Tag: Gregory J. Bowles

Fresh Hope for General Aviation Community

Panelists: Moderator Gregory J. Bowles, director of European regulatory affairs and engineering, General Aviation Manufacturers Association; Nicholas K. Borer, principal investigator, Aeronautics Systems Analysis Branch, NASA’s Langley Research Center; Lowell Foster, flight test engineer, FAA’s Small Airplane Directorate; Rick Peri, vice president for government and industry affairs, Aircraft Electronics Association; Andy Supinie, director of aerospace sciences, Textron Aviation.

by Ben Iannotta, Aerospace America editor-in-chief

The general aviation industry has been hampered by an out-of-date FAA certification rule that has driven up the costs of aircraft and too-often stifled innovation, but a solution could be on the way, said experts June 16 at AIAA AVIATION 2016 in Washington, DC.

A rewritten part 23 rule covering aircraft up to 19 passengers will be in place by the end of the year, predicted Greg Bowles of the General Aviation Manufacturers Association.

Bowles was referring to the FAA target date of Dec. 16 for the new rule.

The new rule makes a “fundamental philosophical” change away from “prescriptive language to the maximum extent possible,” said Rick Peri, who is in charge of government and industry affairs at the Aircraft Electronics Association.

Bowles, who moderated the session, “Restoring the Foundation of Aviation,” gave an example of what’s meant by less prescriptive. He said that to avoid burnable material aboard general aviation aircraft, the current rule defines how a burn test must be conducted. The new rule specifies not to use burnable materials.

Regarding safety, Bowles showed a chart with a frustratingly flat line indicating no improvement in recent years in general aviation fatalities.

“Look how stable that is,” he said.

Several panelists suggested that this fatality line will shift in a favorable direction because of the new rule’s more welcoming approach to innovation.

“The bottomline is: New technology enhances safety,” said Andy Supinie of Textron Aviation, a merger of Cessna and Beechcraft, including the Hawker brand.

With a more welcoming approach to innovation, Peri said that “autonomous” general aviation is on the horizon.

FAA Flight Test Engineer Lowell Foster said overall, he sees reason for optimism about restoration of the industry, which is currently dominated by decades-old aircraft.

“I think we’re in a transition to a new growth phase, and one that could be even neater than what we’ve done in the past,” Foster said.

The panelists were hopeful that the shift in philosophy will usher in innovations that could reduce the costs of general aviation planes and lead to bold, new aircraft designs. Until now, certifying new technologies has often been “cost prohibitive,” said Peri of the Aircraft Electronics Association.

Specifically, several panelists said the new part 23 could open the door to applying entirely new approaches, such as the distributed electric propulsion technology to be tested by NASA’s piloted SCEPTOR plane, short for Scalable Convergent Electric Propulsion Technology and Operations Research.

The panel also raised the infrastructure challenges posed by electric propulsion. Nick Borer, a principal investigator at NASA’s Langley Researcher Center, noted that there are no electric charging stations he’s aware of at airports.

He said at least initially, the following needs to be considered: “Can we get some of the benefits of electric propulsion without challenging the infrastructure?”

He added that a possibility could be fuel cells, a technology he works on for NASA.

Video

All 2016 AIAA AVIATION Forum Videos

Aerospace Entrepreneurs Try and Find a Way Around City Traffic

Panelists: Moderators Brian J. German, associate professor, Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology; JoeBen Bevirt, founder, Joby Aviation; Geoffrey Bower, chief engineer, A^3 by Airbus Group; Gregory J. Bowles, vice president of global innovation and policy, General Aviation Manufacturers Association; David Josephson, engineer/CEO, Josephson Engineering Inc.; Mark D. Moore, director of aviation, Uber Engineering; Tine Tomažič, director of research and development, Pipistrel; Jon Rimanelli, founder and CEO, AirspaceX

by Hannah Godofsky, AIAA Communications

EHang-184-AP — EHang 184 | Associated Press-©

A new wave of aerospace entrepreneurs and technology startups are stepping in to try and solve the problem of traffic, and according to a panel of experts at the 2017 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Denver, it could be done with vertical takeoff and landing, or VTOL, aircraft.

As any commuter knows, roadway congestion eats up a huge amount of time and energy, and “traffic is taking over our lives,” Jon Rimanelli, founder and CEO of AirspaceX, said during the discussion June 8.

Rimanelli cited figures showing that each driver loses about $1,400 in fuel costs and productivity each year due to traffic.

“Key to this future is leveraging the automotive industrial base,” he said, adding that his company works with Uber, which has disrupted the taxi and car markets with its ridesharing app.

“Our mission is to support Uber, and their mission is to move people,” Rimanelli said.

Mark Moore, director of aviation at Uber Engineering, said his company’s working on making electric VTOL a reality and plans to tests the system as soon as 2020.

“Uber is going to connect the users to the network. Uber is a software company, and there is a great deal of software in this ecosystem,” Moore said. “Uber will be very active in developing the network, including the network operations center.”

But, Moore insists, “We see many participants in this system.”

One such example is Pipistrel, whose director of research and development, Tine Tomažič, explained where electric flight is at in terms of development today.

“We understand what happens when you are really challenged with power demands,” Tomažič said.

However, he said, some of the problems that still need to be solved before e-VTOL is a reality on a mass scale aren’t directly related to the vehicles themselves.

“When these vehicles are connected all the time to the service network, one has to think, ‘how do you isolate the vehicles from cyberattacks?’” Tomažič said.

Other obstacles panelists noted are potential objections from local governments or federal regulators.

“You have to make the case that the tradeoff between noise to the community and benefit to the community is positive,” said David Josephson, engineer and CEO of Josephson Engineering Inc.

Greg Bowles, vice president of global innovation and policy at the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, said he’s skeptical the infrastructure is ready for e-VTOL on a mass scale.

“When we talk about the needs of charging one of these vehicles in five minutes, it’s like adding a grocery store to the grid for five minutes,” Bowles said.

Despite these risks, even large companies like Airbus are investing in e-VTOL technology, said Geoffrey Bower, chief engineer of A^3 at Airbus Group.

“We’re trying to disrupt Airbus and the rest of the aerospace industry before somebody else does,” he said. “The technology, the components are there; we just need the integration.”

Rimanelli urged regulators: “What we need you to do is collaborate, partner or get out of the way.”

All 2017 AIAA AVIATION Forum Videos

Regulatory and Operational Challenges of On-Demand Mobility

Panelists: Moderator Tom Gunnarson, regulatory affairs lead, Zee Aero; Gregory J. Bowles, vice president of global innovation and policy, General Aviation Manufacturers Association; Carl Dietrich, chief technology officer and co-founder, Terrafugia; Eric Mueller, aerospace engineer, NASA’s Ames Research Center; Sasha G. Rao, chair of intellectual property practice, Maynard Cooper & Gale; Wes Ryan, unmanned systems certification lead, FAA

by Lawrence Garrett, AIAA Web Editor

Overcoming regulatory and operational barriers to achieve the dream of high-density urban mobility requires close collaboration between industry, government and academia, along with an incremental and methodical approach, said experts Jan. 10 during the “On-Demand Mobility – Regulatory and Operational Challenges” panel at the 2018 AIAA SciTech Forum in Kissimmee, Florida.

Rapid technological advancements in electric vertical takeoff and landing craft, or eVTOLs, and autonomous systems are making future on-demand urban mobility a certainty, panelists said. But, as panel moderator Tom Gunnarson of Zee Aero cautioned: “If we think about the men and women out there who are developing these fantastic machines, there has to be a path set before they can actually realize what they want to do with them.”

Gunnarson suggested the technological challenges posed by urban air mobility are unlikely to be as challenging as regulatory and operational ones.

“The really big bar in all of this may not be the development of the aircraft, but being able to operate it,” he said.

Gregory J. Bowles, vice president of global innovation and policy at the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, wondered about FAA certification for new types of personal aerial vehicles and other autonomous eVTOL aircraft when they don’t fit under the current categories. He said that industry, in collaboration with government, needs to figure out where “we define these vehicles.”

Another significant challenge, Bowles said, is how to train future pilots of these aircraft, as well as what they’ll be trained to do. He noted it’s unlikely these aircraft will be totally autonomous initially.

“Some will have operators; some will have pilots,” Bowles said. “We need to look at what the human pilot does, what automation can do today and where’s that gap; that’s what needs to be trained.”

Wes Ryan, the unmanned systems certification lead for the FAA, said industry and academia should work with the FAA and NASA “to create a purposeful and evolutionary path to address the design of, the testing of, the operation of these pilotless aircraft at some point in the future.”

Carl Dietrich, chief technology officer and co-founder of Terrafugia, a Massachusetts-based company specializing in the development of flying cars expected to hit the market in 2019, said his company’s primary challenges are ensuring a potential market exists — and safety.

“We’re worried about our brand; we’re worried about liability,” he said, adding there are other concerns, such as rate of return, how quickly certification requirements can be determined or how complex a given supply chain may be.

But, Dietrich said, to realize the benefits of a potential market, a key challenge will be overcoming societal fear. He noted that if catastrophic accidents occur in a fully deployed on-demand urban mobility system at the same rate as auto accidents, they would equate to over 6,000 globally in a given year. Minimizing societal fear, Dietrich explained, must be done “at a very, very early stage; otherwise we’re going to be dead in the water as soon as someone gets out there with a vehicle and crashes.”

Airspace integration issues are another significant challenge, said Eric Mueller, an aerospace engineer at the NASA’s Ames Research Center. He noted that while it may be easy dealing with only a handful of aircraft aloft, it will become exponentially more challenging when also dealing with a number of Uber or Voom aircraft that want to share the same airspace.

“We need to have rules for those interactions and really consensus that those are fair rules,” he said. “An incremental or methodical approach to airspace integration, I think, can achieve this high-density urban air mobility operation.”

Sasha G. Rao, an attorney and chair of intellectual property practice at Alabama-based Maynard Cooper & Gale, cited three key legal and policy areas to consider regarding on-demand mobility: operations and infrastructure; how to work within the confines of the current patchwork of federal, state and local laws; and vehicle certification. She said it’s important to build a safety-case for personal aerial vehicles while developing standards that are much better than cars and what people see on the roads.

“And we have to educate the public to gain their acceptance,” Rao said.

Video

All 2018 AIAA SciTech Forum Videos