The decade from 2010 to 2019 saw some remarkably ambitious initiatives in all realms of aviation. While some, like the creation of the Gulfstream G650 ultra long-range jet, were spectacular successes, others, like the saga of the Solar Impulse global giants, were less so. Still, they reminded us that great accomplishments come only after overcoming great obstacles, which makes the successes all the sweeter.
7. ADS-B
The decade weâre finishing out was prelude for ADS-B, a new, mandated electronic computerized airborne âradarâ technology. The introduction by the FAA of the ADS-B mandate early in the decade made clear the requirement for almost all aircraft in the United States to install the gear by January 1, 2020. The process has taken a decade to work through, and it has not been easy. Despite pleas from the agency for all owners to equip as soon as possible and even louder pleas from aircraft electronics installers to really install as early possible, aircraft owners, being human, put it off until the end. In part that was because ADS-B isnât cheap, and many owners were hoping the FAA would delay the mandate, which they have repeatedly said they would not and today show no sign of considering.
4. Automation
Electrical mechanical automation is aircraft is nearly 100 years old. But over the last decade the advent of light, rugged and powerful digital hardware has advanced the state of the art at light speed literally and otherwise, making the automating of aircraft flight control, in part or in whole, a signature movement of the decade. From airliners to light planes, from pilot-less planes to weapons of war, weâve seen the storyline of increasing automation play out in dribs and drabs in both the mainstream and insider media. The crash of two Boeing 737 Max aircraft is linked to a failure of the design, implementation and integration of an automated system known as MCAS. Even light aircraft had their moment in 2019, when aircraft electronics giant Garmin International introduced a hardware/software package known as Autoland that will take control of an aircraft after a pilot is incapacitated bring the plane in for a safe landing to stop with zero human involvement. Again, expect much more news on this front in the coming decade, including perhaps the first commercial airliner one-pilot passenger flights.
6. Airlines Are Hiring
The airline industry has been expanding for some time, but in recent years big growth coupled with a continuing wave of retirements as pilots hit that magic number, 65, has meant a job market like weâve never seen before. Wages at the regionals, where most pilots begin their flying careers, are spectacularly high compared to the bad old days of just a few years ago, when newbie pilots were paid starvation wages. Today new pilots are getting bonuses, early sign-on incentives and employee focused workplace initiatives to make pilots happy to be at their current airline, in large part because replacing a pilot who goes elsewhere is no longer cheap and easy.
8. Preparing For A Jetsons Future
The dream of a Jetsons future took ahold in worldwide in the latter part of the decade. The concept of a high-volume network of autonomous or semi-autonomous next-gen air vehicles carrying people to and fro in busy city centers was so compelling that companies from the biggest aerospace giants to startups like Uber and Kitty Hawk invested heavily in that dream. The movement continues, though there has been some reorganizing of initiatives and development programs as the money continues to flow out the door while the goal remains unsettlingly distant.
5. Drones
The remotely or autonomously piloted aircraft known colloquially as âdronesâ had a huge impact on aviation and the world in the 2010s, but our advice: Hold on to your hats because you ainât seen nothinâ yet. The promise of drones is that they might automate dozens if not hundreds of flying activities that are today, or at least in recent memory, done by planes flown by human pilots. Today drones are doing pipeline patrol, wind turbine blade inspections, power line checks and aerial photography as weâve never seen it before. There have been early forays into package delivery, too. The FAA struggled over the course of the decade to get its arms around the drone issue, with abortive attempts at registration of pilots and drone aircraft that failed to comprehend the magnitude of the new segment.
3. A Decade Without A Fatal US Crash
All of the controversy surrounding the crash of two Boeing 737 jetliners did much to detract attention from the fact that safety in the United States commercial airliner world has been nearly perfect, no fatalities in crashes since 2009 when a Colgan Air 3407 crashed near Buffalo, New York, killing all 49 passengers and crew and one person on the ground. There has not been a fatal crash of a US passenger plane since. The lone fatality came in 2018, when the left engine of a Boeing 737 operating as Southwest 1380 experienced an uncontained failure that breached the cabin, killing a passenger after which the pilot, Tammie Jo Shults, and copilot Darrin Ellisor, successfully maneuvered the greatly compromised plane back safely to Philadelphia International.
10. The Rise Of The Super Jets
A strange economic phenomenon has changed the face of in aircraft sales in the past 25 years. The numbers of aircraft sold has declined precipitously since the heyday of general aviation manufacturing in the 1970s when 10,000 or more planes were built each year. For the past many years, in contrast, a thousand or so private planes coming off the assembly line each year is a predictable level of production. Despite this, the revenue generated by aircraft sales has skyrocketed over that time, even when adjusted for inflation. In order for that to happen the planes that are sold would have to be far more expensive, at least ten times as expensive in order to just keep pace. But itâs been far more than that. Over the course of the past decade a new breed of super jets has emerged, led by the breakout success of the Gulfstream G650, an intercontinental jet with fly-by-wire flight controls, that nips at the heels of the speed of sound while flying at altitudes as great as 51,000 feet and for distances as great as 8,600 statute miles. Cost per unit was $65 million when it was introduced in 2013. Gulfstream has built more then 400 G650s. You do the math. Spectacular long-range and ultra-long range jets from other manufactures include the Dassault Falcon 8X and the Bombardier Global 6500, all of which have strong order books. Light jets, like the Embraer Phenom and Cessna CJ lineup, which were once the high point on the graph of the turbine marketplace, today represent a much smaller slice of the bizjet pie.
1. Malaysia Air 370âs Disappearance
On March 8, 2014, a Boeing 777 airliner departed from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing, China, and after an hour it disappeared. The plane and its 239 occupants were never heard from again. The public interest in the mystery was unprecedented, drawing in millions of television viewers in prime time to follow the mystery and the theories, some bizarre, surrounding it. The theories were born of the fact that there was no imaginable reasonable explanation for the planeâs disappearance. Under normal circumstances, there were multiple ways for pilots to communicate with air traffic control facilities, none of which were used, and all of the flight tracking hardware that normally helps keep tabs on such flights went silent inexplicably. Two main theories emerged, that a cascading mechanical failure perhaps caused by a fire had disabled the communications of the plane while leaving it able to fly, presumably on autopilot, for many hours. The second theory is that the captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, had orchestrated the event as a bizarre suicide mass murder, a theory that seems to command the argument today. The theory that the plane continued to the Indian Ocean, where it crashed, was confirmed when parts of the 777 washed up on island beaches far to the west.
9. Solar Impulse 2
In 2015 a pair of Swiss pilots, Andre Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard, flew the solar powered giant, Solar Impulse 2, around the world. The flight, which was intended to showcase the possibilities of solar energy, did just that. The plane, which was powered by nothing but the sun, was very large, very light and had huge wings designed to serve both as solar collectors and to give the plane great lift. The lumbering giant, which cruised at just over 40 mph, successfully circumnavigated the globe, the first solar power plane to do it. But the journey took almost a year and a half of stops and starts to do that. In the end the Solar Impulse served as much as a showcase of the grand limitations of solar power, a message surely not intended by the team.
2. Boeing 737 Max Fiasco
The crash of two Boeing 737 Max Airliners was not only the biggest story of the year but also one of the biggest stories of the decade. The crashes of Lion Air 610 in Indonesia, which killed 189, and that of Ethiopian Airlines 302 in Addis Ababa, that killed 157 people, caused a global uproar. The crashes, early on linked to a new stability enhancement system called MCAS, eventually grounded the 737 Max, costing Boeing and its airliner customers billions of dollars. It also ensnared the FAA, Boeing and foreign aviation authorities in controversies over how the certification, regulation and training for the plane were mishandled that remain to be settled.
Read the Top Ten General Aviation Stories of 2019!
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