Originally Posted by
Lonewolf_50
I'll be interested to see how that plays out. John Dixson has mentioned any number of times the mismatch between the early FBW development for rotary wing versus the capacity to figure out requirements for that among regulators (at least on the FAA side).
The future passengers of these new aircraft agree with you.
Two that come to mind are the 609 (civilian tilt rotor) and the 525 (Bell). I am sure that there are others, to include the odd event with S-97 - WoW and fly by wire mode conflict - a few years ago at West Palm.
Isn't Relentless (Bell 525) almost there?
I agree. Sometimes I wonder if the "can" and "should" thinking fits the needs of the aircraft.
I believe the 525 Relentless and the 609 tiltrotor are one to two years away from certification (my guestemation). The V-22 provides a significant amount of reliability data for FBW. (The first crash in Delaware as I understand it, was attributed to human error of incorrect cable attachment to two of the three onboard computers, while the North Carolina hydraulic fluid incident was truly a software glitch in the warning light system.)