One Rule To Fly Them All

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In a first visit to Aero, it’s hard to escape this harsh reality — around every corner, there is another beautiful, stunning, interesting aircraft — but it’s difficult or next to impossible for an American to buy one. On my first day here, I visited the Risen sport plane, developed by Swiss Excellence Airplanes. For Alberto Porto, the company president, the brand-new aircraft is clearly a labor of love. A prototype has been flying for three years, and the shiny new airplane he brought to Aero incorporates all the lessons learned during that extended test phase. It’s fast, sleek, and pretty, with lots of thoughtful details — the canopy nicely raises itself up electronically, on a signal from a tiny pocket-size remote. Porto plans to fly it to Oshkosh next year and explore the options for offering it for sale in the U.S., but those options are probably limited to buying it as an Experimental, and visiting the factory in Switzerland for a few weeks or more to build it. But if aviation advocates in the U.S. and Europe get their way, there may soon be one global rule that would enable small companies like SEA to at least have a realistic chance of certifying and selling in a global marketplace.

The effort in Europe — it’s really a global effort — to change outdated certification rules and switch GA to an ASTM standards approach — similar to what we now have for LSAs — has accelerated in the last year, under new leadership at EASA, and this week EASA published a new advance notice of rulemaking. It’s still a slow process — after collecting comments on the advance notice, an actual notice will be posted, then a final rule — but it does show real progress. The ultimate goal, according to GAMA’s Greg Bowles, is to bring all of GA under what will essentially be a global standard, creating a global marketplace. This could happen in as soon as a few years, he says. It’s hard to say how real or not that estimate might prove to be. As the scientists like to say, “It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.”

But if they pull it off, it could be a boon for pilots and GA, not only making it easier to introduce new products and new technology, but making it easier for current aircraft owners to upgrade their equipment. Another point raised at the GAMA briefing here was that CFIT accidents have declined precipitously in just the last few years, as moving maps with terrain-warning features made their way into cockpits, helping pilots more readily avoid terrain. Pretty soon, technology will enable GA airplanes to be virtually autonomous, with a lesser role for the pilot, a change that needs to be reflected in our training programs. It’s not hard to imagine that a high-tech GA airplane with a high level of safety and capability will appeal to a much broader range of the population than today’s relatively complex aircraft, which require a big commitment in training and continuous currency. Our safety record is better than it used to be, but still worse than that of cars. If new technology improves that record so a GA aircraft feels like a safer place to be, I expect that will have a positive impact on demand too, driving even more new technology, and more new airplanes for pilots to choose from.

Maybe it’s all the cappuccino and espresso over here at Aero, but it’s hard not to be optimistic about GA’s future, while drinking in all the new technology and beautiful designs on display here in the hangars. And then there’s electric-powered flight — Pipistrel’s new Alpha Electro is just one of many on display here. Watch this space for more reports on still more new designs and new technology, still to come over the next few days.

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