Fly by wire filtering down to bizjets
Fly-by-wire (FBW) flight controls have been commonplace in fighters and Airbus airliners for years, but the technology has remained out of reach for all bu
Fly-by-wire (FBW) flight controls have been commonplace in fighters and Airbus airliners for years, but the technology has remained out of reach for all but a handful of business jet pilots. The notable exception in business aviation is the Airbus Corporate Jetliner, a descendent of the A320, which in 1988 became the first airliner with fly-by-wire controls and sidesticks to enter production.
Yet as FBW continues to gain acceptance among pilots and operators and the cost of the technology comes down, experts predict a major shift in business aviation away from today’s cable-and-pulley or hydraulic flight controls to systems that are manipulated by servoactuators taking their cues entirely from computers.
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