Airhart Sling: The airplane that anyone can learn to fly in an hour

In 2020, Nikita Ermoshkin, an engineer at SpaceX, decided to pursue a private pilot license. His goal was simple: fly between his home in Los Angeles and San Francisco, allowing him to visit friends and enjoy his favorite burrito spot.

However, the experience revealed a broader problem to him: why is flying still so complex in a world with self-driving cars and advanced automation? “It’s kind of like driving a manual car with two steering wheels,” Ermoshkin explained in an interview with Observer.

This realization led Ermoshkin to take a bold step. Just a year after obtaining his pilot’s license, he left SpaceX and co-founded Airhart Aeronautics with two other engineers. Their mission? To simplify flying with technology akin to automatic transmission in cars.

By 2022, Airhart was admitted into the prestigious Y Combinator Summer cohort, where the startup secured a pre-seed investment. Their first prototype, the Airhart Sling, is a four-seater aircraft built in collaboration with Sling Aircraft, a light aircraft manufacturer. If successful, the Airhart Sling could be operated by individuals with no previous flying experience after just one hour of training, according to the company’s projections.

Currently, Airhart Sling falls under the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) experimental/amateur-build category, meaning it isn’t yet eligible for commercial use. In addition, anyone flying the Sling will still need a traditional private pilot license. However, Ermoshkin and his team have their sights set on future certifications like MOSAIC (Modernization of Special Airworthiness Certification) to make commercial flights possible.

In a recent interview, Ermoshkin spoke about his vision for Airhart and how he believes personal aviation remains a largely untapped market. He reflected on his time at SpaceX, his motivations for starting Airhart, and the unique challenges of simplifying flying for the masses.

Before launching Airhart, Ermoshkin spent three years at SpaceX as an avionics systems and integration engineer. His primary focus was the fairing recovery program for the Falcon 9 rocket.

Reflecting on his departure, Ermoshkin explained, “What motivated me was that I had just learned how to fly a year earlier, and I really loved it. But I also noticed how complex and difficult it is… we have this better way to travel, but why is nobody doing it? So, we started Airhart to solve that problem and make flying so accessible that flying an airplane really is an extension of driving a car.”

Flying is often seen as an elite or niche hobby, but Ermoshkin believes that it has broader appeal—particularly among people who work in aerospace. When asked about this overlap, he noted, “I think there is an overlap between people who are into aerospace and who get excited about flying airplanes.” As for his personal motivation to fly? “The true reason I wanted to get a pilot license was so I could fly to San Francisco to get burritos.”

One of Airhart’s key selling points is the ease of flying. Traditional flying requires complex maneuvers, navigation through airspace, and communication with air traffic control. “It’s kind of like driving a manual car with two steering wheels,” Ermoshkin said.

The Airhart team wants to change that by developing what they liken to “automatic transmission” for airplanes. Their flight control system allows the plane to turn left or right with the push of a stick, coordinating the movements automatically. Likewise, moving the stick forward or back makes the aircraft climb or descend, simplifying the flying experience dramatically.

Importantly, Airhart is not relying on breakthrough technologies like new batteries or propulsion systems. Instead, they are focusing on transforming the user interface and user experience.

“We’re using the existing idea of a fixed-wing airplane, which has been well-known for over 100 years, and putting all of our efforts into changing the way people fly the airplane rather than trying to invent a new kind of flying vehicle,” Ermoshkin emphasized. This approach makes flying feel more like using an iPad than navigating a complicated cockpit.

To determine if there’s a market for this innovation, Airhart looked at existing infrastructure. The United States has about 19,000 airports, but fewer than 100 are used for commercial air travel. The remaining general aviation airports, located within 10 miles of most Americans, are largely underutilized. Ermoshkin sees this as an opportunity, “Fundamentally, we are creating a new market here.” Airhart aims to unlock this potential by making personal aircraft more accessible to everyday people.

Their four-seat aircraft design is central to this vision. The goal is to enable families to travel quickly and efficiently. Ermoshkin offers an example: “You go from Los Angeles to Mammoth to go skiing… it’s a seven-hour drive without traffic… With our plane, it will be less than a two-hour flight.” This convenience is a game-changer for people accustomed to long road trips for weekend getaways.

While Airhart’s ambitions are clear, the challenge remains in making flying as easy as they promise. Ermoshkin spent approximately 80 hours over six months to obtain his private pilot license, followed by another 50 hours to earn his instrument rating. But with the Airhart system, the aim is for new users to become proficient with just one hour of training—a radical reduction in time.

Though one hour might sound optimistic, Ermoshkin points to promising results from their simulator system. “We would bring in people who have never flown an airplane before… when our simulator system is turned on, they could fly, take off, and land in like 10 minutes.” This level of user-friendliness is a critical component of Airhart’s vision.

Of course, Airhart’s pitch to investors includes the inevitable questions about regulation and certification. Aerospace companies face significant hurdles in these areas, but Ermoshkin remains confident.

“Like any aerospace company, regulation and certification is always a big question mark, and it’s just a matter of working through the certification plan with regulators,” he said. Ultimately, Ermoshkin believes Airhart’s technology and infrastructure can usher in a new era of personal flight that’s both practical and widely available.

The dream of accessible personal aviation has been around for decades. Airhart aims to move closer to that reality by building on existing technology and infrastructure, rather than waiting for futuristic breakthroughs. As Ermoshkin puts it, “We have all this technology available and all of this infrastructure available to us to get around faster and more efficiently, and we just don’t currently utilize it.”

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