Tag: Wes Ryan

FAA Part 23 Rewrite Transforms General Aviation to Meet New Demands

Panelists: Moderator Nicolas Borer, advanced air vehicle configurator technical lead, Aeronautics Systems Analysis Branch, NASA’s Langley Research Center; Ella Atkins, professor of aerospace engineering, University of Michigan; Anna Dietrich, co-founder, Terrafugia; Stephane Fymat, vice president of product management and marketing, BendixKing, Honeywell Aerospace; Zohaib Mian, senior autonomous systems architect, Mercedes-Bosch Autonomous Driving Project, Robert Bosch LLC; Wes Ryan, unmanned systems certification lead, Policy & Innovation Division, FAA; David Sizoo, FAA

by Hannah Thoreson, AIAA Communications

General aviation is transforming from a world of very uniform small aircraft to one of a mix of air vehicles, both manned and unmanned, and technology and infrastructure must adjust to accommodate new types of vehicles into the national airspace, a panel of experts said June 27 during the “Entering a New Era of General Aviation (Part 23)” session at the 2018 AVIATION Forum in Atlanta.

Wes Ryan, unmanned systems certification lead at the FAA, touched on safety in general aviation and said it has improved over the past several years.

“We were flat in our fatal accidents for general aviation aircraft for a very long time, and over the last several years, we’ve seen a marked, measurable decline in fatal accidents in general aviation aircraft,” Ryan said. “We believe that is from the technology initiatives and also coming from some of the training aspects that we’ve done and collective efforts for safety. But we’d like to give credit to a lot of the new technology and the new ideas that industry has brought to us like moving map displays, GPS, envelope protection autopilots, all of those kinds of things.”

David Sizoo, an FAA test pilot, said there is still room for improvement with small airplanes.

“In general aviation in the United States alone, there is a fatal accident once every two or three days. We can do much better than that,” Sizoo said, adding that he believes that fly-by wire technology needs to become more affordable for general aviation pilots.

Ella Atkins, a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan, also zeroed in on the cost of improvement in aircraft electronics as a major burden for general aviation pilots.

“One of the big pushbacks from the general aviation community is that ‘we can’t afford to spend another $15-20,000 for new avionics,’” Atkins said.

Anna Dietrich, co-founder of Terrafugia, said recent changes in the FAA regulatory schema for general aviation will also help accelerate the transformation of the space.

Dietrich said before the Part 23 rewrite, it was meant for fixed-wing aircraft and that Part 27 was for rotor-wing.

“They were kind of self-replicating,” she said. “You followed a very prescriptive set of rules, and you got a very predictable set of aircraft out the other end.”

Dietrich said that during the Part 23 rewrite, the prescriptive language was removed.

“We took that all out,” she said, adding, “Part 23 is a good solution for eVTOL and on-demand aircraft.”

However, Dietrich said the days of standard fixed-wing general aviation aircraft under the new schema might be numbered.

“I think that the days of, ‘I’m going to have my own plane that I keep in my own hangar that I fly on the weekends,” that’s going to be very clearly a hobby,” she said. “But that’s not where aviation is headed.”

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Unmanned Aircraft Are Not the Wave of the Future — They Are the Present

Panelists: Moderator Glenn Roberts, chief engineer, Center for Advanced Aviation System Development, The MITRE Corp.; Jonathan Evans, co-president, Skyward; Jesse Kallman, president, Airbus Aerial; Van Espahbodi, co-founder and COO, Starburst Accelerator; Wes Ryan, manager, Programs & Procedures (Advanced Technology), Small Airplane Directorate, FAA

by Duane Hyland, AIAA Communications (2008-2017)

Evolving-Culture-of-Aviation-Panel-AVIATION2017 — Participants in the panel discussion, “The Evolving Culture of Aviation,” June 6 at the 2017 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Denver.

Unmanned aircraft have exploded onto the aviation scene in recent years, and the industry needs to focus on the safety and security involved with these systems, a panel of experts said June 6 at the
2017 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Denver.

The
FAA predicts about 7 million total hobbyist and commercial drones will be purchased by 2020.

“All this change is happening at an incredibly rapid rate,” Glenn Roberts, chief engineer at the Center for Advanced Aviation Systems Development with
The MITRE Corp., told the audience in a session titled “The Evolving Culture of Aviation.”

Panelists explained the benefits of increased drone use, including eliminating human error from aviation; better monitoring of remote areas, such as power lines and rail lines; a greater collaboration between the information technology and aviation sectors; and a nearly limitless potential for creative future applications of the technology.

But, they said, there are challenges, including ensuring safe and successful integration of unmanned aircraft into the national airspace; educating the public about the safe nature of drones; and ensuring the systems are not put to nefarious uses.

Wes Ryan, manager of Programs & Procedures (Advanced Technology) with the
FAA’s Small Airplane Directorate, explained that safety is paramount, because if drones are put to “nefarious uses, nothing will kill quicker in the mind of the public.”

Jesse Kallman, president of
Airbus Aerial, echoed Ryan’s concern.

“It would only take a small incident to change the public’s perception,” Kallman said.

Panelists debated the role of humans when it comes to drone technology, settling on a scenario that would leave humans in the loop. As Jonathan Evans, co-president of
Skyward, explained, the human role would be “not in a cockpit, but sitting in a network control center.”

Van Espahbodi, co-founder and COO of
Starburst Accelerator, urged attendees to “find ways to participate in the UAS sector, especially as the tide rises.”

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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.

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