part of the airworthiness requirements for VTOL aircraft. EASA suggests in its proposed regulations that some data can be transmitted and recorded remotely. According to the representative from EASA, “This is a provision established through the requirement of Special Condition VTOL.2555(f) that would apply in case the VTOL aircraft would be remotely controlled by means of a command unit. The proposed operational rules apply only to VTOL with a pilot on board.”

Last year, EASA published a study on societal acceptance of urban air mobility operations in Europe. The study took into account survey responses from 4,000 citizens and 40 qualitative interviews. Although implementing VTOL operations for emergency medical services is one of the most accepted applications for these types of aircraft, one challenge is ensuring the availability of infrastructure such as vertiports, according to the spokesperson from EASA. They added that battery management and noise are two other potential concerns, although VTOL aircraft will have lower noise levels than helicopters.

A few months ago, EASA released guidance regarding the design of vertiports (EASA’s original report can be viewed here). The NPA that was just published also includes recommendations surrounding regulation of infrastructure like vertiports. When establishing a vertiport within the airside of an aerodrome, EASA suggests that a wake-turbulence analysis is needed in order to evaluate risks with conventional manned aircraft flying near the aerodrome. “We will be conducting studies [involving] all the relevant stakeholders such as VTOL manufacturers, ANSP, airport operators and EUROCONTROL as well as the Member States,” the representative shared. “We will be using methods equivalent to the one we have used for establishing the EU RECAT after the safety assessment was performed.”

“Predetermined VFR VTOL routes should be established to prevent conflicting situations (e.g. crossing, head-on or overtaking situation).” – EASA’s proposed regulations for urban air mobility operations (Photo: EASA)

EASA proposes measures for mitigating the risk if there is a large number of VTOL aircraft operations and ATC is not able to safely manage the additional amount of traffic. One recommendation is to assign VTOL aircraft in uncontrolled airspace to predetermined VFR (Visual Flight Rules) routes.

The representative from EASA explained that “in order to be able to allow regular VFR VTOL operations between vertiport pairs, there is a need to establish a network of those VFR routes based on the assessment performed by the operator.” This would follow consideration of aspects such as “the airspace traffic, complexity, their aircraft endurance, availability of alternate vertiports and operation sites for the case of contingency and/or emergencies as well as other aspects such as the existence of other VTOL operations utilizing the same vertiports, the implementation of U-space, the existence of environmental protected areas and the acceptable noise levels.”

Before beginning operations, EASA’s spokesperson noted, the individual national or local authorities from within EASA member-nations would need to approve the establishment of a network of VFR routes that takes into account the previously mentioned aspects.

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Australia’s CASA Publishes New Regulatory Roadmap for Advanced Air Mobility

“We wanted to provide a plan that outlined the long-term vision for the Australian RPAS and AAM regulatory regime as well as the integration of these technologies into the civil aviation system.” – Pip Spence, CASA’s CEO and Director of Aviation Safety. (Photo: CASA)

This week, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) announced the launch of a regulatory roadmap that describes its approach to ensuring safety for drones and other components of the advanced air mobility ecosystem. The roadmap is the result of 12 months of research, analysis, and consultation. CASA coordinated with industry experts in designing the new roadmap, which outlines the regulatory framework for remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) and advanced air mobility (AAM) over the next 10 to 15 years.

In publishing this roadmap, CASA sets out its long-term plans regarding safe integration of AAM technologies into the current airspace and into future regulations, said Program Manager Sharon Marshall-Keeffe in the announcement from CASA. “We will continue to work with industry to review and update the roadmap to make sure it stays relevant and supports new technologies and innovation,” she added.

CASA identified five challenges inherent in regulating RPAS and AAM operations. The first is diversity in type and size of aircraft as well as the range of complexity in aircraft design. Second, AAM and RPAS are evolving rapidly. In the roadmap, CASA describes innovations in technology and concepts of operation as fast-paced, creating some uncertainty. The third challenge is the scale of operations. There are more remotely piloted aircraft operating in Australia than there are existing airspace users. And CASA expects AAM operations as a whole to scale up in a similar manner.

Another challenge is that drones and other AAM are disruptive technologies, and the existing ecosystem must adapt to accommodate these new operations. CASA lists autonomy as the final obstacle in regulating the emerging RPAS and AAM industries. Though they will likely be critical for a growing AAM ecosystem, automation and interactions between humans and machines will need to be monitored and regulated.

CASA’s new roadmap describes some of the new types of AAM vehicles, made possible with progress in hybrid propulsion systems and electrification as well as innovations in automation. These vehicle types include multi-rotor, tilt wing, tilt-rotor, and powered wing, for both short take-off and landing (STOL) and vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) capabilities. (Photo: CASA)

CASA lists several activities within the roadmap that will need to occur in the next year or two. In 2022 and 2023, the agency intends to publish acceptable industry standards for piloted AAM aircraft, as well as further guidance material for remotely piloted aircraft operations, such as acceptable means of compliance. Other activities outlined for the immediate future are developing design requirements and regulations for supporting infrastructure like vertiports, and coordinating with other government agencies to evaluate cybersecurity risks associated with RPAS and AAM.

In the near future, from 2023 to 2026, CASA expects to publish industry consensus standards for AAM aircraft operated by a single pilot and for remotely piloted aircraft. The roadmap lists the initial implementation of airspace modernization as another objective for the 2023–2026 period. Near-term objectives also include development of guidance for operational approval requirements of AAM, and development of certification requirements for infrastructure.

CASA intends to ensure internationally harmonized standards for AAM, and to publish industry standards for remotely piloted aircraft that are highly automated, in the years 2026 to 2031. The so-called “medium-term” section of the roadmap dictates the development of an integrated traffic management framework that supports all airspace users, as well as the implementation of standard requirements for personnel training and licensing that take into account increased amounts of autonomy in RPAS and AAM operations.

The new roadmap includes long-term objectives—from 2031 to 2036—such as publishing industry standards for highly automated AAM aircraft; establishing mature regulations and processes for approval that support RPAS And AAM infrastructure; and developing standards that support both cooperative participation amongst airspace users and levels of self-separation between each user.

In a press release, Australian vertiport infrastructure provider Skyportz confirmed that they were able to contribute to the creation of CASA’s roadmap. Skyportz CEO Clem Newton-Brown remarked that the document will provide clarity to the industry. “The key to this industry is breaking the nexus between aviation and existing airports,” he stated. “We need to develop a network of new vertiport sites if the industry is to reach its potential.”

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Gulfstream Completes First Flight of New G800

Gulfstream completed the first flight of its new G800 business jet on Wednesday, June 28, at Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport. (Photo courtesy of Gulfstream)

Gulfstream’s new G800 business jet completed its first flight at the company’s Savannah headquarters on Wednesday, launching the flight testing campaign for what will become the longest-range aircraft in the company’s history.

The G800 program was first revealed by Gulfstream in October 2021 with a range of 8,000 nautical miles/14,816 kilometers at Mach 0.85, powered by Rolls-Royce Pearl 700 engines. According to Gulfstream, the first flight lasted two hours, taking off and landing at Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport.

“We are seeing great interest in the G800,” Mark Burns, president, Gulfstream, said in the company’s announcement of the first flight. Gulfstream also highlighted the 19-passenger jet’s use of a “blend of sustainable aviation fuel” on the first flight.

Gulfstream shared this image of the new G800’s wingtip after completing the first flight on Wednesday. (Photo courtesy of Gulfstream)

Gulfstream is keeping the Symmetry flight deck—based on Honeywell’s Primus Epic cockpit suite—for the G800 that made its debut with the G500. One innovation within the flight deck of the G800 is a new combined vision system that blends enhanced and synthetic vision in the cockpit’s dual head up displays.

The G800 also features flight control computers supplied by Thales, while GE Aviation is supplying the jet’s data concentration network and power and health management systems.

Completion of the first flight of the G800 by Gulfstream also confirms another avionics-related milestone completed by the company. In May, General Dynamics Chairman and CEO Phebe Novakovic explained to investors and analysts during an earnings call how the completion of a new software validation requirement from the FAA was necessary to launch the first flight of the G800.

Upon launching the G800 in October, Gulfstream was anticipating customer deliveries of the G800 to begin next year.

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OPINION: Why Mission Critical Systems are Needed to Achieve Safety in Urban Air Mobility

Will Keegan is the CTO of Lynx Software Technologies.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is such a hot term and there’s strong interest in AI, with Gartner’s recent study finding 48% of enterprise CIOs have already deployed or plan to deploy AI and machine learning technologies this year. Interest in AI is at odds with AI maturity, however. For some industries (e.g. customer experience with chatbots), the “cost of being right” is enough to see AI experimentation and deployment. But when organizations are managing mission-critical AI applications – where the “cost of being wrong” on an outcome could result in loss of life – AI maturity is a must-have, and accuracy and security are key differences to achieving safety.

Rushing safety engineering processes, building with new technology that regulators are still grappling with, and generating an ROI on an aircraft with historical 30-year production lifecycles, isn’t a model for success. For industries like automotive and aerospace, consumer confidence that systems are safe is a must before this market progresses.

My company has partnered on several level 4 autonomy platforms and we see a common design roadblock when organizations build safety nets to mitigate individual points of failure for critical functions. The preferred choice of achieving redundancy is to replicate functions on independent sets of hardware (usually three sets to implement triple-mode redundancy).

Putting aside size, weight, power and budget issues, replicating functions on singular hardware components can lead to common mode failures – whereby redundant hardware components fail together due to internal design issues. Therefore, safety authorities expect to see redundancy implemented with dissimilar hardware.

The adoption of dynamic architectures is hotly debated in the community dealing with mission-critical applications. Safety systems have typically been built around static methods. The safety system analysis goal is to examine a system’s behavior to ensure all behavior is predictable and will operate safely for its environment.

Static systems easily allow analysis of system behavior, given the functionality and parameters to the system are revealed up front for human and automated static analysis. The concept of letting fundamental system properties change dynamically causes prominent analysis obstacles.

The debate around adoption of dynamic capabilities focuses on the notion that a system can modify its behavior to adapt to unpredictable scenarios during the flight. “Limp home mode” is a capability that gains much from harnessing a dynamic architecture. This is where a major system failure happens (e.g. a bird is caught in a propeller) and other parts of the system intelligently distribute required functions across available resources for sufficient functionality to protect human life.

AI is necessary because without human oversight, computers must decide how to control machines at multiple levels, including mission critical. The permutations of variables that can impact the state of system are plentiful; the use of model-driven system control and hazard analysis is essential to achieve level 5 autonomy safely. However, there are hundreds of nuanced artificial neural networks that all have tradeoffs. In three decades, safety standards can only support the use of a few programming languages (C, C++, Ada) with strong-enough knowledge and give clear usage guidance alongside a mature ecosystem of tool suppliers.

Clearly the wide world of neural networks should be paired down, unpacked and guided according to the objectives and principles casted in DO-178C DAL A and ISO26262 ASIL-D. The FAA publication TC-16/4’ “Verification of Adaptive Systems” discusses the challenges particularly well. However, we still don’t have strong guidelines of use and development process standards for artificial neural networks.

The foundation of advanced safety system analysis in the automotive industry is a massive model that maps passengers’ relationships with the vehicle interfaces and traces the vehicle features into functions that result in software distributed on computer parts. In the future these models would become significantly more complex when working with the dynamics of autonomous platforms. The big questions to already be thinking about for these models are a) what is sufficient and b) what is accurate?

Clearly, we need more certification. How can system validation happen for complex systems without those responsible having knowledge in technical complexities like kernel design and memory controllers, which are crucial to enforce architectural properties? Component level suppliers are generally not involved in system validation, but rather asked to develop products in line with strict documentation, coding and testing processes, and show evidence.

However, valid concerns include whether such evidence can meaningfully demonstrate intended behavior of components are consistent with system integrators’ intentions.

In the automotive industry, aggressive claims were made about the timeline for level 5 autonomous platforms (no driver, no steering wheel, no environmental limitations) to become available. The reality was very different. The avionics industry is, rightly, being more conservative. I like the framework that the European Aviation Safety Agency published last year, which focused on AI applications that provide “assistance to humans.”

Key elements of this relate to building up a “trustworthiness analysis” of the artificial intelligence block based on:

Learning assurance; Covering the shift from programming to learning, as the existing development assurance methods are not adapted to cover AL/ML learning processes
Explainability; Providing understandable information on how an AI/ML application is coming to its results
Safety risk mitigation; Since it is not possible to open the ‘AI black box’ to the extent needed, this provides guidelines as to how safety risk can be addressed to deal with the inherent uncertainty

From this, and from conversations we have held with customers, it seems like pragmatism is the word that describes the industry’s approach. Just like lane departure detection is becoming relatively commonplace in new vehicles, we will first see the use of AI in applications where the human remains in charge. An example would be a vision-based system that aids in-flight refueling procedures. These important but peripheral to main system functionality use cases are great places to increase trust in the technology.

From here, we will see the technical deployment of AI in increasingly more challenging systems with “switch to human operation” overrides. Some analysts have indicated we may never reach the point of fully autonomous vehicles on our streets. I do believe though we will reach the milestone of fully autonomous vehicles in the sky. Believing in the “crawl, walk, run” path the industry is currently on is exactly the right one to make that a reality.

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