Pilot training challenges for advanced air mobility

Abstract

The emerging cast of air taxi companies promising to revolutionize urban transportation, has raised billions of dollars and enticed investors. In addition to the final certification of such vehicles and not yet approved flight procedures, now comes the difficult and challenging part: Certifying their pilot training program from regulators such as FAA and EASA. And that's merely among the firsts in a series of exacting technical and operational approvals that air taxi manufacturers must secure before entering the highly regulated world of commercial aviation. The novel design of eVTOL aircraft features technologies (e.g. electric propulsion systems, batteries, electric rotors, simplified vehicle operations and single set of flight controls), do not automatically align with existing standards and may result in additional challenges faced by OEMs to certify their pilot training programs. Despite the current ambiguity for Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) pilot training, the training program needs to be strong enough, as pilots need to operate eVTOLs in obstacle-rich environments in and around city centers, landing and take- off from some elevated landing pads and on top of that they might be influenced from microclimate weather and unforeseen emergencies. Harnessing the power of digital technologies, artificial intelligence, synthetic training environments and big data are promising solutions to develop and implement pilot training systems for the elevated future of Advanced Air Mobility. Based on the facts presented above, several aspects of daily eVTOL operations will differ from traditional aviation operations. It is the aim of this research to map these differences and propose solutions for reflecting these challenges into pilot training programs. Research findings will provide significant contribution to Academia, given the scarce references on this topic. By doing this, a momentum may be created that will lead to future research ideas. In addition, through identification and justification of a set of critical factors and challenges for AAM pilot training, industry practitioners and OEMs may create roadmaps and strategic plans for reflecting these challenges into the design of their future eVTOL pilot training programs. © (2022) by International Council of Aeronautical Sciences (ICAS) All rights reserved.

Keywords Advanced air mobility, VTOL, pilot training, scenario-based training