Personal flying transportation is coming. When we first looked in at the Icon A5, a folding-wing personal aircraft designed in a collaboration between multiple bodies including IDEO and Art Center College of Design, it was just a bunch of renderings and grainy images we assumed were Photoshopped. That was over five years ago, so let's look at what the resultant company, Icon Aircraft, has got today:
It doesn't have to land on water, by the way; terra firm will also do. But perhaps what's most notable here is the business approach the company is taking, and how the UI design is a key part of that approach. Rather than going after wealthy folks who have already invested in pilot's licenses and already own Cessnas, Icon's mission is "to democratize aviation the same way that great brands like Apple, BMW, Ducati, or Oakley democratize their products: by fusing outstanding engineering with world-class consumer product design."
To that end, they've designed the aircraft's crucial feedback-providing gauges to be closer to what you'd find in a passenger car rather than an Airbus.
"A high goal for us is that there is a very intuitive user interface," Icon founder Kirk Hawkins told Bloomberg. In concert with the physical design of the craft itself, this makes the A5 easier to fly. As an example:
One [feature] is an easy-to-read Angle of Attack (AoA) gauge, a feature common to military aircraft but virtually unknown in civilian planes. In general terms it tells you how your wings are performing, or rather how much lift they're providing in whatever maneuver you're currently in. Keep the needle in the green zone, you're good; hit the yellow zone, and an audible alarm goes off to tell you to correct; hit the red, and you've stalled (i.e. there's no lift on the wings). At this point the plane starts to shake and protest physically—clearly something is wrong.
[Stalling is countered by] a Spin-Resistant Airframe…. A main danger of a stalled plane is that it can enter an uncontrolled spin should there be any yaw (lateral) movement—say, in a turn while on approach to land, which could result in a crash; 41 percent of pilot-related fatalities are due to stall/spin crashes.
In the A5, you may stall—and Hawkins intentionally did during our flight (to my chagrin) to show me this feature—but you don't lose control or lift, and it's fairly difficult to enter a spin. (Or as I assumed might happen as a non-pilot, drop like a bowling ball.) For newer pilots, the ease of recovery is an obvious boon.
That the A5 will see uptake is not in doubt; there are already 1,500 pre-orders logged. The craft doesn't require Jet A and can be filled up with ordinary premium unleaded at any gas station. Even more surprising is how little training is required: Just 20 hours, which Icon reckons you can complete in two weeks.
There's no word on when they'll begin shipping, but their website indicates that those placing pre-orders now—i.e., at the end of the line—will receive their A5 in 2019. We imagine we'll start seeing A5 earlybirds cruising the Hudson River before then.
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"Keep the needle in the green zone, you're good; hit the yellow zone, and an audible alarm goes off to tell you to correct; hit the red, and you've stalled" Does anyone know why this is even allowed by the electronics?
I would venture to guess that this reflects feedback from small-plane pilots or perhaps even military test pilots. If you read into the investigation of Air France 447 it shows that user interface defaults contributed to the loss of situational awareness by the pilots, one of whom was led to act in the opposite manner that he should have. Chilling to read the transcripts combined with the actual flight performance, but extremely insightful regarding human/computer interaction.
The Icon is a light airplane and has physical mechanical controls, it is therefore not a matter of 'disallowing' an AOA stall. The entire point of an AOA indicator is to inform the pilot of the amount of lift being generated by the wing in real time. There is no good way I know of off my head to limit the inputs so that you can't get too steep: some aircraft naturally will auto-correct too high of an AoA, but generally its just a matter of informing the pilot of their current situation so they can fly the airplane correctly.
Eventually you'll see the pilot replaced altogether in some craft like the Icon, but that's not really the point for these types of birds, not yet. It's still very much about being the pilot.