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I love innovation and stuff. Radical ideas. But the aviation market is one of the most heavily regulated - bureaucracy beyond comprehension. Did you ever wond

I love innovation and stuff. Radical ideas. But the aviation market is one of the most heavily regulated - bureaucracy beyond comprehension. Did you ever wonder why Piper or Cessna airplanes look EXACTLY what they did 50 years ago? And why the engines used in these planes (e.g., Lycoming) are referred to as “Lycosaurus”!? If you go for a sightseeing flight with a local aeroclub - you will find the pilot spending 30min pre-checking the aircraft, checking the weather, reading NOTAMS etc. Not to mention the potentially pretty intensive communication with ATC et al. required to make sure everybody stays safe. Getting a pilot license is magnitudes more work than getting a drivers license, proficiency has to be continuously demonstrated, maintaining airworthiness of an airplane isn’t exactly cheap either and pretty heavily regulated. And all that should be “automated”, certified and approved? Not saying things can’t be automated - but no shit, the spark plugs in a Cessna are like 50$ each for that “aviation certificate”... Even if there ARE rules and guidelines how to certify autonomous vehicles like that - like how does anybody imagine that a novel aerial vehicle like this actually IS CERTIFIED within a lifetime? Pilots still walk around a multi-million $ fighter jet or aircraft equipped with the most sophisticated avionics because “a bird nest in the engine intake is hard to detect and difficult to resolve mid flight”. Investing in one of the most heavily regulated, difficult to scale and extremely expensive to operate industries is brave... Even more so when this industry is low margin and “kept dying every couple of years”...

mattigames 6y ago
Well, they should just use some of that VC money into pocketing (AKA lobbying) politicians to relax rules for these specific kind of airplanes, it has worked pretty well for the health industry in the US.
- looping__lui 6y ago
  I mean, they probably do that. But the point is: even if politicians DO push that and even if the rules and regulations are written down - doesn’t mean that they will be granted a certification. I mean, funnily enough, they don’t yet even KNOW what they will have to adhere to and achieve and start burning through 300MM USD in investor money... Boeing, Airbus, Cessna, Cirrus and Piper have dozens of years of experience and KNOW how to get planes certified - and yet they essentially “re-use older certifications”... Fun times when they get told they need two ballistic parachutes or they need at least 30 min safety backup for hover flight (e.g., each Cessna pilot has to make sure he has 30+min fuel reserve). Your engineers will commit suicide when you surprise them with “oh there was this ask...” And then the weather - I mean, seriously, there are super strict rules about visual minimas for flights in the US and Europe. If you go instrument rated things get even more complex and bureaucratic. Not to mention that instrument flight is PROHIBITED in Germany below 2000+ft in uncontrolled airspace... Ah, and I want to see that flying electric lawn-mower make his way across the Alps with 50kts headwind, freezing temperatures at cruising altitude. Pilots landing in Innsbruck need special training for “Foehn” Approaches and when the heavy winds roll over the city and airport you can hear the pilots pushing full throttle in final to counter the 2000+ft/min downwash.
  - GekkePrutser 6y ago
    > e.g., each Cessna pilot has to make sure he has 30+min fuel reserve Well, this is pretty much standard practice! Edit: Ah I misunderstood your comment. So yes it is standard. However I could see this not applying to these guys, because with vertical landing capability they should be able to support field landings with really minimal risk.
    - gibolt 6y ago
      VTOL and several other major capability differences really should change the certification process. Current certifications a designed around certain engineering constraints. Nearly all existing planes operate with the same basic parts, thanks to the fuel. This dictates the possible drivetrains. Reduced complexity can lead to drastic reconsideration. While I don't expect change to be super fast, regulation tends to move faster than normal when major disruption starts showing up in practice (drones, self-driving vehicles, ...)
      - nradov 6y ago
        There is already a certification process for helicopters and autogyros, so VTOL capability alone is no reason for a different certification process. Helicopters require a 20 minute fuel reserve in VFR conditions and 30 minutes in IFR conditions. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.151 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.151
        GekkePrutser 6y ago
        Yes but these are automated, so they could be programmed to stay within X minutes of backup landing sites at all times, and altitudes to reach them easily.
        nradov 6y ago
        No there will be a human pilot in control. It's going to be many years before fully automated aircraft are allowed to carry human civilian passengers through regular airspace.
GekkePrutser 6y ago
Totally agree about the certification. It's so annoying having to do stuff like managing the mixture. There is absolutely no chance I'm going to be better at that than even the most basic FADEC system. Every car since the early 90s has done away with the choke, but for some reason in a 2020-built C172 I still have to do this... :X I would argue that this insistence on safety certification makes actual flights less safe. Because it results in it not being done, leaving something to the pilot who is more error-prone than an automatic system. I haven't heard of accidents in GA aircraft that were due to poor mixture (though I haven't looked, and it could technically cause one if you set it too explosive) but when I still flew there were several incidents reported by our maintenance company who complained about cylinder scoring due to overheting. It would be much better to have this automatically managed, and more environmentally friendly too, because there is no need for 'full rich' settings during takeoff/landing, it would just adjust it to ensure sufficient cooling. The full-rich is just a precaution to avoid the pilot miscalibrating it during this critical flight phase (and to avoid overheating on the ground of course).
- looping__lui 6y ago
  Yes! Rotax (Austrian company) actually builds great engines. They are heavily used in ultra-light airplanes with much more “relaxed” certification. And you are right: in the ultra-light market, we see a giant boom because of lower certification hurdles and actually much safer systems: automated engine control, constant speed propellers, ballistic parachutes, etc. But Maximum Take-Off-Weight (MTOW) is 650 kg (Germany) that leaves you with a skinny wife/husband, some gas and light baggage... Airplane engines are operating in tougher environments than car engines - hence bigger tolerances and less sophistication in some parts. They also must not fail. I mean, the engine has to be ok with starting up at 100 degrees F on the ground, climbing at maximum power to 10’000 ft, with below freezing temperatures within 15/20 min and descending down again with an urgy pilot pushing down the cylinder heat temperatures from 400 to 200 degrees fahrenheit within minutes (due to power reduction and increased speed cooling the engine).
  - rkangel 6y ago
    Rotax engines are in fact fully certified aircraft engines as I understand it. I am training for a PPL(G) in the UK (G is for Gyrocopter). There two proper certified makes of Gyro in the UK (Magni and AutoGyro), and all of the engines are Rotax. The newest is the 915, which includes a FADEC and turbo.
lisper 6y ago
Private pilot here. Yes, aviation innovates slowly, but it's not nearly as bad as you make it sound. Cirrus aircraft have been a game changer, as has the Garmin G1000 avionics. I can fly just about any instrument approach entirely on autopilot. The only thing I have to touch is the throttle and the flaps. I get real-time traffic information via ADS-B, real-time weather via Nexrad. I do my flight planning in five minutes using Foreflight on an iPad. It is all pretty awesomely cool actually. It's not installed in the plane I fly, but Garmin's auto-landing system was recently certified for emergency use. https://generalaviationnews.com/2020/05/19/garmin-autoland-certified-for-general-aviation-aircraft/ https://generalaviationnews.com/2020/05/19/garmin-autoland-c...
- looping__lui 6y ago
  Yes, but let us not compare a 50k used Cessna to a 500k Cirrus? They rely on a Continental that was developed in the 80s (so quite new) - but doN’t you still have to adjust the mixture manually (e.g., manually adjust the air to fuel ratio)? I mean, the cool stuff you are describing can easily end up at 500k-2MM USD with a fully trained private pilot...
  - notatoad 6y ago
    >let us not compare a 50k used Cessna to a 500k Cirrus? why not? the original post was that innovation can't happen in aviation because of regulation. if we're shifting the argument to innovation doesn't happen because it's expensive, that's a much more solveable problem.
    - looping__lui 6y ago
      Let me rephrase: The innovation you describe (which is cool and needs certification) bumped the price for a new airplane from about 50k in the 70s (I guess we may be talking 200k in today’s money) to close to 1MM USD. And that innovation is “just” glass cockpit, and some more advanced avionics. Not changing the principles - you fly a bit faster, a bit safer but still need a license and do all the preparation and checks. But it’s a bit more fancy. From 200k to almost 1 MM. The Garmin Autoland you described bumps up the sum to 3MM (https://www.piper.com/press-releases/piper-announces-new-m600-sls/ https://www.piper.com/press-releases/piper-announces-new-m60...). So factor 10 for something “that was already unreasonably expensive”... My argument was around “innovation has a horrible ROI” in the aviation industry. Building a startup in that space has to take costs into consideration... I mean, Musk initially didn’t shoot people into space, there was an inefficient market and the margins were enormous... That’s a different story...
looping__lui 6y ago
For those interested, a couple of professors were using physics n hard math on the Lilium claims: https://www.aerokurier.de/8/3/7/8/5/9/6/aerokurier_Konzeptberechnung_Lilium_Jet.pdf https://www.aerokurier.de/8/3/7/8/5/9/6/aerokurier_Konzeptbe... (It is in German though). A big German magazine did a rather intensive “how much sense does it make” story: https://www.aerokurier.de/elektroflug/flugtaxis-kein-markt-fuer-lilium-und-co/ https://www.aerokurier.de/elektroflug/flugtaxis-kein-markt-f...
rklaehn 6y ago
If US and EU are so buerocratic that innovation is impossible, there will still be a big market for viable VTOL electric planes in the rest of the world. Just like most 3rd world countries these days have better 4G coverage than supposedly 1st world countries like Germany, or rural US.
- looping__lui 6y ago
  Check out: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_5K7cpxeXnc&feature=youtu.be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_5K7cpxeXnc&feature=youtu.be And guess the country :-) I would never start such a business in the US or Europe.
- JAlexoid 6y ago
  Which third world countries have better 4G, than... say Estonia?
- smabie 6y ago
  What 3rd world countries are you referring to? I'm pretty well traveled, and in my experience, this definitely has not been the case.
RobRivera 6y ago
You paint it to in a overly negative light, in my opinion. Much of the processes and procedures in place are not just functional, but behavioral training and conditioning to enable the pilot to troubleshoot mid-flight problems. It's like a highly capable human runtime exception debugger that will save the lives of everyone on board. Some FAA regs and procedures are written in blood, but most are written in a way to prevent blood in the future. I also like to echo the products Garmin is incorporating to increase the UX in the cockpit. They address some of the things you outline. Remember, aviators aren't engineers, they are operators. The license requirement is there to ensure that pilots can do basic things like triage, malfunction diagnostic, ad hoc solution generation, energy management, communicate, etc.
steffan 6y ago
I'd argue that some of the difference between a pilot license and a driver's license would diminish if the difficulty of a driver's license more accurately reflected the challenges of operating a heavy vehicle in close proximity to pedestrians and other vehicles. At the current standards, apparently the only hard requirement is a pulse.
- s1dev 6y ago
  Here are a few ways to kill you and all your passengers under instrument flight rules. Most of these involve a single mistake and a "controlled flight into terrain" - Turn too early/late past an arbitrary point in space - Turn the wrong direction - Descend too early past an arbitrary point in space - Use the wrong altimeter setting - Failing to recognize and troubleshoot a failed instrument - Failing to recognize signs of hypoxia Not to mention dealing with emergency procedures while you don't do any of the above Here is an example from a few years ago where a 777 missed a mountain by a few seconds after some non-standard instructions by ATC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFdXax7Zh_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFdXax7Zh_g
  - steffan 6y ago
    (I fly IFR as well) I don't think the comparison between a regular driver's license and Instrument / IMC flight is reasonable. Perhaps more accurate to compare to a Commercial Driver's License with a HazMat load Or driving a bus Even in the aviation world, an IFR rating is largely considered the most difficult to get. I would also add that in aviation, most accidents / incidents do _not_ result from a single error, but rather the stacking up of errors, which granted, are almost all variations of 'pilot error'
- rkangel 6y ago
  In a car, if in doubt you can just press and hold the brake pedal and you reach a safe condition. With the exception of motorways where you first have to pull over to the hard shoulder you can always do that. In a plane you don't have that single goto option. You have to know the correct response to every possible situation and it's different in each case. Plus, many mechanical failures in an aircraft will kill you. Most things in a car won't. You need to learn how to look after a plane, and what to check for.
IAmEveryone 6y ago
Safety, as measured in fatalities per person per mile per year, has increased by a factor of 100x since the 1960s: traffic increased 10-fold, while fatalities fell by the same factor. So they do seem to be doing something right... The lack of chaanges may just indicate that the current paradigm is a rather good one. If anvbody came up with a working scramjet, regulation would be a minor hassle. It's really physics that are limiting here: supersonic travel is too inefficient both economically and environmentally. And personal autonomous local transport (i. e. "flying car") is impossible without some sort of breakthrough on noise.
JAlexoid 6y ago
I suspect that aeroplanes will look very similarly in 100 years as well. There's such thing as physics that are the main reasons. Don't look at fighter jets, as they are basically jet engines with guns and little control surfaces added. As for airworthiness - there's a good reason for that - these things literally fly over your head.
aphextron 6y ago
Aviation regulations are written in blood. They are the only reason you can step into an aircraft with a reasonable expectation of making it safely to your destination. Disasters are generally not caused by obvious large issues, but a multitude of smaller compounding, seemingly benign causes that could otherwise be easily dismissed. The massive body of regulation around aviation is a direct result of this. Each one is almost always a direct response to a particular incident that killed people.
- jessriedel 6y ago
  That regulations are motivated by avoiding deaths does not mean that they are effective at that, or even if they are effective that they are worth the costs. Regulations that specify specific safety equipment, rather than specifying target error rates or bonds/liability, are the worst because they get enacted and then stay on the books for decades unchanged.
  - danaliv 6y ago
    They aren’t motivated by it. They’re a result of it. Practically every rule or standard in the book can be traced to a crash. Mode C veil? Aeromexico 498, 82 dead. Radio comms standardization? Tenerife, 583 dead. CRM: United 173, 10 dead. Altitude requirements while being vectored to an approach (91.175(i)): TWA 514, 92 dead. I could go on. The answer to “why can’t we just” in aviation is “because people died.” The FAA doesn’t make rules just to make them. They make them because aviation is unforgiving and it will kill you and your passengers if you screw it up.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      It sounds like you're trying to disagree with the comment you replied to but none of those facts disagree with what they said.
      - redis_mlc 6y ago
        No, the writer who said "because of" is more correct than "motivated by." The US FARs are really a sequence of reactions to dead passengers, which is what "written in blood" means. That's why the NTSB always seems to be one step ahead of the FAA in demanding action - the NTSB investigated an accident with dead people, found a cause, and requested the FAA do something about it. Source: commercially-rated airplane pilot.
Aeolun 6y ago
> how does anybody imagine that a novel aerial vehicle like this actually IS CERTIFIED within a lifetime? All of the aircraft in existence have been certified in what is (for a very old person) one lifetime. I think we’ll be fine. Their schedule seems to have 5 years for development, and 5 more for certification. That seems reasonable.
- 29083011397778 6y ago
  > Their schedule seems to have 5 years for development, and 5 more for certification. >That seems reasonable That sounds laughable. Garmin, an established, well-funded, and well-connected company, spent multiple decades to certify one system with the FAA.
giosalinas 6y ago
Seems like you lack of understanding about aviation in general. You know why Piper/Cessna airplanes look exactly the same and keep using 50 year old engines? because of safety. You know why pilot spends 30min pre-checking the aircraft? safety You know why getting a pilot license is magnitudes more work? safety Everything in aviation works around safety. If you want to innovate, sure, go ahead. If you want to innovate and do it safety and reliable, oops, that's going to cost you a lot and that's the same reason why there are not many players in aviation, engineering an aircraft or new powerplant is a big up-front cost with probably little return.

mattigames 6y ago

Well, they should just use some of that VC money into pocketing (AKA lobbying) politicians to relax rules for these specific kind of airplanes, it has worked pretty well for the health industry in the US.

looping__lui 6y ago
I mean, they probably do that. But the point is: even if politicians DO push that and even if the rules and regulations are written down - doesn’t mean that they will be granted a certification. I mean, funnily enough, they don’t yet even KNOW what they will have to adhere to and achieve and start burning through 300MM USD in investor money... Boeing, Airbus, Cessna, Cirrus and Piper have dozens of years of experience and KNOW how to get planes certified - and yet they essentially “re-use older certifications”... Fun times when they get told they need two ballistic parachutes or they need at least 30 min safety backup for hover flight (e.g., each Cessna pilot has to make sure he has 30+min fuel reserve). Your engineers will commit suicide when you surprise them with “oh there was this ask...” And then the weather - I mean, seriously, there are super strict rules about visual minimas for flights in the US and Europe. If you go instrument rated things get even more complex and bureaucratic. Not to mention that instrument flight is PROHIBITED in Germany below 2000+ft in uncontrolled airspace... Ah, and I want to see that flying electric lawn-mower make his way across the Alps with 50kts headwind, freezing temperatures at cruising altitude. Pilots landing in Innsbruck need special training for “Foehn” Approaches and when the heavy winds roll over the city and airport you can hear the pilots pushing full throttle in final to counter the 2000+ft/min downwash.
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  > e.g., each Cessna pilot has to make sure he has 30+min fuel reserve Well, this is pretty much standard practice! Edit: Ah I misunderstood your comment. So yes it is standard. However I could see this not applying to these guys, because with vertical landing capability they should be able to support field landings with really minimal risk.
  - gibolt 6y ago
    VTOL and several other major capability differences really should change the certification process. Current certifications a designed around certain engineering constraints. Nearly all existing planes operate with the same basic parts, thanks to the fuel. This dictates the possible drivetrains. Reduced complexity can lead to drastic reconsideration. While I don't expect change to be super fast, regulation tends to move faster than normal when major disruption starts showing up in practice (drones, self-driving vehicles, ...)
    - nradov 6y ago
      There is already a certification process for helicopters and autogyros, so VTOL capability alone is no reason for a different certification process. Helicopters require a 20 minute fuel reserve in VFR conditions and 30 minutes in IFR conditions. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.151 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.151
      - GekkePrutser 6y ago
        Yes but these are automated, so they could be programmed to stay within X minutes of backup landing sites at all times, and altitudes to reach them easily.
        nradov 6y ago
        No there will be a human pilot in control. It's going to be many years before fully automated aircraft are allowed to carry human civilian passengers through regular airspace.

GekkePrutser 6y ago

Totally agree about the certification. It's so annoying having to do stuff like managing the mixture. There is absolutely no chance I'm going to be better at that than even the most basic FADEC system. Every car since the early 90s has done away with the choke, but for some reason in a 2020-built C172 I still have to do this... :X I would argue that this insistence on safety certification makes actual flights less safe. Because it results in it not being done, leaving something to the pilot who is more error-prone than an automatic system. I haven't heard of accidents in GA aircraft that were due to poor mixture (though I haven't looked, and it could technically cause one if you set it too explosive) but when I still flew there were several incidents reported by our maintenance company who complained about cylinder scoring due to overheting. It would be much better to have this automatically managed, and more environmentally friendly too, because there is no need for 'full rich' settings during takeoff/landing, it would just adjust it to ensure sufficient cooling. The full-rich is just a precaution to avoid the pilot miscalibrating it during this critical flight phase (and to avoid overheating on the ground of course).

looping__lui 6y ago
Yes! Rotax (Austrian company) actually builds great engines. They are heavily used in ultra-light airplanes with much more “relaxed” certification. And you are right: in the ultra-light market, we see a giant boom because of lower certification hurdles and actually much safer systems: automated engine control, constant speed propellers, ballistic parachutes, etc. But Maximum Take-Off-Weight (MTOW) is 650 kg (Germany) that leaves you with a skinny wife/husband, some gas and light baggage... Airplane engines are operating in tougher environments than car engines - hence bigger tolerances and less sophistication in some parts. They also must not fail. I mean, the engine has to be ok with starting up at 100 degrees F on the ground, climbing at maximum power to 10’000 ft, with below freezing temperatures within 15/20 min and descending down again with an urgy pilot pushing down the cylinder heat temperatures from 400 to 200 degrees fahrenheit within minutes (due to power reduction and increased speed cooling the engine).
- rkangel 6y ago
  Rotax engines are in fact fully certified aircraft engines as I understand it. I am training for a PPL(G) in the UK (G is for Gyrocopter). There two proper certified makes of Gyro in the UK (Magni and AutoGyro), and all of the engines are Rotax. The newest is the 915, which includes a FADEC and turbo.

lisper 6y ago

Private pilot here. Yes, aviation innovates slowly, but it's not nearly as bad as you make it sound. Cirrus aircraft have been a game changer, as has the Garmin G1000 avionics. I can fly just about any instrument approach entirely on autopilot. The only thing I have to touch is the throttle and the flaps. I get real-time traffic information via ADS-B, real-time weather via Nexrad. I do my flight planning in five minutes using Foreflight on an iPad. It is all pretty awesomely cool actually. It's not installed in the plane I fly, but Garmin's auto-landing system was recently certified for emergency use. https://generalaviationnews.com/2020/05/19/garmin-autoland-certified-for-general-aviation-aircraft/ https://generalaviationnews.com/2020/05/19/garmin-autoland-c...

looping__lui 6y ago
Yes, but let us not compare a 50k used Cessna to a 500k Cirrus? They rely on a Continental that was developed in the 80s (so quite new) - but doN’t you still have to adjust the mixture manually (e.g., manually adjust the air to fuel ratio)? I mean, the cool stuff you are describing can easily end up at 500k-2MM USD with a fully trained private pilot...
- notatoad 6y ago
  >let us not compare a 50k used Cessna to a 500k Cirrus? why not? the original post was that innovation can't happen in aviation because of regulation. if we're shifting the argument to innovation doesn't happen because it's expensive, that's a much more solveable problem.
  - looping__lui 6y ago
    Let me rephrase: The innovation you describe (which is cool and needs certification) bumped the price for a new airplane from about 50k in the 70s (I guess we may be talking 200k in today’s money) to close to 1MM USD. And that innovation is “just” glass cockpit, and some more advanced avionics. Not changing the principles - you fly a bit faster, a bit safer but still need a license and do all the preparation and checks. But it’s a bit more fancy. From 200k to almost 1 MM. The Garmin Autoland you described bumps up the sum to 3MM (https://www.piper.com/press-releases/piper-announces-new-m600-sls/ https://www.piper.com/press-releases/piper-announces-new-m60...). So factor 10 for something “that was already unreasonably expensive”... My argument was around “innovation has a horrible ROI” in the aviation industry. Building a startup in that space has to take costs into consideration... I mean, Musk initially didn’t shoot people into space, there was an inefficient market and the margins were enormous... That’s a different story...

looping__lui 6y ago

For those interested, a couple of professors were using physics n hard math on the Lilium claims: https://www.aerokurier.de/8/3/7/8/5/9/6/aerokurier_Konzeptberechnung_Lilium_Jet.pdf https://www.aerokurier.de/8/3/7/8/5/9/6/aerokurier_Konzeptbe... (It is in German though). A big German magazine did a rather intensive “how much sense does it make” story: https://www.aerokurier.de/elektroflug/flugtaxis-kein-markt-fuer-lilium-und-co/ https://www.aerokurier.de/elektroflug/flugtaxis-kein-markt-f...

rklaehn 6y ago

If US and EU are so buerocratic that innovation is impossible, there will still be a big market for viable VTOL electric planes in the rest of the world. Just like most 3rd world countries these days have better 4G coverage than supposedly 1st world countries like Germany, or rural US.

looping__lui 6y ago
Check out: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_5K7cpxeXnc&feature=youtu.be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_5K7cpxeXnc&feature=youtu.be And guess the country :-) I would never start such a business in the US or Europe.
JAlexoid 6y ago
Which third world countries have better 4G, than... say Estonia?
smabie 6y ago
What 3rd world countries are you referring to? I'm pretty well traveled, and in my experience, this definitely has not been the case.

RobRivera 6y ago

You paint it to in a overly negative light, in my opinion. Much of the processes and procedures in place are not just functional, but behavioral training and conditioning to enable the pilot to troubleshoot mid-flight problems. It's like a highly capable human runtime exception debugger that will save the lives of everyone on board. Some FAA regs and procedures are written in blood, but most are written in a way to prevent blood in the future. I also like to echo the products Garmin is incorporating to increase the UX in the cockpit. They address some of the things you outline. Remember, aviators aren't engineers, they are operators. The license requirement is there to ensure that pilots can do basic things like triage, malfunction diagnostic, ad hoc solution generation, energy management, communicate, etc.

steffan 6y ago

I'd argue that some of the difference between a pilot license and a driver's license would diminish if the difficulty of a driver's license more accurately reflected the challenges of operating a heavy vehicle in close proximity to pedestrians and other vehicles. At the current standards, apparently the only hard requirement is a pulse.

s1dev 6y ago
Here are a few ways to kill you and all your passengers under instrument flight rules. Most of these involve a single mistake and a "controlled flight into terrain" - Turn too early/late past an arbitrary point in space - Turn the wrong direction - Descend too early past an arbitrary point in space - Use the wrong altimeter setting - Failing to recognize and troubleshoot a failed instrument - Failing to recognize signs of hypoxia Not to mention dealing with emergency procedures while you don't do any of the above Here is an example from a few years ago where a 777 missed a mountain by a few seconds after some non-standard instructions by ATC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFdXax7Zh_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFdXax7Zh_g
- steffan 6y ago
  (I fly IFR as well) I don't think the comparison between a regular driver's license and Instrument / IMC flight is reasonable. Perhaps more accurate to compare to a Commercial Driver's License with a HazMat load Or driving a bus Even in the aviation world, an IFR rating is largely considered the most difficult to get. I would also add that in aviation, most accidents / incidents do _not_ result from a single error, but rather the stacking up of errors, which granted, are almost all variations of 'pilot error'
rkangel 6y ago
In a car, if in doubt you can just press and hold the brake pedal and you reach a safe condition. With the exception of motorways where you first have to pull over to the hard shoulder you can always do that. In a plane you don't have that single goto option. You have to know the correct response to every possible situation and it's different in each case. Plus, many mechanical failures in an aircraft will kill you. Most things in a car won't. You need to learn how to look after a plane, and what to check for.

IAmEveryone 6y ago

Safety, as measured in fatalities per person per mile per year, has increased by a factor of 100x since the 1960s: traffic increased 10-fold, while fatalities fell by the same factor. So they do seem to be doing something right... The lack of chaanges may just indicate that the current paradigm is a rather good one. If anvbody came up with a working scramjet, regulation would be a minor hassle. It's really physics that are limiting here: supersonic travel is too inefficient both economically and environmentally. And personal autonomous local transport (i. e. "flying car") is impossible without some sort of breakthrough on noise.

JAlexoid 6y ago

I suspect that aeroplanes will look very similarly in 100 years as well. There's such thing as physics that are the main reasons. Don't look at fighter jets, as they are basically jet engines with guns and little control surfaces added. As for airworthiness - there's a good reason for that - these things literally fly over your head.

aphextron 6y ago

Aviation regulations are written in blood. They are the only reason you can step into an aircraft with a reasonable expectation of making it safely to your destination. Disasters are generally not caused by obvious large issues, but a multitude of smaller compounding, seemingly benign causes that could otherwise be easily dismissed. The massive body of regulation around aviation is a direct result of this. Each one is almost always a direct response to a particular incident that killed people.

jessriedel 6y ago
That regulations are motivated by avoiding deaths does not mean that they are effective at that, or even if they are effective that they are worth the costs. Regulations that specify specific safety equipment, rather than specifying target error rates or bonds/liability, are the worst because they get enacted and then stay on the books for decades unchanged.
- danaliv 6y ago
  They aren’t motivated by it. They’re a result of it. Practically every rule or standard in the book can be traced to a crash. Mode C veil? Aeromexico 498, 82 dead. Radio comms standardization? Tenerife, 583 dead. CRM: United 173, 10 dead. Altitude requirements while being vectored to an approach (91.175(i)): TWA 514, 92 dead. I could go on. The answer to “why can’t we just” in aviation is “because people died.” The FAA doesn’t make rules just to make them. They make them because aviation is unforgiving and it will kill you and your passengers if you screw it up.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    It sounds like you're trying to disagree with the comment you replied to but none of those facts disagree with what they said.
    - redis_mlc 6y ago
      No, the writer who said "because of" is more correct than "motivated by." The US FARs are really a sequence of reactions to dead passengers, which is what "written in blood" means. That's why the NTSB always seems to be one step ahead of the FAA in demanding action - the NTSB investigated an accident with dead people, found a cause, and requested the FAA do something about it. Source: commercially-rated airplane pilot.

Aeolun 6y ago

> how does anybody imagine that a novel aerial vehicle like this actually IS CERTIFIED within a lifetime? All of the aircraft in existence have been certified in what is (for a very old person) one lifetime. I think we’ll be fine. Their schedule seems to have 5 years for development, and 5 more for certification. That seems reasonable.

29083011397778 6y ago
> Their schedule seems to have 5 years for development, and 5 more for certification. >That seems reasonable That sounds laughable. Garmin, an established, well-funded, and well-connected company, spent multiple decades to certify one system with the FAA.

giosalinas 6y ago

Seems like you lack of understanding about aviation in general. You know why Piper/Cessna airplanes look exactly the same and keep using 50 year old engines? because of safety. You know why pilot spends 30min pre-checking the aircraft? safety You know why getting a pilot license is magnitudes more work? safety Everything in aviation works around safety. If you want to innovate, sure, go ahead. If you want to innovate and do it safety and reliable, oops, that's going to cost you a lot and that's the same reason why there are not many players in aviation, engineering an aircraft or new powerplant is a big up-front cost with probably little return.