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Are eVTOLs The Death-Knell For Helicopters?

It’s fun­ny how a fea­ture idea sud­den­ly pops in to your head. In this case, it was see­ing an image dur­ing a talk by Dave Web­ber, an AAM Flight Test Liai­son Offi­cer for the FAA, at a recent Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety ‘2023 Autonomous VTOL Tech­ni­cal Meet­ing and Elec­tric VTOL Sym­po­sium’ held in Mesa, Ari­zona.

This is the image.

Why would the world’s lead­ing avi­a­tion reg­u­la­tor use a com­ic strip image from a Jet­sons car­toon to rep­re­sent the green avi­a­tion rev­o­lu­tion? Fol­low this up with Web­ber dis­cussing what some sug­gest are too high lev­els of safe­ty reg­u­la­tions for e/VTOL cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, throt­tling some inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies before they even begin the process, and I won­dered… Sure­ly, e/VTOLs are already safer than heli­copters, the pri­ma­ry mar­ket it will replace, so why all this extra “cer­ti­fi­ca­tion froth?”

So the research began.

The FAA is proud, very proud of its safe­ty record. The pub­lic are told that fly­ing is safer than cross­ing a road. Sta­tis­tics prove this. More recent­ly, that an air­craft flight in the U.S “is even safer than get­ting out of bed in the morn­ing” or so Ser­gio Cecut­ta from SMG Con­sult­ing says.

Even so, heli­copters do have a poor record of safe­ty when com­pared to gen­er­al avi­a­tion. Data shows that in 2019, for exam­ple, there were 122 crash­es in the U.S of which 24 were fatal lead­ing to 51 deaths. Six years ear­li­er, there had been 146 crash­es of which 30 were fatal lead­ing to 62 fatal­i­ties. Per­haps, safe­ty over­all is improv­ing?

Yet, heli­copter inci­dents are, unfor­tu­nate­ly, still way too com­mon espe­cial­ly when com­pared to the fixed wing world. While the acci­dent rate for gen­er­al air­craft is 7.28 crash­es per 100,000 hours of flight time, for heli­copters, that num­ber is 9.84 per 100,000 hours.

What doesn’t help is the high pro­file cer­tain heli­copter crash­es attract, par­tic­u­lar­ly when a celebri­ty or an impor­tant per­son is killed. Two exam­ples come to mind.

Kobe Bean Bryant, the leg­endary bas­ket­ball play­er, who had spent 20 years play­ing for the Los Ange­les Lak­ers in the NBA, was wide­ly regard­ed as one of the great­est bas­ket­ball play­ers and scor­ers of all time.

Trag­i­cal­ly, he was killed in a Siko­rsky S‑76 heli­copter when it crashed into the side of a moun­tain on Jan­u­ary 26th, 2020 at Cal­abasas, close to Los Ange­les. Bryant was 41 years-old. His 13-year-old daugh­ter Gian­na, six fam­i­ly friends, and the pilot, Ara Zobayan, also died. Bas­ket­ball fol­low­ers around the word mourned his death and the crash was glob­al head­line news for much of that week.

In the UK, fif­teen months ear­li­er, the pop­u­lar bil­lion­aire own­er of Leices­ter City FC, Vichai Sri­vad­dhanaprab­ha, died along with the pilot and three oth­er pas­sen­gers, when his heli­copter crashed in a fire­ball straight after take-off, out­side the Leices­ter sta­di­um. What made this even worse, is that var­i­ous City fans had filmed the heli­copter tak­ing-off from the mid­dle of the pitch, after a match, fol­lowed by the crash less than a minute lat­er, via their mobile phones.

Under Srivaddhanaprabha’s own­er­ship, the team had won the Pre­mier League in 2016, hav­ing start­ed the sea­son as 5,000/1 out­siders. Leices­ter City fans were bereft.

eVTOLs are viewed, over­all, as supe­ri­or to the present USD49 bil­lion heli­copter mar­ket, espe­cial­ly sur­round­ing safe­ty, as this 14’ long CNBC film explains.

Yet, it seems the FAA, as well as EASA, are mak­ing it very dif­fi­cult for emerg­ing eVTOLs to be ful­ly cer­ti­fied as Mark Moore, Founder and CEO of Whis­per Aero, explains while speak­ing dur­ing a recent Avi­a­tion Week Webi­nar enti­tled ‘Do Or Die: Why 2023 Will Be Piv­otal For AAM Star­tups.’

He says, “Many com­pa­nies involved in this nascent eVTOL indus­try have nev­er cer­ti­fied an air­craft before. They are told by the U.S and Euro­pean reg­u­la­tors, ‘You have to have the high­est lev­el of safe­ty pos­si­ble.’ I have asked EASA sev­er­al times to show their analy­sis, jus­ti­fy­ing select­ing its 10 to the minus 9, but nev­er been shown it.”

He con­tin­ues, “Ok, let us go for this high­est lev­el. What about ten to the minus 12 or 15? What you will find is a less safe air­craft, for the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion val­ue only per­tains to 10 to 15 per­cent of acci­dents. The rest are oper­a­tional. Want­i­ng these ridicu­lous­ly high stan­dards, you are not increas­ing safe­ty. What you are doing is dis­in­cen­tiviz­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers from deal­ing with and putting such sys­tems in to their craft. EASA is mak­ing a hor­ri­ble mis­take.”

Moore then adds, “My pre­dic­tion for the future is Volo­copter and Lil­i­um won’t exist in three to four years while EASA holds on to their present safe­ty stan­dards. Where­as with the FAA, the reg­u­la­tor has a smarter and more real­is­tic approach.”

This frus­tra­tion over the present rules is then aired by Ser­gio Cecut­ta. He points out, “China’s CAAC decid­ed to car­ry out their own reg­u­la­tions and not take onboard FAA or EASA’s. So today, the indus­try faces three dif­fer­ent sys­tems for three of the largest mar­kets in the world. The pri­ma­ry eVTOLs are not designed for indi­vid­ual coun­tries, but con­struct­ed for a glob­al market.They are high­ly expen­sive to bring to mar­ket where USD1 bil­lion is a finan­cial floor — not the ceil­ing.”

He con­tin­ues, “We all want the high­est lev­els of safe­ty, of course we do, but the high­er the lev­el, the more expen­sive the air­craft becomes to cer­ti­fy. What hap­pens if no mar­ket then exists, because it becomes too expen­sive to cre­ate, leav­ing aside the much need­ed infra­struc­ture. Take ver­ti­ports, for exam­ple, where the FAA is being super con­ser­v­a­tive. The two reg­u­la­tors can’t even agree on the same sym­bol.”

Gra­ham War­wick, Exec­u­tive Edi­tor of Avi­a­tion Week, affirms dur­ing the Webi­nar, “The indus­try des­per­ate­ly needs har­mon­i­sa­tion.” He agrees with Cecut­ta, “Con­struct­ing air­craft under three dif­fer­ent sets of avi­a­tion rules is sim­ply not work­able. Stan­dard­i­s­a­tion is essen­tial, where more close­ly aligned reg­u­la­tions must come soon­er rather than lat­er.”

Mean­while, how does the heli­copter indus­try view the poten­tial usurp­er of its mar­ket? Why not ask a heli­copter pilot of 30 years who is also the Chief Exec­u­tive of an emerg­ing VTOL com­pa­ny.

Thomas Pfam­mat­ter (Cred­it: Air Zer­matt)

Thomas Pfam­mat­ter is CEO of Dufour Aero­space and a high­ly expe­ri­enced pilot. He flies for Swiss avi­a­tion com­pa­ny, Air Zer­matt. Pfam­mat­ter has flown many thou­sands of heli­copter hours. He dis­agrees that eVTOLs are safer. “Present­ly, an eVTOL’s safe­ty is all the­o­ret­i­cal. Until actu­al flights have occurred in real rather than sim­u­lat­ed con­di­tions, only then can cor­rect assump­tions be made. The more hours flown with­out prob­lems, the safer an air­craft becomes.”

Pfam­mat­ter agrees with Moore. “Tech­ni­cal types of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion are impor­tant, but oper­a­tional ones are crit­i­cal. Only 10 to 15 per­cent of heli­copter acci­dents are tech­ni­cal-relat­ed, while 85 to 90 per­cent are due to pilot error. It is the oper­a­tional part that is fraught with dan­ger. The same applies to eVTOLs, yet this per­cent­age could be even high­er, as we don’t know how to fly them yet.”

He says while the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process of heli­copters is sim­i­lar to eVTOLs, giv­en the fast-track path the lat­ter is on, the process­es are some­what dif­fer­ent. Some ele­ments are more prob­lem­at­ic like the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of flight com­put­ers (10 to the minus 9), but eVTOLs have improved redun­dan­cy, in most cas­es, due to a mul­ti­ple propul­sion sys­tem, where if one fails oth­ers con­tin­ue on. Unlike a heli­copter, this should not lead to a cat­a­stroph­ic event. He accepts the EASA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dard is very high and hard to attain.

Pfam­mat­ter then points to the prob­lem of bat­tery pow­er. “eVTOLs are lim­it­ed by their bat­ter­ies. The longer the air­craft has been fly­ing, so the less pow­er avail­able in an emer­gency sit­u­a­tion. Here, heli­copters are safer as they’re lighter and have more pow­er to use.”

He then dis­cuss­es the dif­fi­cul­ties of today’s eVTOL safe­ty.

“There is a major dif­fer­ence between fly­ing an eVTOL via a sim­u­la­tor and fly­ing one in real-life. Until you fly one phys­i­cal­ly, you don’t know how it actu­al­ly flies. Peo­ple say an eVTOL has a sim­pli­fied con­trol sys­tem and yes, in the­o­ry, an eVTOL is sim­pler than a heli­copter to fly. How­ev­er, there is a third dimen­sion where a pilot must work with the sur­round­ing ener­gy dur­ing a climb or descent. A pilot needs to be aware of the con­stant chang­ing envi­ron­ment, how the air­craft responds to air cur­rents, weath­er etc.. There are many oper­a­tional chal­lenges an eVTOL pilot will need to face when phys­i­cal­ly fly­ing which can’t be learned from a sim­u­la­tor.”

Joby Avi­a­tion Sim­u­la­tor

There­fore, you must have some sym­pa­thy for the world’s three major air reg­u­la­tors. A brand new emerg­ing indus­try with all types of new air­craft from fly­ing cars to eVTOLs, VTOLs to STOVL, not for­get­ting V/STOL and HeV­TOLs along­side car­go and deliv­ery drones. Then there are tilt-rotors, vec­tored thrust, mul­ti­ro­tors, boxed wings, lift and cruise, fold­ing wings etc. espe­cial­ly when the num­ber one pri­or­i­ty is to make them all safer than dri­ving a car. And on top of this, is to then come up with a set of accept­able reg­u­la­tions to cre­ate the required infra­struc­ture. It’s enough to give any reg­u­la­tor a throb­bing migraine.

(Cred­it: www.gizchina.com)

Robert Bassey (A Con­struc­tion Engi­neer for the FAA) remarks dur­ing his lec­ture after Dave Web­ber, “If your air­craft, per­for­mance-wise, does not jive with­in our engi­neer­ing brief, we encour­age you to work with us to fig­ure out what is appro­pri­ate for your par­tic­u­lar craft. That is the caveat here.” Mean­while, the pres­sure on the air­craft com­pa­nies to progress as fast as they can towards com­mer­cial oper­a­tions, before their finan­cial invest­ment runs out is piv­otal, which only adds fur­ther pres­sure on the air reg­u­la­tors to sup­port them.

Bassey says, “The FAA are very judi­cious. We want to ensure an accept­able high lev­el of safe­ty for the fly­ing pub­lic. Yet, we are crit­i­cised that the reg­u­la­to­ry process may not be keep­ing up with the pace of inno­va­tion. I want to assure you, we are mov­ing as expe­di­tious­ly as we can, with a safe­ty goal at front and cen­tre.”

Mean­while, Pfam­met­ter points out, “Bat­ter­ies are the biggest weak­ness the eVTOL indus­try faces and why hybrid pow­ered-sys­tems are bet­ter. Pure elec­tric air­craft are an eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ter for their pow­er source is only good for three months tops before they get cooked and need to be replaced. This could cost an eVTOL com­pa­ny with a small fleet of air­craft, a fur­ther USD4 to 5 mil­lion a year. Then, while in use the bat­ter­ies need to be charged every 30 min­utes or so which can take over half an hour to achieve, where impor­tant pas­sen­ger cus­tom goes amiss. Short-term, where is the prof­it when each air­craft could cost up to USD8 mil­lion to con­struct? It will be the VTOLs like ours at Dufour and not the eVTOLs that will replace heli­copters.”

Lil­i­um Jet Dis­play­ing a Low Lev­el of Noise

A major pos­i­tive is the low­er noise lev­el for eVTOLs over heli­copters. The often quot­ed com­par­i­son is 100 times qui­eter. Moore who is a spe­cial­ist in this field, says, “I admit I have strong views over air­craft quiet­ness, but this is for a good rea­son. Com­mu­ni­ty accep­tance is crit­i­cal if this new indus­try is to suc­ceed.”

He con­tin­ues, “I have talked to cities about noise lev­els and what they will and won’t accept. The truth of the mat­ter is, there’ll be quo­tas over how much noise a ver­ti­port may accept. If noisy the air­craft will be allowed only a few oper­a­tions. If real­ly qui­et, many more oper­a­tions. There­fore, what rev­enue a com­pa­ny can attract is depen­dent on how qui­et its craft is.” Adding, “By 2027/28 when com­pa­nies begin scal­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing, if they don’t have qui­et air­craft, their busi­ness could be severe­ly jeop­ar­dised.”

Mean­while, Pfam­mat­ter believes the heli­copter indus­try will remain, albeit small­er at around 20 per­cent of its present size, by either employ­ing sling-load­ing ‘copters car­ry­ing heavy loads for spe­cial mis­sions, par­tic­u­lar­ly mil­i­tary ones, or where a craft requires to hov­er for long peri­ods of time, whether to pick up injured per­son­nel or drop­ping off a large group of sol­diers into heavy-fire­fight­ing envi­ron­ments.

For­tu­nate­ly, one aspect of this present con­tro­ver­sial field a major­i­ty agree on will be the flight jour­ney of an e/VTOL. It will be a fun and enjoy­able expe­ri­ence for both oper­a­tor and pas­sen­ger. “I am look­ing for­ward to that,” enthus­es Pfam­mat­ter. “Not only will these new air­craft be a plea­sure to pilot, but the pub­lic will enjoy fly­ing in them too.”

(Top image: www.gizchina.com)

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