Electric and eVTOL platforms pose complex questions for OEMs, operators, regulators and training organizations as the technologies and services develop
ADVANCED AIR MOBILITY
The burgeoning eVTOL (electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing) sector is promising to turn the long-standing dream of flying taxis into a reality. Yet while a plethora of aircraft manufacturers inch closer to achieving certification for their vehicles, several urgent operational questions remain to be answered. Of these, one of the most pressing is: who will fly them?
Many of the hundreds of eVTOL OEMs envisage a future in which the aircraft will fly autonomously. But until the technology and its many variants proves itself to regulators (not to mention the public), the aircraft will require a pilot on board.
Business models outlined by putative eVTOL operators call for high utilization rates, with many operators looking at scenarios where the aircraft would operate as on-demand shuttles—initially, between hub airports and downtown areas of the cities they serve. The pilot would be expected to carry out numerous takeoffs and landings in congested and perhaps aerodynamically challenging airspace, with very little time spent in cruise mode.
This suggests that the job of flying eVTOLs will share many characteristics with that of piloting traditional helicopters. But the aircraft will be easier to operate than today’s rotorcraft, with usually just one-stick control: a concept referred to as simplified vertical operation (SVO). A helicopter pilot may be overqualified for SVO operations, while airliner pilots will lack experience in low-altitude flight over urban areas.
Pilots are and will be an essential part of the short- and medium-term eVTOL/AAM picture. But who will they be, how will operators identify and recruit them, who will train them, to what standards, and will those requirements prove so expensive that early AAM operations will be available only to the super-rich?
Implication for PilotsThe AAM pilot will receive an unprecedented level of assistance from the platform while in the air. One company that has devoted itself to this part of the eVTOL/AAM technology marketplace is the Switzerland-based Daedalean. Initially established to develop an autopiloting solution for autonomous eVTOL platforms—it has worked with AAM developers including Volocopter and Embraer’s Eve—the company is now developing a series of tools that can act as aids to pilots of today’s aircraft.
“Currently, all single-pilot operations have a massive single point of failure—namely, the single pilot,” says company founder Luuk van Dijk. “Garmin is already playing into this with its Autoland. But if you want to go further than that and make everything as safe as a dual-pilot operation, then maybe it would be good if you had a device that could do all the things that a co-pilot could do.”
An Embraer engineer uses one of Daedalean’s pilot-aid systems during an evaluation flight in 2022. Credit: Daedalean
Daedalean is focusing on analyzing and understanding the tasks both pilot and co-pilot carry out during flights, and the data sets they have assembled are being used to inform a range of products that can be deployed on conventional aircraft as optional add-ons. Installing such systems on conventional aircraft will help build the safety case for their use on AAM platforms as well.
“Once we’ve added a co-pilot to single-pilot flights—including Part 23 privately owned aircraft and business jets—then we can gather the evidence that in cases where the pilot is incapacitated, or whenever something happened, the automatic co-pilot had his or her back,” van Dijk says. “Then you can maybe get to the point where you can take out the second pilot [in dual-crewed aircraft] and replace it with our system, and have the same or a higher level of safety.”
With the aircraft itself carrying out a significant chunk of the traditional pilot’s tasks, and given the inherent differences of electric versus internal-combustion propulsion, the nature of the onboard pilot’s role will be different.
“I’m used to flying private jets, which are state-of-the-art technology and make the situational awareness for the pilots much, much easier; and I’m also used to flying an old Cessna 210, in which, every time you fly, you’re constantly juggling the mixture going into the engine, you’re looking at the temperatures of all of the cylinders. It’s a full-time job just looking after that engine,” says Adam Twidell, a former Royal Air Force pilot who leads Flexjet’s future of flight program, and chairs the European Business Aviation Association’s AAM working group.
“Now, if you’re flying an electric aircraft the checklist is remarkably simple,” he continues. “There are three switches to use before you take off. A motor is so much simpler and more reliable than a combustion engine.”
The implications for both operational flying and for pilot training are profound, Twidell argues.
“When you’re learning to drive a manual car, so much of your capacity is about the gears, the clutch, the hill starts,” he says. “When you move into an electric car, you go and you stop and you get that within minutes: now all of your capacity is on how you interact with the road, with other drivers, with the environment you’re in. And you become a much better driver very quickly because of the automation the vehicle’s giving you.
“I think it will be exactly the same with electric aircraft—either conventional takeoff or eVTOLs,” he adds. “We’re going to have really good pilots because the aircraft itself will be doing the job for the pilot. [And] pilots going through [electric-aircraft pilot training] courses will have a much easier time learning to fly than they would’ve done if they were using a conventional aircraft.”
Volocopter test pilot Paul Stone discussing the cockpit of the company’s X2 demonstrator during acoustic signature testing at Pontoise Aerodrome, France, in 2022. The control inputs are made through the single stick. Credit: Angus Batey/BCA
Training and RecruitingIn theory, the new career field of eVTOL pilot ought to be open to an encouragingly wide range of people. But, while different, training courses will not necessarily be shorter or less expensive; and the huge anticipated demand will be challenging for extant training providers to meet.“How will they learn? Differently to legacy pilot training, I imagine,” David Lord, a former Royal Navy helicopter pilot and now the manager of regulatory affairs for training provider FlightSafety International, told the British Business and General Aviation Association’s annual conference in London on March 2. “This is going to be reflected throughout the aviation industry. We have not seen this scale of demand ever before.”
But some significant questions must be addressed by regulators before companies like FlightSafety can begin to design courses.
“From a trainer’s perspective, it’s going to be bloody difficult to assess pilot competence in the single-seat cockpit,” he said. “I had to do that when I was instructing people on the [Boeing] Apache. It’s hard work. You don’t always get it right. Single-pilot human-factor issues may also be masked, [and perhaps] compounded, by simplified vertical operation. The artificial intelligence on board may mask pilot incompetence.”
For business aviation operators like Flexjet, little will change in terms of pilot recruitment strategy when eVTOL aircraft are added to the company’s fleet. Twidell says the company will still be seeking “very overqualified pilots” and is not considering recruiting ab initio eVTOL operators. He believes that the job will appeal to experienced aviators who will be keen to pioneer a new kind of flying.
For other types of operators, the selection challenge will be different. Norwegian airline Wideroe intends to operate eVTOLs and nine-seat electric/hybrid regional aircraft on short routes in and around the country. To staff up its operation, the company will have to offer a competitive financial package, despite the low fares it will need to attract passengers. There are ways of squaring that financial circle, argues Andreas Kollbye Aks, CEO of the Wideroe Zero, which the company calls its “air mobility incubator” division.“We expect to fly to many remote destinations where there is likely very limited staff on the ground,” he says. “It may make a lot of sense to have a pilot on board who can also perhaps charge the vehicle, help the passengers in and out, and be that one person on-site who can do the service. Perhaps if you can reduce the number of staff involved in a total operation, this one guy that operates the eVTOL can actually make a good salary because he’s doing multiple jobs.”
Demand for pilots should be manageable for initial operations, Aks says, but in the longer term, recruitment, training and retention will become significant issues for operators to manage.“[Wideroe is] talking about an EIS [entry into service] in 2027,” Aks says. “We’re still expecting that to be a very limited operation, and I think we will be fine with whatever number of pilots we can get hold of within the country and within our existing structures. I would love to see 50 eVTOLs flying around Norway in the 2020s, but I’m also okay with seeing five. If this becomes a huge success, and the numbers of eVTOLs on multiple MOUs and LOIs [memoranda of understanding, letters of intent] around the world materializes, then yes, there will be a huge need—but I expect that the volume will come in 2030 and onwards, more than in the 2020s.”
—A freelance journalist based in the UK, Angus Batey has been a frequent contributor to the Aviation Week group since 2009.
