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Comment by hahamrfunnyguy | Hacker News Reader

As a paraglider pilot (unpowered), I will say that the technical aspects of flying the aircraft are only a small part of what's involved in a flight - as you point out.

It's a bad idea to get pilots in the air with less training. People can't safely pilot cars in two dimensions.

Making the avionics easier to use and more affordable sounds like the actual winning product.

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The way we see it isn't less training, but training focused on the most important parts of flying: decision making and risk management. Given the current track record for accidents, they almost always culminate in the pilot failing to control the airplane, whether due to directly stalling or being distracted by another issue and then stalling. By eliminating loss of control as a failure mode, pilots can spend more of their minimum 40 hours on decision making and risk management training, rather than on stick and rudder training. Then when in the air, they put more of their mental load on ADM. We are just breaking down the barrier that stops people from even getting there in the first place.

> By eliminating loss of control as a failure mode

I think this is a flawed view of the problem, even with an industry-grade FCS to work with. If you're in the air, you should know how to break out of a stall, belly-land in an emergency, or route around turbulence as it crops up. These things happen, and preventing someone from doing a loop-de-loop won't eliminate a category of failure-modes.

This is something I very much wish would be a reality one day, but you'll be kicking yourself with every incident report that blames bad piloting. One can only hope that they wouldn't risk their own life trusting an untrained pilot.

Most accidents occur because the pilot makes a bad decision somewhere and a chain of events leads to an accident (in GA--commercial is a completely different beast). Our hope is to break that chain by making it as easy as possible for the pilot to continue flying the airplane and bring it safely to the ground in a high-stress emergency.

Even when the tools are available, pilots need the training to know to use them. How many NTSB accident reports include non instrument rated pilots getting disoriented in IMC despite having an autopilot with a "level" function? If your system can keep them out of this kind of trouble without them even having to take action, it will save lives.

The thing that worries me is that this will attract the same kind of pilots as Tesla's so called FSD.

How do you propose this training happens? Surely this will require a full PPL as you're well above LSA limits.

I'd also be deathly afraid of what happens when the automation inevitably fails.

A lot of the existing training system from the FAA and others all emphasize aeronautical decision making and single-pilot resource management. It's the core thing that we are taught when we learn to fly.

Also, under the upcoming MOSAIC regulations, such airplanes will be LSAs and flyable with a sport pilot license.

> they almost always culminate in the pilot failing to control the airplane

"failing to control the airplane" is a little like saying everyone dies of heart failure. Yes their heart stopped - but why!?

The real cause is somewhat earlier. Why was a normally competent pilot in a situation where they no longer adequately controlled the aircraft?

Improve avionics - great. Improve situational awareness - really helpful. Handling should be way down the list - it becomes quite intuitive very quickly.

> Making the avionics easier to use and more affordable sounds like the actual winning product.

Garmin is the clear leader in the certified avionics class for general aviation aircraft these days. If you somehow manage to capture a part of their market, you win big time.

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