Flying This Innovative New Aircraft Is as Easy as Driving Your Car

Simplifying flight—to make it as easy as getting into a car with automatic transmission—has long eluded the aerospace engineers creating new aircraft. While we’ve relied on flight controls such as ailerons, rudders, and elevators to maneuver around the sky, turning that control yoke or center stick in the cockpit into a “smart” joystick is critical to making aircraft control easier and more intuitive for a wider range of people.

Airhart, a Los Angeles-based start-up, intends to bring the ease of control to light aircraft. Founder and CEO Nikita Ermoshkin is clearly passionate about pushing these boundaries. His background as an engineer for SpaceX—specifically with avionics systems integration into the Falcon 9 project—drives his desire to create what he calls the “easiest-to-fly and safest aircraft ever engineered.”

A growing number of new aircraft have achieved easier control of complex flight regimes with a type of fly-by-wire (FBW) system called “unified flight controls.” So far, those can be found in military hardware like the F-35B, or the FBW sidesticks of the high-end Dassault Falcon 6X, Embraer Praetor 500/600 bizjet, or Gulfstream G700.

Many eVTOL makers are also incorporating unified flight controls into their next-generation aircraft. Joby Aviation is building toward its first certificated eVTOL using electric motors and battery packs with simplified flight controls that marry vertical and forward flight—an even greater challenge than keeping an airplane right side up. Its competitor, Archer, has also incorporated similar flight controls into its Archer Midnight air taxi. “They allow for a much more intuitive piloting experience than existing systems,” Tom Muniz, Archer’s chief technical officer, told Robb Report during a recent visit to Archer’s Silicon Valley facilities.

Concurrently, Skyryse continues development of its flight control system retrofit into a Robinson R66 single-engine turbine helicopter.

But Ermoshkin wants to bring that sophisticated ease to the masses, in a light airplane he envisions anyone could fly themselves. “I was an airplane nerd growing up, and I started learning to fly in 2020,” he said. “I felt disappointed about the complexity of even a basic airplane, but I enjoyed the benefits it offered me. With my experience building high-reliability electronics at low cost, and my startup experience, I felt we could launch our own solution.”

Ermoshkin pointed out the reality that today, even 120 years after the Wright Brothers first flew, personal aviation isn’t a huge market. “But there are 300 million people in the U.S. within a 20-minute drive to an airport,” he said.

Getting to scale with an easy-to-fly airplane will drive the costs of aircraft down. “Making flight more accessible will help us scale. And we don’t have to worry about waiting for new technology approval or additional regulations to come into play” for the solution to get to market, Ermoshkin said.

Airhart’s solution is full FBW, like that of Joby and Skyryse. It involves a side yoke that slides forward and backwards, and side to side, with force feedback “so the computer is in the loop all the time,” says Ermoshkin. “You’re just telling the computer left, and right, and you’re achieving a coordinated turn every time.” Rudder pedals won’t be required, since the computer always knows how much pressure to apply. There’s no throttle anymore, either—there’s a speed control. “We’re not calling it an autothrottle, because it’s set at a speed rather than mechanically moving a throttle level . . . throttle by wire is closer in description,” he says.

In 2022, Airhart started flying its software testbed in a Van’s Aircraft RV-12, an experimental light-sport aircraft already popular on the market. At EAA AirVenture in July 2023, Airhart exhibited its current prototype with aircraft manufacturer Sling.

Sling was chosen because its overall performance fits the mission in speed, range, and endurance, with a turbocharged Rotax engine. Airhart is adopting the fly-by-wire system from the prototype—having already flown with the base avionics developed in-house—to the Sling.

Ermoshkin anticipates a first flight for the Airhart Sling in early 2025, as an experimental kit with a full Airhart avionics/control suite. “We want to make everything the pilot interacts with in the airplane simpler,” said Ermoshkin, “with more automated features, including fuel monitoring.” Almost everything is touch screen.

Airhart anticipates delivery of its first kit to customers in ​​January 2026. By late 2027, the company plans to have translated the kit design into an S-LSA (special airworthiness certificate in the light sport aircraft category). Airhart will pursue certification under newly modified FAA regulations for light aircraft (MOSAIC), “so we can certify a fast four-seater versus a slow two-seater.”

Ermoshkin believes the new aircraft, manufactured at scale, will drive operational costs down. He figures that a flight he recently flew from from Los Angeles to San Francisco cost nearly $1,000—but with a simpler, low-cost airplane it can be closer to $200.

Airhart has started a pre-order campaign, with a $1,000 fully refundable deposit, for one of the 50 Slings it plans to build. The $500,000 price tag includes being part of its builder-assist program, a full flight training program and eventually a managed ownership experience. “We’ll help them find hangar space, set up maintenance, etc.,” said Ermoshkin. “Because the airplane will be so heavily connected, ownership can be like a car experience, where the notification comes on your phone that you need to take it in.”

Despite the intentions, $500,000 is still out of reach for the masses Airhart wants to bring to private flight. “Our aspiration for the first Part 23 airplane [with expected certification in 2031] is to get it down to $100,000,” says Ermoshkin.