The FAA has confirmed that Skyryse’s automated flight control system has met all of its means-of-compliance requirements, clearing the way for it to complete applications for supplemental type certificates (STCs) to convert existing aircraft, starting with the Robinson R66 light helicopter. According to the company, the outcome of a recently completed system review means that the U.S. air safety agency will not require additional rulemaking to cover any aspect of the system’s hardware, software, or human factor components.

FlightOS is intended to improve safety by reducing pilot workload and training needs rather than displacing crew from aircraft flight decks. According to Skyryse, the technology will bring commercial aviation safety standards to general aviation, which it says suffers from risks associated with pilot errors and delays in poor weather.

The equipment replaces some of the complex controls in a typical general aviation flight deck with a touchscreen tablet display and a joystick. Fly-by-wire hardware and software handle most of the core piloting functions, according to Skyryse, preventing pilots from inadvertently exceeding safe flight envelopes. The company says that training pilots to interact with FlightOS will take only a few minutes.

According to California-based Skyryse, it has designed the system to the 10-to-the-minus-nine (10^-9) safety standards used as the benchmark for commercial aviation safety, which equates to a one-in-a-billion chance of a catastrophic system failure. The system is based on a triple-redundant fly-by-wire system with dissimilar architecture that the company says will support commercial air transport levels of safety for general aviation aircraft by removing mechanical complexity and adding highly intelligent computers.

FlightOS is intended to be a highly automated, airframe-agnostic universal flight control system. Founder and CEO Mark Groden told FutureFlight that the FAA has reviewed all of the system's components.

“We have a proven means of compliance for every piece of our system with the FAA,” he said. “We are developing a technology that will make flying just about any general aviation aircraft easier and safer, a shared goal across the industry. Since our technology will be implemented in existing airframes rather than a newly designed aircraft, our path to compliance may be a bit shorter as we are not certifying an aircraft and we aren’t certifying unknown technologies."

Skyryse aims to install its FlightOS automated flight deck on existing aircraft such as the Robinson R66 light helicopter. (Image: Skyryse)

Skyryse intends to offer FlightOS for other in-service helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft once the R66 STC is approved and implemented. “We are facing some supply-chain issues, but hope to bring this aircraft to market within 18 months,” Groden said.

The company views its technology as an effective means to address human error as a leading cause of aircraft accidents. “We believe it’s a moral imperative to reduce and, one day, eliminate general aviation fatalities,” Groden said. “Skyryse is making general aviation easier and safer by removing the complexities of managing an aircraft during standard flight, inclement weather, emergencies, and in-flight testing.”

In the third quarter of 2021, Skyryse completed a $200 million Series B funding round. It has now raised more than $260 million with backing from investors including Fidelity, Monashee Investment Management, ArrowMark Partners, Venrock, Eclipse Ventures, Cantos, Stanford University, and Ford Motor Company chairman Bill Ford.

The company is competing with other start-ups working to introduce higher degrees of automaton to the flight deck. These include remotely piloted systems pioneers such as Reliable Robotics and Xwing.

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