> Then a doped up former major league pitcher decides to hop in your plane and fly it into the ocean and everything you have done is called into question and you end up buried in lawsuits.

Here's what I don't understand. If the same meathead pitcher gets in his Ferrari and drives it into a tree, nobody questions the car company or buries them in lawsuits. Driver crashes car, it's their fault.

So wouldn't it stand to reason that aviation evolve into the 21st century by eliminating much of the red tape? Sure, cars are required to leverage new technology to enhance safety (e.g. mandating back-up cameras), and the same should apply to an aviation world which treats aircraft as they are: cars in three dimensions rather than two.

All that red tape was necessary when flying was extremely dangerous with primitive technology. We now have the means, through continuous enhancement, to make a "safe enough" aircraft and offload some of the risk on the driver.

> the same should apply to an aviation world which treats aircraft as they are: cars in three dimensions rather than two.

If you think an aircraft is a car with extra dimensions of travel then you've trivialized flight. Airplanes have gotten more complex over the past 50 years, and you're not going to get away abstracting any of it comfortably. The red tape exists because flying is hard, expensive and extraordinarily risky.

Junior aviators shouldn't be getting into planes they cannot operate themselves. It's like trying to claim it's safe putting a person without a drivers license behind the wheel of a self-driving car. You might feel that your life or the major-league pitchers' isn't worth enough for it to matter, but there's at least 1 or 2 important people on the overbooked 747 you crashed into due to crosswinds on the runway or after ignoring ATCs demands to "go around".

I'm trivializing small aircraft flight, because it's a personal transport like a car. And the reason I'm doing so is that it seems very technically possible to safely control and simplify the amateur/small craft experience. So, my question would be, with modern technology, why should flying be hard?

I'm not suggesting this for a 747. Let's compare it to a private driver's license versus a CDL. Of course we shouldn't let any schlub to pilot a plane, just like we (ostensibly) require a person to take driver's training and pass a test prior to getting behind the wheel.

In my admittedly ignorant mind, we could automate and make safe the entire process. The OP prevents a device with redundant and safety systems making it nearly impossible to execute dangerous maneuvers, and balance weight and weather concerns. Current computing could automate air traffic control at small airfields where these small planes would fly. The airspace carved out for these craft could be enforced by the fly-by-wire system on the plane. And so on.

My point is, with modern tech, it would possibly be feasible to trivialize personal flying.

What you're talking about is already a thing. Experimental category is aviation without much of the red tape. You can fly pretty much anything that passes 50 hours of flight testing, then modify it at will just like your car. Expect this aircraft to offered as Experimental/Amateur-Built, because they have shown no plans for certification.

You can't inject reason into a conversation that is largely defined by $$. GA is an incredibly tiny market - faa.gov has the current active non-student pilot population in the US as less than 500k. The survival of the companies that rely on that population is predicated on the tight regulatory environment - not in spite of it.

I'm sure you're right, but what if that population of people exploded due to a revamped system? Surely they'd benefit from a looser environment as well? I suppose it's a leap of faith they wouldn't be willing to take.

You know how fast drone legislation was passed? That's the power of the Commercial Aviation sector when it feels threatened. Now imagine how they would react if somehow an affordable aircraft that made flying "easy" hit the market. Icon came close...

Have you considered that maybe Airhart and its founders have thought through those inevitable hurdles and decided to push forward anyway?

Even if they don’t ultimately succeed, so what? This is how true innovation happens—someone decides to take a chance on an idea/concept everyone else thinks is impossible or unrealistic.

There are innovators and then there are armchair critics who just tell the innovators all of the reasons why they’re going to fail.

This "armchair critic" was an engineer at VisionAire Corp. in the late 90's and watched a truly innovative aircraft and company be consumed by the red tape and outright corporate protectionism of the regulatory bureaucracy. Not only have I considered it - I lived it. What relevant experience do you bring to this discussion?

Good for you. Why didn’t you answer my question though?

> Have you considered that maybe Airhart and its founders have thought through those inevitable hurdles and decided to push forward anyway?

Do you genuinely think you’re the first person to tell them all of the reasons why they’re going to fail?

Wouldn’t it be much more useful to try to understand, in good faith, why they’re pushing forward with this venture anyway despite all of the hurdles in their future?

Have you considered that a significant number of companies that are presented - in good faith - as revolutionary startups that will open aviation to the masses are just investment schemes? I understand that they are pushing forward with this venture and are actively seeking investments "despite the hurdles" - what is your play in this?

> Have you considered that a significant number of companies that are presented - in good faith - as revolutionary startups that will open aviation to the masses are just investment schemes?

So you’re suggesting that Airhart is just engaged in an investment scheme? Do you have any evidence to support that?

Have you heard of occam's razor? Time will tell - in the meantime what you chose to believe and what I chose to believe are equally worthless opinions.

Look at their staff; all engineers, nobody there who has ever got anything past the FAA.

> Look at their staff; all engineers, nobody there who has ever got anything past the FAA.

So what?

When the Collison brothers founded Stripe, they (1) were young, (2) had no experience at all in the domain, (3) weren’t even U.S. citizens, (4) were entering a highly regulated space, and (5) were about to compete with some very powerful institutions that have existed forever worth billions and billions of dollars. In the eyes of folks who just look at all of the ways you can fail, they were extremely unattractive and Stripe’s fate was obvious failure. Today, most Americans can’t avoid using Stripe (both directly and indirectly) even if they tried. They’ve overcome all of those hurdles to the point of making it easy for the average engineer to build products without even having to think about the hurdles, dealing with regulators, etc. I vividly remember how awful the process of implementing payments was prior to Stripe (the process took a very long time)—they changed the game.

Maybe Airhart fails or maybe they just manage to change the game.

Are you seriously comparing a payment processor to an airplane manufacturer? Are you aware that Stripe received VC funding from Musk, Thiel and Sequoia in order to keep it from competing with PayPal and to provide a second-source provider to protect PayPal from accusations of monopolization of online processing fees? Are you aware that the storyline you are promoting is in fact a specifically curated myth?

> Are you seriously comparing a payment processor to an airplane manufacturer?

Clearly, my comparison had more to do with the regulation aspect than actually comparing payments and airplanes. Did you read the comment I was responding to?

Exactly. There's a reason an IFR GPS navigator costs upwards of $10K. It's incredibly expensive to make certified avionics.

"(an aviation grade GPS can cost upwards of $10k, but it’s the same hardware as in a $20 consumer grade GPS)"

No, it's absolutely not the same hardware as a consumer grade GPS. And this misses the entire point of why it costs so much.