Flight Safety Information - October 5, 2022 No.192 In This Issue : Incident: Endeavor CRJ9 at Raleigh/Durham on Oct 2nd 2022, runway excursion : Embraer EMB-545 Legacy 450 - Inflight Emergency Return to Airport (Texas) : Britten-Norman BN-2A-21 Islander - destroyed in emergency landing (Australia) : Cantwell promised change and fought for new regulation in previous FAA Reauthorization : Boeing Preaches Safety Ethic as Work on Max 7, Max 10 Persists : Russia Loses UN Aviation Council Seat over Activities in Ukraine : Singapore Airlines, rated the best airline in 2021, tops the list once again : ICAO credits Azerbaijani aviation safety standards : NTSB Finds Improper Maintenance Was a Cause of 2020 Crash of Piper PA-28 : Lufthansa Technik Taps into the Electronic Logbook Market : Airplane lands $32M in new cash to make it easier for companies to build internal dev tools : CHINA'S AUTOFLIGHT APPOINTS U.S. LEADERSHIP TEAM FOR PROSPERITY EVTOL AIRCRAFT : Boeing's Wisk Is Going Full Robot With Its Electric Air Taxi While Competitors Stick With Human Pilots : GRADUATE RESEARCH SURVEY Incident: Endeavor CRJ9 at Raleigh/Durham on Oct 2nd 2022, runway excursion An Endeavor Canadair CRJ-900 on behalf of Delta Airlines, registration N297PQ performing flight DL-5467 from Newark,NJ to Raleigh/Durham,NC (USA), was on an ILS final approach to Raleigh's runway 23L when the crew went around due to the ILS becoming unreliable. The crew consulted with ATC, who advised now both ILSs for runway 23L and 23R indicated unreliable, the better option seemed to be runway 23R however. The crew decided to position for an ILS approach to runway 23R and touched down safely about 17 minutes after the go around, however, while attempting to vacate the runway at the last exit the aircraft collided with a threshold runway 05L light and vacated the runway on the taxiway edge line. The FAA reported: "AIRCRAFT LANDED AND STRUCK A THRESHOLD LIGHT, RALEIGH-DURHAM, NC." rating the damage minor. The aircraft remained on the ground for about 21 hours then continued service. https://avherald.com/h?article=4ff36cd9&opt=0 Embraer EMB-545 Legacy 450 - Inflight Emergency Return to Airport (Texas) Date: 03-OCT-2022 Time: c. 17:40 LT Type: Embraer EMB-545 Legacy 450 Owner/operator: Partee Aviation LLC Registration: N179SP MSN: 55010008 Fatalities: Fatalities: 0 / Occupants: 4 Other fatalities: 0 Aircraft damage: Unknown Location: Houston-William P. Hobby Airport, TX (HOU/KHOU) - United States of America Phase: Initial climb Nature: Executive Departure airport: Houston-William P. Hobby Airport, TX (HOU/KHOU) Destination airport: Big Spring-Webb AFB, TX (BGS/KBPG) Confidence Rating: Information verified through data from accident investigation authorities Narrative: The Legacy 450 aircraft departed from Rwy 13R and returned 'due to a door coming off', according to the FAA. The aircraft landed safely on Rwy 04 at 17:47 LT. https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/287747 Britten-Norman BN-2A-21 Islander - destroyed in emergency landing (Australia) Date: 03-OCT-2022 Time: 01:40 Type: Britten-Norman BN-2A-21 Islander Owner/operator: Colville Aviation Services PTY LTD Registration: VH-WQA MSN: 494 Fatalities: Fatalities: 0 / Occupants: 7 Other fatalities: 0 Aircraft damage: Substantial Category: Accident Location: Moa Island, Torres Strait - Australia Phase: Unknown Nature: Passenger - Non-Scheduled/charter/Air Taxi Departure airport: Saibai Island Airport, QLD (SBR/YSII) Destination airport: Kubin Island Airport, QLD (KUG/YKUB) Confidence Rating: Information is only available from news, social media or unofficial sources Narrative: A Britten-Norman BN-2A-21 Islander, VH-WQA, was destroyed in an emergency landing on Moa Island, Torres Strait. The pilot and six passengers were not injured. https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/288149 Cantwell promised change and fought for new regulation in previous FAA Reauthorization Today, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, applauded the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) new rule that gives airline flight attendants 10 hours of consecutive rest time between shifts, guaranteeing flight attendants now have the same rest time as pilots. “Flight attendants perform critical safety roles on behalf of the flying public and have long deserved the same rest periods afforded to pilots. Thank you to the flight attendant workforce for their leadership and sustained advocacy on this important safety reform,” said Sen. Cantwell. “That overwhelming bipartisan vote that came on the heels of an incredible championing by Chairman Peter DeFazio, by Chair Maria Cantwell in Commerce, Chair Rick Larsen of the Aviation Subcommittee, Chair Frank LoBiondo also of the Aviation Subcommittee – a real bipartisan effort supporting the advocacy of flight attendants and supporting the science that had determined this was a safety risk and loophole that we had to close,” said Sara Nelson, President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, during today’s press conference. Senator Cantwell has long supported increasing flight attendant duty rest periods. In September 2016, Sen. Cantwell argued for this change and co-sponsored legislation aimed to prevent flight attendant fatigue by guaranteeing 10-hour rest periods. During a May 2017 Commerce Aviation Subcommittee hearing, Cantwell promised to include the 10-hour rest rule in the 2018 FAA Reauthorization: “I was also there last year when we put an FAA bill together and we didn’t give flight attendants the same rest time as pilots. We should correct that this time and make sure that there is even parity," said Sen. Cantwell, then Ranking Member of the Commerce Aviation Subcommittee, to Sara Nelson, President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA. Congress approved the change in 2018 after Sen. Cantwell fought for this rule’s inclusion in the 2018 FAA Reauthorization Bill, which passed the Senate 93-6. https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2022/10/cantwell-applauds-new-flight-attendant-safety-rest-requirement Boeing Preaches Safety Ethic as Work on Max 7, Max 10 Persists Boeing continues to insist it won’t let what it calls an arbitrary deadline to complete certification of the 737 Max 7 and Max 10 influence the timing of its paperwork exercise with the FAA, despite the real possibility of a compromise in commonality between those airplanes and the Max 8, Max 9, and 737NG. At issue remains a legislative requirement that would require Boeing to install a new engine indicating and crew alerting system (EICAS) in the Max 7 and Max 10 if it does not meet the year-end deadline, an eventuality that appears ever more likely, particularly in the larger of the two airplanes. In a September 19 letter sent to Boeing vice president of Max return to service Mike Fleming, FAA Aircraft Certification Service director of aviation safety Lirio Liu noted that the agency had accepted only 10 percent of the required system safety assessments (SSAs) for the Max 7 while 70 percent remained in various stages of review and revision. “Most concerning” to Liu, however, Boeing hadn’t yet submitted six outstanding SSAs. “As you are aware, the FAA communicated that Boeing must turn in all remaining system safety assessments (SSA) by mid-September if the company intends to meet its project plan of completing certification work (and receiving FAA approval for this airplane) by December 2022,” wrote Liu. Given that Boeing hadn’t yet submitted all the SSAs by that time, Liu’s warning suggests that not only will the Max 7 not meet the December deadline, but neither will the Max 10, which remains in flight testing. The Max 7 finished its flight testing last year. Furthermore, while the Max 7 now features virtual full commonality with the Max 8 and Max 9, the Max 10 carries longer and heavier main landing gear to accommodate its extra length and, perhaps more significantly, an enhanced angle of attack sensor to address design concerns stemming from the twin crashes of the Max 8 in October 2018 and March 2019. An excerpt of Boeing’s September 22 response to the FAA provided to AIN on condition of anonymity indicated that the company initially submitted the SSAs for the Max 7 to the FAA in October 2021. The letter also noted that Boeing followed FAA direction to instruct its engineering unit members (E-UMs) to undertake a second review and approval of the associated SSAs. “This secondary review significantly increased the efforts of our teams, and we appreciate the clarifying letter you sent last week advising you were not looking for a new means of compliance, and that any questions of compliance should be addressed through the existing guidance,” said the letter. “We are applying this clarification going forward.” The excerpt also indicates that of the 26 or 32 SSAs Boeing submitted between March and July of this year, the FAA has completed its review of three. The company revised and resubmitted 13 to address FAA comments and the company continues work on another 10 in preparation for resubmittal. As of September 22, Boeing continued to prepare and review the final six SSAs ahead of their submittal. Addressing reporters during one of a series of briefings held in the Puget Sound area in mid-June, Fleming expressed satisfaction with the progress of the Max 10 in flight testing but conceded that whether or not the airplane gained type inspection authorization (TIA) in time for certification by the end of the year rested with the FAA’s approval of development assurance work, during which Boeing needed to complete items such as fault hazard analysis. Despite the time pressure that resulted from the legislation known as the Aircraft Certification, Safety, and Accountability Act (ACSAA), Fleming stressed that Boeing would not rush through any of the required steps. Addressing a question about whether he personally thought Boeing would win certification by the end of the year, he answered, “it’s indeterminate.” Reuters reported late Monday that a letter from FAA administrator Billy Nolan to Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker indicated that Boeing does not expect Max 10 certification until sometime next summer. Wicker, the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, proposed an amendment to this year’s defense appropriations bill that would give Boeing until September 2024 to complete its work on the two airplanes before the ACSAA provision that calls for EICAS takes effect. For its part, Boeing continues to cite safety as the “driving factor” in the certification effort and laments the safety compromise that the loss of commonality between various submodels of the 737 would cause by a need to install an EICAS in the Max 7 and Max 10. “Safety gains in commercial aviation over several decades have demonstrated that a consistent operational experience across an airplane family is an industry best practice that benefits flight crews and the flying public by enhancing safety and reducing risk,” concluded Boeing. https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/air-transport/2022-10-04/boeing-preaches-safety-ethic-work-max-7-max-10-persists Russia Loses UN Aviation Council Seat over Activities in Ukraine Russia yesterday failed to win enough votes for reelection to the United Nations International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) Council, as the country lost 86 votes because of its invasion of Ukraine. The election was conducted yesterday at the ongoing United Nations General Assembly for aviation, which began this past week in Montreal, Canada. Reports from Montreal indicated that the ousting of Russia followed a democratic vote by member states. This was the first time a country would be kicked out from the premier category of the decision-making council at the United Nations organisation for aviation. After the vote by over 170 countries, Russia refused to recognise the results of the election, demanding a second vote but majority of countries said the election was free, fair and final. This move is considered a huge moment for ICAO where the status quo has been ‘constant’ in the last 70 years. ICAO is a specialist agency of the United Nations set up to define international safety, environmental and operating standards for commercial aviation and currently has more than 190 countries as members. About three months ago, it was reported that European aviation leaders met with other countries to solicit votes that would ensure the election would be the chance to democratically oust Russia from the council. The president of Nigeria’s National Association of Aircraft Pilots and Engineers (NAAPE), Abednego Galadima, who is currently in Canada for the General Assembly, said that the implication of voting Russia out of ICAO means that the country would lose collaboration opportunities with member states. It also means that Russia would no longer be subjected to international regulations and without ICAO regulations, no country will trust the safety of equipment (aircraft) that operates in Russia and their flights would not be allowed to operate into the airspace of ICAO member countries. The United States will also withdraw the Category One status given to countries that have met the given standard of safety by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). This means that any aircraft registered in Russia would not be operated into the United States. Also the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), which is responsible for ensuring safety and environmental protection in air transport in Europe, will block Russia from flying to any European destinations. Russia will not participate in global aviation events and their aircraft will be deemed unsafe and will not be allowed into any ICAO member states airspace. Reports indicated that the voting results set off a procedural review yesterday, after a challenge by Russia for an additional vote. The European Commission in a statement said it welcomed the decision by the International Civil Aviation Organisation to call on the Russian Federation to immediately cease its infractions of international aviation rules, in order to preserve the safety and security of civil aviation. “The ICAO decision refers to the violation of Ukraine’s sovereign airspace in the context of Russia’s war of aggression, and to the deliberate and continued violation of several safety requirements in an attempt by the Russian government to circumvent EU sanctions. “These actions include illegally double-registering in Russia aircraft stolen from leasing companies, and permitting Russian airlines to operate these aircraft on international routes without a valid Certificate of Airworthiness, which is the necessary safety certificate,” the Commission said. The ICAO Council is a permanent body of the Organisation responsible to the Assembly. https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2022/10/02/russia-loses-un-aviation-council-seat-over-activities-in-ukraine/ Singapore Airlines, rated the best airline in 2021, tops the list once again Travel and lifestyle magazine Condé Nast Traveller has published its 2022 list of the best airlines in the world. The list has been revealed as part of the magazine’s annual Readers’ Choice Awards, “the most important awards in the travel industry, celebrating the ultimate places, movers and fixers on the planet”. As the name suggests, the Readers’ Choice Awards are presented according to the results of surveys taken by Condé Nast Traveller readers. With its longstanding reputation for customer satisfaction, it’s not surprising that Singapore Airlines has been named the best airline in the world — Shutterstock When it came to airlines, readers had their say on several aspects. These included their experience (if any) with flight disruption, food and drink available on board, and overall customer service. The feedback was collated and each airline was given a numerical score, with 100 being the highest possible. According to this, the top-20 ranking of the best airlines in the world is as follows: 20. Swiss International Air Lines (75.87) 19. Alaska Airlines (76.71) 18. Tradewind Aviation (76.97) 17. Air France (76.98) 16. British Airways (77.01) 15. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines (78.50) 14. Air New Zealand (80.44) 13. Virgin Atlantic (80.49) 12. Hawaiian Airlines (80.50) 11. Qantas (81.11) 10. JetBlue Airways (81.96) 9. JAL (Japan Airlines) (83.23) 8. Delta Air Lines (83.65) 7. Cathay Pacific (84.73) 6. ANA (All Nippon Airways) (85.63) 5. Etihad Airways (85.69) 4. Emirates (85.80) 3. Qatar Airways (85.99) 2. Turkish Airlines (87.71) 1. Singapore Airlines (89.65) https://www.kiwi.com/stories/conde-nast-traveller-reveals-the-best-airlines-in-the-world-in-2022/ ICAO credits Azerbaijani aviation safety standards The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has conducted another large-scale audit of the ICAO Coordinated Validation Mission for compliance with international safety standards of civil aviation in Azerbaijan under the Universal Safety Oversight Audit Program, Azernews reports. During the audit, compliance with international safety standards and the organization of state control was consistently verified in eight critical elements, including legislation, organizational structure, flight operations control, aircraft airworthiness control, air navigation standards control, aerodrome operator control, certificate issuance, and air accident investigation. According to the preliminary report of the Validation Committee, the effective implementation of the flight safety management system in Azerbaijan and compliance with ICAO standards were set at 80 percent. This figure is 5 percent above the global and European average set by ICAO by 2025, and at the same time, it is above the compliance rate of 66 percent determined by the last audit conducted in Azerbaijan in 2018. In this regard, ICAO sent a letter to the Digital Development and Transport Ministry and congratulated the Government of Azerbaijan and the State Civil Aviation Agency for the success achieved. The letter also expressed willingness to discuss directions of activities for further enhancing the control capacity of the agency. https://www.azernews.az/business/200392.html NTSB Finds Improper Maintenance Was a Cause of 2020 Crash of Piper PA-28 The Board was very specific in pointing out what happened Pilot error is the most common cause of crashes of light planes, but in the case of a Piper PA-28 that landed long and went through a fence two years ago in Upstate New York, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found that the primary cause was someone else’s mistake. The takeoff of the PA-28-161 Warrior on October 4, 2020, seemingly started without any issue as the aircraft rolled down the runway at Oswego County Airport (KFZY) in Fulton, New York. That is until shortly after liftoff when the windscreen became covered with oil. The pilot attempted to return to the airport and land on the departure runway. However, according to the NTSB analysis, the aircraft touched down more than halfway down the runway where the pilot was unable to stop the aircraft, overrunning the runway, striking a chain link fence. This caused substantial damage to the airplane and minor injuries to the pilot. Examination of the engine found that the crankshaft expansion plug dislodged. The expansion plug was recently installed during maintenance that occurred three days before to the accident. The mechanic who performed the repairs said that he installed the crankshaft plug using a procedure that he has utilized in the past, which included what the NTSB called the “unconventional” use of a ball-peen hammer to seat the plug instead of the recommended procedures and special tools that were specified by the engine manufacturer. The NTSB’s probable cause for the accident was listed as “The mechanic’s improper maintenance, which resulted in the crankshaft expansion plug dislodging in flight and a subsequent forced landing.” https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/news/the-latest/2022/10/04/ntsb-finds-improper-maintenance-was-a-cause-of-2020-crash-of-piper-pa-28/ Lufthansa Technik Taps into the Electronic Logbook Market Lufthansa Technik plans to start installing its new Electronic Technical Logbook (eTLB) on the entire fleet of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam-based Vietjet's aircraft. The move comes just one month after Lufthansa completed the fleet-wide rollout of its latest Aviatar application with Hungarian low-cost carrier Wizz Air. The project with Wizz Air represents a “milestone” for the eTLB mainly because it received the approval of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), noted Dajana Kunz, product lead for the system at Lufthansa Technik in Hamburg, Germany. “We hope that the EASA approval of Wizz Air’s implementation of the Aviatar eTLB system will make it easier for airlines that fly under a national authority that adheres to the EASA regulations to receive the approval from their relevant authority,” she told AIN. “Of course, sometimes national regulators have additional or country-specific requirements but the EASA approval [for Wizz Air] is a milestone for us.” Every airline that seeks to replace the traditional manual and paper-based technical log must complete a tech log page for each flight as a legal record of the aircraft’s technical status and journey; a digital system must obtain the approval of the associated processes from the responsible authority—usually, the national civil aviation authority. In Wizz Air’s case, EASA serves as that authority because the carrier years ago opted to make use of the European agency’s expanded competence and fly under its safety oversight. (EASA scrutinizes full compliance with all applicable safety standards and certifies on behalf of the national authority where an EU-licensed air carrier’s AOC is based.) The aircraft that will transfer from Wizz Air’s AOC in Hungary to its newly obtained AOC in Malta will fall automatically under the EASA's eTLB approval, Wizz Air CEO Jozsef Varadi confirmed to AIN. Conversely, because the UK no longer is a member of the EU and EASA, the UK CAA must separately approve processes of the Aviatar technical logbook for Wizz Air's aircraft based in the UK. The same applies to the company’s aircraft flying for Wizz Air Abu Dhabi in the UAE. While Lufthansa Group participated in the initial development and testing of Lufthansa Technik’s eTLB, Wizz Air emerged as the launch customer. The company seemed a natural choice because of its drive to digitalize its entire operations and because it already used Aviatar—Lufthansa Technik’s cloud-based platform for a wide range of products and services such as predictive maintenance. Aviatar users can easily integrate the eTLB because it already captures several datapoints. But “the Aviatar digital technical logbook is a standalone application that can be used in each cockpit and on all aircraft types—business jets as well as regional or long-range passenger and cargo airliners,” stressed Kunz. “ The solution works with any hardware, such as a tablet, smartphone, or desktop computer running Apple or Windows software, she said. Deployment of the eTLB requires training at both ends of the system, but Lufthansa Tecknik ensured the interface “is easy and intuitive to use,” noted Kunz. “We are getting quite good feedback on that.” Wizz Air has reported positive first results of the deployment of the digital pilot-to-maintenance collaboration application on its EU fleet of more than 140 Airbus A320s and A321s. “We already experience data quality, reliability, and airworthiness control enhancement supporting our technical and operational performance,” said Diogo Reu, head of engineering and maintenance at Wizz Air and project lead for the airline’s Go Digital project. For instance, calls to Wizz Air's maintenance control center dropped by more than 25 percent following the launch of the application. Aviatar’s technical logbook offers prefilled text blocks and automated input masks, which allow pilots to record technical anomalies of the aircraft in real-time, thereby reducing manual efforts by up to 50 percent while ensuring data quality as well as transparency, said the company. Real-time data availability and a direct connection to the airline’s maintenance and engineering system, ensures maintenance on arrival and decreases turnaround times and costs. On average, the system cuts closing times of defects in half. Despite the many advantages an electronic tech log offers compared with the paper-based process of cockpit writeups and maintenance follow-ups, fewer than 5 percent of the world's airlines have equipped their fleets with a digital solution, estimates Kunz. The trend seems to be accelerating, however. In recent months, carriers such as SAS Scandinavian Airlines and India's Vistara have announced that they will adopt electronic logbook software and selected Ultramain Systems to provide it. Operating as part of the Lufthansa Group does not mean an affiliated airline automatically will implement the Aviatar eTLB. Air Dolomiti, the Italian airline of the Lufthansa Group, and Swiss International Airlines use Boeing’s Crossmos eTLB software. Meanwhile, a Lufthansa Technik sister company—Swiss AviationSoftware (Swiss-AS)—has begun developing its own eTLB. Over the past few months, Swiss-AS signed several AMOS customers to the eTLB development partners group, such as El Al Israel Airlines, Luxair, and the Philippines’s Cebu Air. The company expects to deliver its eTLB solution in the fourth quarter of 2023. “We are in advanced talks with several airlines across the world, including some Lufthansa Group airlines,” confirmed Kunz, while declining the reveal names. As Aviatar customers, Eurowings and Austrian Airlines will likely expand their Aviatar portfolio with the new eTLB. “We see a high demand for the electronic technical log and we anticipate that at least the large airlines will implement the digital solution,” asserted Kunz. “We would like to become the main player in the eTLB market, of course.” https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/air-transport/2022-10-04/lufthansa-technik-taps-electronic-logbook-market Airplane lands $32M in new cash to make it easier for companies to build internal dev tools Software-as-a-service dev platform Airplane today closed a $32 million Series B funding round led by Thrive Capital with participation from Benchmark, bringing the startup’s total raised to $40.5 million. Ravi Parikh says that the new funds will be put toward growing Airplane’s 19-person team while expanding its product to new markets. Airplane was founded in 2020 by Parikh and Josh Ma, who was formerly the CTO at Benchling, a cloud-based platform for biotechnology R&D. Parikh previously co-founded analytics startup Heap, which offers tools to analyze customer journeys online. Parikh and Ma left their respective companies in 2020 after realizing that one of the biggest challenges in software development is a lack of internal tooling. It wasn’t just a hunch on their parts. According to one recent vendor survey, developers spent more than 30% of their time building internal apps in 2021. The pandemic worsened matters, with 87% of respondents saying that they increased or maintained their time spent on internal apps in response to the health crises. How modeling the future can help increase sustainability. “[We’ve spoken] to tons of engineers who spend 25% to 50% of their time responding to customer requests, building and maintaining internal admin panels, maintaining cron jobs, on-call runbooks and more instead of pushing the product forward … At Heap, we had tons of one-off customer requests, like deleting data, merging accounts, GDPR operations and billing operations,” Parikh said. “We created Airplane to make it easy to take these one-off engineering operations and turn them into tools anyone at a company can use.” Parikh acknowledges there are platforms already addressing these internal tooling challenges, like Retool and Superblocks — both of which recently secured tens of millions in venture capital backing. But he argues that Airplane is more developer-centric and “code-first,” eschewing a low-code, drag-and-drop approach to creating apps for more specialized tools and workflows. With Airplane, developers can select from a library of tables, forms, charts and more to built apps, which can be integrated with APIs and custom components or libraries. The platform supports databases and messaging platforms out of the box and can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud, giving devs the raw tools to launch apps like billing dashboards and content moderation queues. Airplane today launched Airplane Views, a framework for creating internal tooling visual interfaces. Airplane was previously focused on code-heavy internal apps for tasks like deleting user data, refunding a charge and banning a user. But Airplane Views allows developers to create app components that act like dashboards, for example to display certain key metrics. “One of the most common use cases is software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies using Airplane Views to build internal admin panels for their customer success and support teams. SaaS companies use Airplane to create [interfaces] where they can look up customer data, view account metrics and make account changes like suspending users or upgrading a customer’s account,” Parikh said. “Another important use case is fraud detection … [W]ith Views, companies can build more sophisticated fraud monitoring [interfaces] where the right user data is displayed contextually next to these operations, making the lives of ops and risk teams significantly easier when using Airplane.” Eric Vishria, a general partner at Benchmark who recently joined Airplane’s board of directors, highlighted what he sees as the other benefits of the platform, such as controls that allow engineers to grant access to data deletion requests to anyone in a business. In theory, these minimize the need for engineers to get involved with every such request — removing a common bottleneck. “Today, virtually every company runs a software service,” Vishria said via email. “Disney used to make content, now it also has to run Disney+. Banks used to store money, now they compete on their apps. Every one of these cloud services has an unmanaged mountain of scripts, cron jobs, SQL statements and internal dashboards that keep it running. Airplane is the first company taking a developer-first approach to bringing order to this 50% of ‘code’ that lives in the wilderness today.” Parikh cautions that it’s early days; he declined to share revenue metrics. But he revealed that Airplane has almost 100 paying customers currently, including startups Vercel, Panther Labs and Flatfile. “We’re not yet profitable, but this funding round plus our current revenue gives us several years of runway even with aggressive growth plans … We’re fortunate to have a product that can save a lot of engineering time as well as significantly improve customer experience. During a period when companies are tightening their belts and looking for ways to improve efficiency, Airplane is easy to justify,” Parikh said with confidence. “[But] our product today only solves a small portion of this huge problem and there’s a lot more we need to build to create a broad platform for internal tool development.” https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/29/airplane-lands-32m-in-new-cash-to-make-it-easier-for-companies-to-build-internal-dev-tools/ CHINA'S AUTOFLIGHT APPOINTS U.S. LEADERSHIP TEAM FOR PROSPERITY EVTOL AIRCRAFT AutoFlight has appointed a new U.S.-based leadership team to oversee its plans to start deliveries of the four-seat Prosperity I eVTOL aircraft for commercial service in 2026. The Chinese company this week named Eviation Aircraft’s founder and former CEO, Omer Bar-Yohay, as its president. It also named Joby Aviation’s former head of business development, Chad Cashin, as its chief commercial officer. At a new U.S. base at Napa County Airport in California, AutoFlight will expand the flight envelope for the current version of the Prosperity model as it works to freeze the design by the end of 2022. The company’s expanded U.S. subsidiary will now work alongside the design organization it established earlier this year in Augsburg, Germany, and its manufacturing hub near Shanghai. Bar-Yohay is a friend of advanced air mobility investor Lukasz Gadowski, whose Team Global group led a $100 million funding round for AutoFlight in November 2021. The Germany-based technology entrepreneur has also invested in rival eVTOL developers Volocopter and Archer. According to Bar-Yohay, AutoFlight’s decision to appoint U.S.-based leadership reflected a need to pursue FAA type certification to access a major market for eVTOL aircraft, and also a desire to have a more prominent center of corporate gravity outside China. “This company is a black swan that no one has paid attention to,” he told FutureFlight. “In the past, I was a big critic of eVTOLs, and I still am because it’s a big challenge and it won’t work if they are only green, quiet, and safe. They have to make economic sense and that means reduced production costs as well. The vehicles need to hit all those markers and not just be a new version of a helicopter.” According to AutoFlight’s new leader, the company will be far more competitive on production costs than Western rivals and already has “hundreds” of employees in China focused on the manufacturing process. He argued that the Prosperity I will also cost much less to operate due to its “simplicity of design, avoiding complex electro-mechanical devices like tilting wings or rotors.” Another competitive differentiator, Bar-Yohay claimed, is the degree of vertical integration at AutoFlight, which he said will own almost every part and system in the aircraft, with the exception of its avionics suite. “The more you own, the more you control your destiny on costs,” he said. The company has previously indicated that the base price for the Prosperity I could be as low as $150,000, which is far lower than the price for most Western-made eVTOL designs. It claims that flights in the aircraft, with a range of 250 kilometers (155 miles), could cost no more than current ground-based taxi services. The first Prosperity I test flights in the U.S. are expected to happen at the end of the first quarter of 2023, which is also when the company aims to submit its initial type certification application to EASA in Europe with a view to completing this process in 2025. AutoFlight intends to increase the production of prototypes to step up test and development work at all three of its locations, including in China's Jiangsu province where the first proof-of-concept aircraft started flying in October 2021. In June, AutoFlight released a video showing a new design with what it says is an improved lift and cruise configuration, optimized lifting propellers, and enhanced hover and cruise performance. It is one of a handful of companies, also including Joby and EHang, to have achieved full transitions from vertical to horizontal flight with a full-scale eVTOL aircraft. The company says it has made over 100 such flights so far this year. Meanwhile, there are signs that AutoFlight’s business model may be shifting to one that is more focused on engaging with existing commercial aircraft operators. In a February 2022 interview, founder and CEO Tian Yu told FutureFlight that mainstream general aviation operators are “too small” to achieve the scale he envisages and that major airlines will have only a peripheral interest in eVTOL aircraft, which he said will never have the range to fit into their networks. “We will now be talking to operators with significant fleets, including Part 135 or charter operators,” said Bar-Yohay. While he now “buys into” the urban air mobility market (UAM) vision, he indicated that he does not expect the sector to scale up as early and as quickly as some eVTOL rivals have suggested it will in their aggressive pitches to investors to go public. “The way UAM will unfold is incrementally around current helicopter services and hub-and-spoke operations [to and from airports and other locations], but then the question is who picks up the scale to a different level,” he commented. “Maybe it could be an Uber-like player, creating a bubble for high-volume operations. This could start with a few hundred aircraft in the early years, and the toolbox is certainly full of the tools needed to build the system.” Chad Cashin (left) is chief commercial officer of AutoFlight, which is now led by Omer Bar-Yohay as president. Chad Cashin, who is now leading AutoFlight’s commercial efforts, joined Joby almost three years ago when the company acquired Uber’s Elevate division. This division had been trying to establish a platform for on-demand eVTOL air taxi services. Bar-Yohay co-founded Eviation Aircraft in 2015 with Aviv Tzidon and left the company in February 2022 after a disagreement with its main shareholder, Clermont Group. Last week, Eviation achieved a long-awaited first flight with its Alice electric fixed-wing aircraft, which is now expected to be ready to start regional airline operations in 2027. He said that he still expects Eviation to succeed and remains a shareholder in the company. AutoFlight, which also has plans for a family of cargo drones, is close to completing another funding round, which Tian Yu has previously said would aim to raise another $200 million. Bar-Yohay indicated that further fundraising may well be required as the company approaches being ready to start serial production of the Prosperity I and, in his view, the source of this funding may well be driven by which markets prove most receptive to the aircraft and where it can find suitable partners. https://www.futureflight.aero/news-article/2022-10-04/chinas-autoflight-appoints-us-leadership-team-prosperity-evtol-aircraft Boeing's Wisk Is Going Full Robot With Its Electric Air Taxi While Competitors Stick With Human Pilots There are a number of notable changes in the new, enlarged version of Wisk's air taxi that it aims to bring to market, seen here in a mockup, including the addition of tilting rotors, but one of the most important aspects remains unchanged: The company is aiming to make it autonomous. Dozens of companies are developing electric air taxis designed to take off and land vertically so they can hopscotch passengers across crowded urban areas. All are hoping that someday computers will fly them, eliminating pilots and their salaries and freeing up their seats to carry another paying passenger. Most air taxi developers are betting that safety regulators will be more comfortable approving their cutting-edge aircraft if there’s a pilot in the cockpit, at least to start. BoeingBA +5.9%-controlled Wisk Aero is going in the opposite direction. It’s sticking with an ambitious plan to go autonomous from the beginning, even as it unveiled Monday the design for a larger, four-seat aircraft that theoretically could accommodate a pilot. Jonathan Lovegren, the head of Wisk’s autonomy efforts, says they can make a better self-flying aircraft if it’s designed for a robot pilot from the start, and that it’s “misleading” for other companies to say it’ll be simple to just pull the human pilot out of their aircraft somewhere down the line. “The reality is there’s a completely different safety analysis and design assurance process,” Lovegren told Forbes. “It’s a really different aircraft.” Wisk acknowledges that will take it longer to come to market. Competitors Joby Aviation and Archer Aviation are aiming to launch in 2024. Wisk isn’t sharing its target date publicly but the Mountain View, Calif.-based company believes the new aircraft, which it hasn’t begun to flight-test yet, will be carrying passengers before the end of the decade. Wisk is planning for its air taxi to fly autonomously along pre-planned flight routes under the supervision of an employee in a ground-control station who will oversee up to three aircraft simultaneously. Its sixth-generation air taxis, which it says will be able to fly 90 miles with safety reserves at a cruising speed of roughly 140 mph, will be outfitted with sensors to detect large birds, aircraft or other hazards and will automatically adjust course to avoid them. The human supervisor will be able to override an air taxi’s decision in an emergency or divert it to land, but they won’t have a control stick to fly it manually. With all the well-publicized struggles TeslaTSLA +2.9% and other automakers have had in perfecting self-driving cars, Wisk is adamant that it isn’t using artificial intelligence to create a “black box” version of a human pilot – the Federal Aviation Administration isn’t ready to evaluate software where there isn’t a predictable output for every input. “The reality is there’s not a way to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt to the FAA that it’s going to do the right thing all the time,” Lovegren says of AI-based systems. Roughly 90% of the tasks on an airliner are already handled by autopilot and other computerized systems. Lovegren says Wisk is simply building on top of that already approved technology to create a rules-based framework to automate the vast majority of the rest. That includes responses to emergency situations, in which pilots currently consult manuals with checklists that detail how to respond step-by-step. “Most of it is procedural,” says Lovegren. “It’s very well understood.” It’s a reasonable approach to automate checklists and “a lot of the button and switch flipping,” says Ella Atkins, an autonomous systems researcher who heads the aerospace and ocean engineering department at Virginia Tech. The problem will be in the rare situations where there’s an emergency that the system can’t match up with a checklist and the supervisor will have to step in, she says. “A human on the ground that’s managing multiple aircraft will be much slower to react, to understand the situation on this airplane in real time,” Atkins says. And they may not have any better situational awareness than the aircraft’s software since they’ll only see the same data and video feed. A dilemma for safety regulators is that it might not be fair to expect the average onboard pilot of these new electric vertical takeoff and landing (EVTOL) aircraft to be able handle an emergency any better. For urban air taxi services to make a profit — and appreciably reduce ground congestion — the companies believe they’ll need to achieve economies of scale by flying hundreds of aircraft at a high tempo in major urban areas. That means they’ll need a lot of pilots. In 2020, consultancy McKinsey estimated that the industry could require 60,000 pilots by 2028 if they rolled out as planned. They’ll need to recruit and train those pilots as airlines grapple with a shortage. The airlines will be able to pay higher salaries to retain the most experienced talent. “These EVTOLs, they can’t have the best pilots in the world,” Atkins says. “They’re not going to be that glider instructor who knows what to do when the engines fail.” That’s one reason Wisk would like to hand the controls over to a robot, and its competitors say their pilots will be supported by highly automated flight control systems. The bottom line, says Atkins: “It’s not necessarily less safe for Wisk or other companies to automate all of the checklists in a way that is certifiable with the FAA” and have a remote supervisor “than it is to have a [less] experienced pilot onboard.” How the FAA will assess the safety of the complicated software in air taxis is a point of concern after the failure of the agency to spot the flaws in a flight-control system that contributed to two crashes of Boeing’s 737 MAX. Observers have warned for years that the agency needs more computer science experts, which it generally has a hard time competing with Silicon Valley to hire. Wisk’s sixth-generation air taxi is a descendant of development work begun in 2010 by billionaire Larry Page’s Zee.Aero and later a company called Kitty Hawk that Zee.Aero was folded into. The program was spun out as a joint venture with Boeing in 2019; Kitty Hawk last month announced it was shutting down, ending its efforts to bring a smaller autonomous air taxi to market. Wisk has been engaged in discussions with the FAA for years on how to prove the safety of autonomous aircraft. “They see us as, I think, setting the direction for a lot of this,” says Lovegren. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2022/10/04/boeing-wisk-autonomous-evtol/?sh=2ae45a826603 GRADUATE RESEARCH SURVEY Dear Pilots and Flight Attendants, Did you know that the difference between a 14-hour flight time and an 18-hour flight time is 28%, which means 28% more exposure by occupants to the cabin environment and other aircraft influences. Keeping this in mind, I am working on a new research study that aims to review current Health & Safety International and National Regulations and best practices for operating Ultra-Long-Range Routes (ULR). ULR operations refer to "An operation involving any sector between a specific city pair (A-B-A) in which the planned flight time exceeds 16 hours, taking into account mean wind conditions and seasonal changes. The scope of this study is to identify different health-related factors affecting Aircrew (Pilots & Flight Attendants) who operate these routes. Based on this review, a gap analysis will be conducted, and recommendations will be presented to mitigate health and safety-related impact factors on Aircrew. As a part of this study, a survey is designed for Aircrew (Pilots and Flight Attendants) who operate on ULR flights. This survey aims to learn about their experience and the different health and safety impact factors that Aircrew experience while operating these routes. Aircrew sought to participate in this study needs to meet the following criteria: - Employed (in the last 24 months) by an air carrier operating scheduled ULR flights (>16hrs); - Qualified as an aircrew member to operate ULR flights. During this study, you will be asked to complete a brief online survey about your opinions concerning health-related issues while operating ULR routes. You will answer several questions about different health-related factors and how it affects your lifestyle, including any prominent experiences you have encountered. The completion of the survey will take approximately 15-20 minutes. If you meet the criteria and are interested in helping, sign up for the study by clicking the link - https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SV2D9KT You can also sign up by scanning the QR code below. Please let me know if you have any questions I can answer. Thank you for your participation Kind Regards, Aditya Rathi ISASI Robertson Fellow M.S. Safety Science '22 (Aviation Safety) Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, Prescott rathia@my.erau.edu | (928)-632-2707 Curt Lewis