- We all know that Boeing aircraft are using yokes and Airbuses
are using side sticks but could Airbus be about
to change the way that their side sticks
are actually working? And if they are, why would they do that? And what will this mean
for the side side sticks that are already in use? Stay tuned. (playful chime) In a couple of previous videos, I've talked about how Boeing
and Airbus pilots tend to tease each other a little bit about how their flight
controls are working. That normally includes Boeing pilots pointing out that they really like how they can feel what
the aircraft is doing and the Airbus pilots responding with that they have a handy little table that they can put
a little kitchen cloth on top. Now I will look at these
and other differences more closely in a minute in this video
but first, it's worth looking at where these two different technologies actually
came from and why? In a recent video, I looked
at the Airbus A300 which is a gorgeous aircraft, by the way, but it was also the aircraft
that led to the creation of Airbus itself. It first flew back in 1972
and its pilots were controlling it with yokes, just like the pilots of all other airliners
were doing at the time. And even though later versions of that A300 added
some fly by wire technology for its secondary flight controls, the aircraft still stuck with a yoke until the production ended, which was actually quite recently. Airbus actually first
introduced side sticks and full fly by wire to its airliners with the Airbus A320 family
which first flew 15 years after the Airbus 300 in 1987. But while the A320 was the first airliner with side sticks, it was far from the first aircraft to use side sticks or even fly by wire, for that matter. A number of military jets
have used these technologies either in testing
or actually operationally going back all the way to the 1960s. The first operational aircraft
to use a side stick was the F-16 fighter which first flew nearly
50 years ago in 1974. And fly by wire aircraft go
much further back than even that, with many sources crediting
the Canadian CF 105 Arrow as the first aircraft to use it, although it actually
never entered service. Even in the airline world,
the A320 wasn't the first airliner to use fly by wire technology. That honor goes to
the awesome Concorde but, of course,
it didn't have a side stick. They used those famous
bicycle style yokes instead. It should probably be mentioned that also there are some smaller aircraft that use side sticks
without having fly by wire. That's like the Cirrus SR20
and the SR22 family as well as their Vision jet actually
which is super cool. But in those planes,
the side sticks basically operate like a side-mounted yoke,
move by one hand instead of by two. Now many people who
discuss the pros and cons of Boeing versus Airbus
tend to group side sticks and fly by wire together which is actually quite a bit misleading. And the same is true
when we look at military aircraft. Originally, fly by wire was attractive to use in military designs
because it made it possible to fly aircraft that were
aerodynamically unstable. Since all the Pilot's control inputs will have to go through a computer then be modulated and then pushed out to the flight controls,
fly by wire makes it easier to design fighter jets
who are really agile or aircraft that have
really unusual shapes like the F-117 or the B-2 Stealth Bomber. Even the space shuttle would
have been completely unflyable without advanced computers
using fly-by-wire systems. The situation is quite different though when we talk about airliners. All airliners including the Concorde with its unique delta wing
are aerodynamically stable and would therefore be possible to control conventionally. So instead fly by wire is useful for airliners because it helps them to operate more consistently
over wider center of gravity limits and it also enhances safety
and reduces weight. With the use of fly by wire, it's also easier to
make aircraft variants of the same family handle
more similar to each other, which helps in training
and makes it easier for a pilot to jump between,
for example, an Airbus A318, A319, 320, 321 with just
minimal difference training. But probably the most
attractive aspect of fly by wire for airliners is the
flight envelope protection. Through that, the fly by wire
helps make sure that the aircraft is operated within safe flight parameters like in pitch, roll and in air speed and this greatly helps prevent serious aircraft upsets
and stalls from happening. That's really the main reasons
why both Airbus and Boeing are now using fly by wire
in their latest aircraft. In the last three decades, Boeing has introduced
two clean sheet aircraft, the 777 and the 787
and both of them are full flyby wire designs. Now to be clear,
there are some differences between the ways
that Airbus and Boeing implement their flight
envelope protections but I'm not going
to go into that here. If you want to hear more about that, then let me know in the comments. But beyond fly by wire
where both of them now clearly agree with each other, the Boeing versus Airbus
debate is really all about the different flight controls they're using. But what a lot of people tend to forget is that Boeing's choice of using yokes rather than side sticks
actually wasn't always a given. In the late 1980s and early '90s when Boeing was developing the 777, they were also working
on something called the 7J7, which I've covered in previous videos. The most distinctive feature
of that aircraft design was its open fan engine configuration but Boeing's conceptual design
for the 7J7 cockpit was pretty much as interesting as that. One of the interesting things
was that they featured an odd center-mounted stick setup while another one actually had a more familiar-looking
side stick mounted. Now I will come back
to all of the benefits that will come with
having side sticks soon but Boeing was really
considering this for that design and, of course, the 7J7 never came off the drawing board
but a lot of the design work that went into materials
and other technologies, when they were working on it, actually later ended up
in the much bigger 777. So it wouldn't have been a leap, to think that the 777 could
have been developed with a side stick as well if history had just taken
a slightly different turn. In the end, Boeing decided to stay with their traditional yokes in part to keep its layout similar to aircraft like the 757,
the 767 and even the 737 but what did Boeing actually
give up with that choice? What were the reasons
that Airbus had already made their switch over to
side sticks at that point? Well, it's really a mix of several things, including ergonomics for the pilots and some more general practical factors, for example, from
a pure design perspective, it's just so much easier
to install a pair of side sticks in a cockpit than it is
to install two big yokes. Another huge reason
which I've actually already mentioned a little bit is the weight. In the Boeing 777 and the 787, who are both fly by wire, the yokes are still
interconnected mechanically, making them move together and this is a bulky
and very heavy mechanism. By comparison, each side stick is just basically a box
filled with the mechanical parts of wiring and with the side stick mounted on top of it requiring much less space and weight. This also makes side sticks
much easier to install and also easier to service and replace. For the pilots, in terms of ergonomics, not having a yoke that moves
back and forth in front of us means that our flight displays can be put closer to us
and that allows us to see them a bit better with nothing in the way but it also enables them
to be turned into touch screens. Airbus have already done this
with the Airbus A350, and like I said before,
the simple mechanics of the side side stick
also makes them much lighter. According to Collins Aerospace,
using side sticks in a cockpit represents an 80% weight reduction compared to a similar setup with yokes. But if Airbus already have side sticks and they're so great,
then why mess with them? Well, I'll explain all of that after this. Just as knowing more about aviation can help you to fight your fear of flying, therapy can be another great tool and that's where today's sponsor,
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Now back to the video. Just over a year ago,
I made a video where I examined the possibility that
Boeing's next airliner might actually have side sticks instead of yokes
and the reason for this is the introduction of something
called active side sticks. In addition to transmitting pilot inputs to the aircraft systems,
these active side sticks also include servo mechanism
who moves the sticks and exert force against
the pilot inputs. This means that even though
the two sticks have still no mechanical interlink between them, it's possible to program them
so that if one Pilot moves their stick, the other stick moves as well in a corresponding way, and that is a really, really big deal because there are actually
a couple of real criticisms of the side sticks that are in use today and one of them is precisely
this lack of feedback between the left and right side stick, especially during an upset
when both pilots might start to make inputs at the same time. Now if that happens,
the Airbus for example have a loud audio warning announcing: - Dual input! Dual input!
- Dual input! But, unfortunately,
one of the first human senses that are degraded
under severe stress is hearing. Another criticism involves
the aircraft's trim or, more accurately, the lack of feedback from the trim. You see, normally,
in normal control law, Airbus aircraft trim their
horizontal stabilizer automatically, reacting to pitch control
inputs from the pilots to neutralize the trim forces. But under certain circumstances, when some systems
or sensors don't work as they should, the aircraft could find itself in a degraded
control law like direct law. In direct law, the aircraft
will no longer trim itself and in that scenario,
the standard side sticks don't give any real feedback to the pilots to let them know that the aircraft is out of trim. Now I should make it clear here that Airbus has designed
its systems with multiple safeguards. Those include that warning system that I just mentioned and on top of that, there are also visual warnings, including a message
on the primary flight display that will tell the pilots
of the need to trim manually if it would be needed. But sadly, over on
the Mentour Pilot Channel, which is my second channel,
I have featured several cases when the high workload of the flight crew made them miss some
or even all of these crucial warnings. Air France 447
immediately comes to mind but it's far from the only one. Now Airbus have been tweaking and improving its warning systems over the years, including
after the Air France 447 tragedy but I just released another video showing a severe upset
involving an S7 Airlines A321neo, which also highlighted the same issues and that one happened quite recently. Active side sticks
could potentially solve these and some other problems which I'll get back to but here,
it might be fair to ask why haven't we seen these
active side sticks until now? I mean these system sound very similar to the kind of force feedback joysticks with which were around
when I was a teenager. Well, one of the explanations has to do with the
origins of the side stick. You see, older military jets
with side sticks were predominantly single seaters. The F-16 had a two-seat version but actually, its side stick
doesn't move that much. It's primarily responding
to pressure input so there isn't really much motion to feed back to the other pilot. But a simpler explanation
to why we haven't seen them in airliners yet is purely technological. The first gaming joysticks
with force feedback went on sale in 1997 and they were fairly basic. So obviously, the technology
definitely wasn't there yet when Airbus was developing
the Airbus A320 back in the 1980s. And while we, Boeing pilots, sometimes tease our Airbus colleagues and call their side sticks joysticks, these devices clearly need
to be several orders of magnitude more robust and reliable
than anything that has to do with computer gaming
but never mind that. The important thing
is that active side sticks have now finally arrived. Today, there are three aircraft designs that come with them as standard and the first one that was released was a Business Jet,
The Gulfstream G500 and the 600, with more variants
of Gulfstream jets following. Next up came a military aircraft, the Embraer KC-390
which is a twin-engine cargo jet, the size of a C130 Hercules. The third aircraft is an airliner
although it might be a while until we actually will
see it carrying passengers. This is the Russian Irkut MS-21 or MC-21. Until Russia's escalation
of the war in Ukraine in 2022, the MS-21 was stated to become the world's first airliner
to enter service with active side sticks
but like practically all of the avionics,
other electrics and systems in that aircraft, those side sticks weren't actually made in Russia. So with the current sanctions, we will have to wait and see
what kind of system this plane actually
will enter service with, when or if it does. In any case, that amount
of re-engineering could take many years to do for the Russians. So is there a possibility
that we could see another airliner enter service with active side sticks before the MS-21? Well, as I've explained before in many of my other videos, Airbus and Boeing probably
won't launch any all new aircraft in the next few years but what
if active side sticks came in as a retrofit for existing aircraft
with conventional side sticks? As I've said before the fact
that side sticks are basically a piece of electronic equipment means that like with all other electronics,
newer and better versions of them can be put in to replace them and it wouldn't be unprecedented either. The first Airbus A320s
had cathode ray tubes or CRTs for their flight displays like those old heavy televisions
that we had back in the day and the fly by wire
and flight management computers of those first A320s were running on banks of multiple
redundant Intel processors whose design dates back to 1982. Both of these have obviously
long since scenes been replaced by newer and much better stuff. The side sticks are configured as line replaceable units or LRUs and as their name suggests,
they are designed for easy removal and replacement. Again, that's one of the reasons
why having side sticks instead of yokes actually makes sense. However, to upgrade
to active side sticks, it would likely be necessary to update more aircraft systems as well but those other systems
also tend to be built for those type of upgrades. And, of course, the new sticks
need to have servos built into their boxes. This could potentially make
the LRUs bigger but given the advancement
and downsizing in electronics since the 1980s, I would
hazard to guess that that's not really a big problem. If active side sticks can fit into a Gulfstream,
they should definitely fit into the famously roomy cockpit of an A320 as well. Active side sticks would offer
three distinct advantages over existing designs. I've already mentioned two of them; firstly, of course, letting the pilots know that the other pilot is making inputs and quickly figure out which one should be flying the plane and secondly, they would
let the pilot know that the aircraft is out of trim in a degraded control law situation. And a third benefit would apply when the aircraft is flying on autopilot. Then the movements of the stick corresponds to the actual deflection of the control surfaces,
serving as a visual cue to the pilots, warning them
if something unusual is about to start happening. Obviously, all three of these advantages of active sticks are things
that Boeing pilots already have, thanks to their yokes. But active side sticks would also
have all of the other benefits that Boeing's cockpits don't have, like the lower system weight, easier maintenance and replacement, better ergonomics and, of course, that famous tray table. At this point, I should also point out that introducing this feedback between the inputs the pilots
and the autopilot are doing isn't going to solve every
control and input problem. In an incident that happened back in April of 2022, the pilots
of an Air France wide body, flying from New York to Paris, ended up fighting
each other's control inputs during the approach
and the following go around, not realizing that they were
both inputting on the controls, but these pilots were not flying an Airbus with side sticks. They were actually flying a Boeing 777, a fly by wire jet with yokes. Now the final report
on this incident isn't out yet but in a press release, the French investigating authority, BEA, indicated that the two pilots managed to split or desynchronize their yokes as they were inputting on the controls. Now I will probably look more closely into this event in a video
when the final report comes but basically, it is possible
for the mechanically-linked yokes on the 777 and the 787 to split this way in case one of the yoke is being jammed. With enough force,
they can then desynchronize and when they do,
the fly by wire computers will average out the inputs,
just like the Airbus computers will average out conflicting
inputs from the side sticks. And speaking of jammed yokes,
I've already done a video involving a very similar issue but with a jammed side stick
in a military Airbus A330 where a bit of feedback
between the two side sticks would have definitely
made a huge difference. Now even if retrofitting
an existing aircraft with active side sticks
is technically possible, another question here is
is it even practical or is it doable? Well, to answer that,
it might help if we know who makes the active side sticks today. The active side sticks
for the Gulfstream's Business Jets and for the Embraer's KC-390 are reportedly made by BAE Systems. The active sticks for the Irkut MS-21 are made by Ratier Figeac,
a French-based division of Collins Aerospace,
which is an American company that belongs to RTX also known, until a few months ago, as Raytheon. And do you know who else
France-based Ratier Figeac makes side sticks for? Should I give you a clue? It's someone who assembles
big aircraft in France. That's right, the supplier
that Airbus sources its existing side sticks from is a company that is already
making active side sticks and that's frankly not a huge surprise since, visually at least,
the Airbus and the Irkut's side sticks are very similar. Now I'm not an engineer,
nor a lawyer so I don't know if there may be any
intellectual property issues with Ratier Figeac or Collins Aerospace selling another version of a product that they've already developed for Irkut to Airbus but I think
it is reasonable to assume that the MS-21 active stick design is broadly just an evolution
of the Airbus all-passive side stick so I would be very surprised if someone hasn't already worked out what it takes to develop a version of the latest active systems for Airbus. Now I would be super interested to hear from Airbus pilots about this in the comments below. What do you guys think? I mean active sticks seems to be eliminating all of the weaknesses of the previous systems,
leaving behind only the advantages that you guys brag to us about. Now, I realize that many
standard operating procedures have been designed to guard against the lack of feedback between
the two existing sticks and will likely need
to be adjusted or updated and, of course, there will also
be extensive training needed for a flight control update like this but from where I'm sitting,
I can only see positives in introducing this technology. Now I haven't been able
to confirm who makes the passive side sticks
for the newer Airbus A220. Perhaps that would be
an easier retrofit to implement since the existing pool of A220 pilots is comparatively small
and Airbus's production of the A220 is much slower
than this for the A320 or maybe Airbus could launch
an active side stick upgrade for the A350 and then later
bring it to the single aisles. I don't know.
It sounds like a possible idea. Now you can support my team and I by sending a Super Thanks after this video or buying a t-shirt but if you really want to take part in the creation
of these videos and give feedback and also hang out with
me on Zoom hangouts, well then you should join
my awesome Patreon crew. Have an absolutely fantastic day and I'll see you next time, bye-bye.
