After some two decades of talk and unmet requests, the demand for voice control on business aircraft is finally being answered. Several factors underpin the advance: voice control has become part of the fabric of everyday life, thanks to Alexa and Siri; evolving technology can now promise seamless simplicity for integrating voice control into cockpit and cabin systems; speech recognition and command are seen as essential for enabling aviation’s Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) future; and perhaps most importantly, research has shown that voice command can reduce workload and increase safety for flight crews.
Here’s what companies leading the onboard voice command revolution are doing now and have planned.
A longtime BJT contributor describes the medical crises she has faced and explains why she’s always eager to hit the road.
This is how she wants to be remembered: “I lived my life as freely as I could, even though I was hindered by recurring cancer, an ulcer bleed, four ambulance rides, and 14 hospital visits in seven years. I traveled to 144 countries and loved every place I visited and every person I met. If you’re scared to travel, as I was at first, just take a deep breath and go anyway. Go everywhere. Go where you don’t speak the language, where you’re out of your comfort zone. Traveling made me a more compassionate, happier person. May it do the same for you.”
Since the Big Three automakers flew to Washington in business jets to ask for bailout money, rumors about flight department closures have multiplied.
Complicating the hunt for the facts is some companies’ practice of offering employees severance packages that include a gag policy on the closing of their flight departments. Others offer generous packages and employees simply don’t want to talk publicly about the situation because they feel the company has been trying to do the right thing for them.
As the aviation industry trends toward more autonomous flight technologies with the help of artificial intelligence (AI), one tech startup is looking into a different use for AI in aircraft: to monitor pilots using facial sensing software.
Blueskeye AI, a UK-based software development company that specializes in facial analysis using AI, recently received a £20,000 ($24,600) award from the Aerospace Unlocking Potential program, a joint effort between the University of Nottingham and the Midlands Aerospace Alliance, to investigate how facial sensing technology could glean information about human behavior in aircraft cockpits.
Decades-old Part 135 pilot rest and duty regulations may soon give way to a more progressive set of science-based rules. Current regulations, according to experts, are far too prescriptive and fail to recognize the effects of circadian rhythm and cumulative duty time. A new set of rules is soon expected to enter the notice of proposed rulemaking process and would be based on modern fatigue science while accommodating the diversity of operations within the charter and air ambulance industry.
In July 2021, the Part 135 Pilot Rest and Duty Rules Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC) submitted its recommendations to the FAA, after nearly three years of collaborative industry work. Established by the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018, the Pilot Rest and Duty Rules ARC was formed to identify the effectiveness and deficiencies of the current Part 135 regulatory framework and develop recommendations for future rulemaking activities.
United Airlines has committed to a $15 million investment in carbon-capture technology company Svante, the U.S. carrier said Wednesday. Svante provides materials and technology to convert CO2 removed from the atmosphere and from industrial emission sources into sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
The commitment marks the latest investment from the United Airlines Ventures Sustainable Flight Fund, which was established in February to support startup businesses focused on decarbonizing air travel through SAF research, technology, and production. United aims to completely eradicate its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, without relying on traditional carbon offsets. The airline has invested in the future production of more than three billion gallons of SAF.
Airbus UpNext, a wholly-owned subsidiary, has demonstrated its Auto‘Mate autonomous inflight refueling technology. During a flight from Getafe, Spain, on March 21, Airbus’s A310 MRTT tanker testbed autonomously guided a succession of four Airbus Do-DT25 drones to an established position behind the extended refueling boom of the tanker.
Both the tanker and drones had the Auto’Mate system integrated. The four drones were successively ramp-launched from the Centro de Experimentación de El Arenosillo (CEDEA, Arenosillo test center) at Huelva. Control of each drone was transitioned from ground station to the A310 over the Gulf of Cadiz. The flight test lasted for nearly six hours, during which the drones were sequentially guided by artificial intelligence and cooperative control algorithms to a position behind the tanker. A minimum distance of 150 feet was achieved.
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