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Future of aviation and new approach to safety.

Future of Aviation

It is 2025, and aviation has reputation as the safest mode of transportation in the world. Almost six decades of evolving standards, rigorous engineering, evolving certification needs made flying reliable and safe. But lately a new chapter of aviation future started to emerge – one that may have impact on those safety factors in fundamental ways. It will impact your job as an engineer, as legislator or the way you travel privately. 

Drones, artificial intelligence, electrification, autonomous systems and one that probably will use parts of all the above – Advanced Air Mobility. Those are impacting huge part of aviation already and that influence will grow in upcoming years. As a result, traditional safety frameworks are under pressure. 

Aviation’s Safety Success — and a New Challenge

Current aviation safety is built on years of accidents and tests that provided researchers and legislators with staggering amount of data. Every major incident has shaped new regulations, procedures and technologies. But we have to ask ourselves a question what happens when entirely new types of aircraft are introduced – aircrafts with no historical data to learn from.  

Electrically powered aircraft, highly automated flight controls with trend towards full autonomy of air transportations, led by eVtols (electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing Vehicles). That train took already most of the biggest companies in aviation world like Airbus or Boeing. This makes the future of AAM certain and somehow credible. Nevertheless it is important to mention that those machines don’t fit neatly into the existing categories of airplane or helicopter. They introduce new flight dynamics, new user expectations, and new risks. 

In most of those systems pilot is no longer required to go through long training, in long term maybe no training at all. That is awesome as it makes flying available to more and more people like me and you. Giving that thrill, everyone who is in love in flying searched for entire life. But with all privileges comes also responsibility. Those advancements will change ways you as a user interact with the machine, add specific constraints to autonomy, and system feedback must be far more intuitive and fail-safe than ever before. 

Why STPA matters?

All that brings more work on the manufacturers hands and is crucial part of system design. That is the point we bring in the STPA (System-Theoretic Process Analysis). Unlike other methods in STPA most important question is “under what conditions can the system enter an unsafe state?”. 

Key features of STPA in that aspects are:

  • It is focused on control structures not just hardware. ✅
  • It considers interactions, software and human behaviour.✅
  • Supports analysis even before physical system is built.✅
  • And probably most important – Helps uncover unsafe scenarios without need for historical data for failure.✅

STPA is perfectly suited for new technologies where risks are more about coordination failures, design assumptions, or automation surprises. Given it does not need any historical data it is one of the best ways to go with in the industry where there is already high level of safety achieved and no one would like to risk the reputation. 

Certification and the road ahead.

Certification are inherent part of aviation and it won’t be different in the nearest future. It is a long and costly project and it will also need adaptation to new types of aircraft, new “types of flight”. Biggest bodies responsible for regulating aviation like EASA and FAA have already began exploring. They are in search for more flexible and modern methods for demonstrating safety in current aviation and new aspects of it. And you should know that STPA is gaining attention. 

Some early adopters, including NASA and aerospace startups, have already begun integrating STPA into their design and verification processes. The method is already being explored in all sectors related to high level of automation and autonomy like automotive, maritime and aviation. With future it is inevitable that system complexity and software integration will be equally as important and it is where STPA shines. 

Future of aviation and new approach to safety.

Future of aviation will be safe – but we need to adapt.

With the rise of possibilities that AI, electrification and accessibility bring there is also rise in the possible outcomes of system design. Process gets more complicated and it requires newer methods that take different things into account. Not historical data but it should allow for structured approach to asking question “What if/What could go wrong”. And to ask that question towards multiple interactions in growing newly built systems. As answer to this question gets tougher and tougher, or some would say not tougher but different there is a chance we need to grab. To make future-proof technological solutions also as safe as possible.

I found out about STPA thanks to Mateusz. As an engineer working on multiple drone systems and manned eVtols I found that method to be extremely exciting. From the aspect of creative brainstorming on workshops to finding technical aspects that in other way may have never been found. To be honest even those two points made my experience of learning about STPA really interesting. Not even taking into account later learned other positive aspects of it. STPA became for me something different than boring implementation of another method to make things better.

This article was first on the topic of aviation. In the future I will try to bring you more detailed insights, maybe some use cases. Meanwhile If you found it interesting let us know, contact with questions or just download our white paper on STPA.

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