Progress, Technology and the Future of Aviation

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Beechcraft Starship

I was a panel member of a group of aviation journalists a few weeks back at a lunchtime meeting of the Wichita Aero Club, and the mood in the room was a little bleak. Even some of my fellow panelists were making dire predictions about the demise of general aviation. Everything good about what we do, they seemed to be saying, was behind us.

It’s nonsense. There’s unimaginably cool stuff in our future. Of this, I am certain.

More than a few years ago when I was a young teenager I was sitting at a window seat on a Boeing airliner (a 727?) low and slow over Fontana coming in for landing at Southern California’s Ontario International Airport. I was mesmerized as I watched the forward slats do their thing, extending out and down to create a nicely cambered shape where formerly there’d been a simple rounded leading edge. How cool was that?

I’d been around airplanes a lot by then — my part time job was pumping gas at my family’s FBO — and I knew enough to be able to figure out what was going on. Boeing had rigged up these elaborate leading edge devices designed to increase lift for landing (“For takeoff, too,” I wondered.) The result, I immediately understood, was to allow an airplane to fly fast at cruise with low drag while in essence making the wing a lot bigger for slower landing speeds.

Forty years ago there was a big push by light GA manufacturers, academics, kit developers and even amateur enthusiasts to use technology to make flying safer and more economical as well as to push the performance envelope. The resultant airplanes were mostly cool or at least cool looking, though in all fairness, a goodly number of them were nightmares.

As has long been the case, even the successful ones, like Burt Rutan’s Vari-Eze, incorporated compromises. While canards are relatively fast, their takeoff distance is typically longer than that of comparable conventional designs. You get some but you give some back. There were tradeoffs in construction materials, too. Composites were slippery and sleek but fairly heavy and hard to work. For every gain one clever idea had, there seemed to be an equal and often opposite downside. I wondered then, and I wonder now, is this always the case with innovation? Is there no getting ahead of the game? Maybe there’s no free lunch, okay, but how about a good-sized discount? Is that too much to ask?

For a lot of old-school aviation insiders, including some of my fellow panelists, the answer was yes; it was too much to ask.

I thought about the Boeing jet again with its leading edge slats. Wasn’t that a free lunch? Even as a kid I figured out what the downsides were: extra weight, complexity and maintenance. But in that case, weren’t the returns easily worth the effort? It was clear to me then and now that the answer is an emphatic “yes.”

Why not search for similar returns for light airplanes? For bizjets, for turboprops, heck, for hang gliders? It’s the height of arrogance to think we’ve solved all the problems inherent in flight.

If you don’t believe it just look around at the cool things done in the avionics arena by Garmin and Avidyne and Honeywell and Aspen with capabilities from traffic avoidance to envelope protection, and much, much more. Look at the iPad and the many economic and quality of life benefits it’s bestowed upon us. Think about Tamarack, with its uber-cool active winglets, which smartly dump lift to limit overstress while adding lift and range. Look at Cessna with its diesel 182 JTA, Gulfstream with its staggeringly innovative G650, GE with its next-gen fuel efficient engines and Cubcrafters with its Super Cub clone that makes the performance of the original look positively pedestrian.

Are there challenges to our industry and community? You bet! Costs, regulation, complexity, vanishing airspace and killer drones. But if we stop looking there, we miss the big picture.

Progress is everywhere, and flying is useful, practical and personally rewarding in ways that are so important to us pilots it’s often hard to express it.

With all these things being true, how could you not believe?

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Submitted by John Tillison on January 09, 2013.

Well said. Keep up the positive reporting. It's always easier to think the industry is toast and site the reasons why. We all need more of a "can do" kick in the butt.

John Tillison

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Submitted by Thomas Boyle on January 09, 2013.

Well said!

My own belief is that someone is going to find a dramatically lower-cost way to produce light aircraft, i.e., either a dramatically lower-cost way to build the primary structure, or a dramatically lower-cost way to install the systems, or both.

I don't know how. But the industry has failed to cut production man-hours per aircraft for about a half century, while other industries have achieved huge productivity gains. There's a big catch-up due!

And it will take "can do" to figure out how to do it.

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Submitted by hgreenleaf2 on January 10, 2013.

We have a choice every morning we wake up.............to be either a pessimist or optimistic. It would appear over the last decades we have had a full measure of the latter........with many new innovative ideas arriving within airframes, and among the airframes themselves. Innovation is hardly dead.

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Submitted by scopedoc58 on January 11, 2013.

I would like to congratulate Robert Goyer for his succinct description of where we have been and where we need to go! Every industry currently has obstacles that we must look past in order to make advances. Let's all look past these and take it to the next level.

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Submitted by LowWings on January 12, 2013.

Just wondering, Robert, did you fly yourself to this meeting in Wichita in your own airplane? If so, did you personally pay the expenses of the trip or were you reimbursed? Or did you go to Wichita on a big iron bird paid for by Someone else?

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Submitted by mpower2013 on January 20, 2013.

Like someone said before , it is much better to be optimistic, thanks for your great articles. Very well explain when you say that Progress is everywhere, i think you are right.

For info on flying : http:/www.learntoflyeasily.org

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Submitted by Hogey74 on January 25, 2013.

Yep, well said. Some good comments too - particularly Thomas Boyle, not so much "LowWings".

Thomas - I've thought exactly the same thing. I saw a beautifully made, half finished kit aircraft today (a "Bush Caddy" - Canadian I think?) and while suitably impressed, I was reminded of how often I've wondered about the huge amount of effort required and the complexity of pretty much every design. Fibre glass etc are simpler but the overall process isn't. I'm not joking when I wonder out loud about the viability of using 3d printing in future. With the right material and varying densities and properties, wings might have one or more simple spars and a semi-flexible structure printed around them. With what I'm hearing about new materials, maybe the skin will be electrically stimulated to expand and contract, thereby bending the whole aerofoil? Fuselages might be a simple, robotically assembled frame with something wrapped around it quickly and then heat-shrunk/cured in place? I'm no expert but I do often think that huge gains are not that far off.

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Submitted by phoeberogers on February 07, 2013.

The future of aviation looks brighter. It promises new ultra-efficient aircraft, modernized air traffic control system, and potential for economic growth by fostering revenue and jobs in other industries, such as tourism and logistics. - JustFab

100%
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Submitted by Barry Rickert on March 24, 2013.

Private flying is in decline for one reason? Cost of doing business is growing every year. Financing, Insurance, Gov. regulations and fear of endless legal battles are enough to deter most any manufacturer from major investments.

Companies that manufacture most new aircraft are now overseas not because it costs less but because they can get airworthy faster and then bring the craft to the US market faster.

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