Training for the Blended Wing: JetZero Builds the Pilot Pipeline

JetZero’s Z4 blended wing aircraft may look radically different from the airliners pilots fly today, but the company does not want learning to fly it to feel revolutionary.

As the US manufacturer develops the aircraft for an anticipated early-2030s entry into service, training and operational considerations are being incorporated into its development from the outset. The aim is for pilots to transition onto the Z4 through a new type rating much as they would when moving to another aircraft type.

“We are not here to reinvent the certification process and how you teach pilots and how you train pilots,” Bethany Davis, Head of Z4 Program & Certification at JetZero, told CAT. “We are here to reinvent the shape of the airplane.”

The Z4 represents a significant departure from the tube-and-wing configuration that has dominated commercial aviation for decades. JetZero is targeting what it calls the middle market: around 250 passengers and a range of 5,000 nautical miles.

From the flight deck, however, the experience is deliberately intended to be familiar.

“By design, it will not feel different,” said Davis, who began her career as a flight instructor and is currently certified as a flight instructor (CFI), certified instrument instructor (CFII), and multiengine instructor (MEI).

The Z4 will retain a conventional two-pilot flight deck, with a centre pedestal, throttle quadrant, speed brake handle, overhead panel and familiar flight guidance and displays.

One notable difference will be an active control sidestick, technology Davis said is already certified and operating on Gulfstream aircraft. Unlike passive sidesticks, the active system allows each pilot to see the other's control inputs.

From a human factors and training perspective, Davis sees this as combining the ergonomic advantages of a sidestick with an important characteristic of the traditional mechanically linked control column: awareness of what the other pilot is doing.

Training While Designing

Davis brings a pilot’s perspective to the Z4 programme. Before joining Gulfstream, where she spent 10 years, she worked as a Part 135 charter, special missions and air ambulance pilot. She said ensuring the aircraft would work well operationally for pilots, cabin crew and maintenance personnel was on her mind from her first day at JetZero.

Rather than completing the aircraft and then asking how pilots should be trained to operate it, JetZero is developing the aircraft and its training thinking in parallel.

“We don't want to wait till the airplane's designed to design the training,” Davis said. “You get a plane and you're like, who designed this? Nobody can actually fly it. How am I going to teach people how to fly it?”

The company is already using two fixed-base simulation environments. Its Flying Qualities Lab integrates real hardware including sidesticks, throttle quadrant and rudder pedals with flight control laws and its aerodynamic model. A second fixed-base simulator focuses on avionics integration.

Neither is an FAA-approved full-flight simulator. They are currently being used for areas including handling qualities, flight control law development and avionics integration.

Airline pilots are also being brought into the process. Davis said flight crew leadership, test, line, standards and training pilots from U.S. and non-U.S. airlines have been invited into JetZero’s Long Beach simulator to provide feedback.

“We have our experimental test pilots, but they are not airline line pilots, right? So you need both,” she said.

Building the Simulator Pipeline

JetZero is also planning the training infrastructure that will eventually be needed to support entry into service.

Davis said the company has been in discussions with existing flight training device providers for several years and plans to issue a request for information, followed by an RFP to select its first training provider partner.

The intention is to start with at least two full-flight simulators at its Long Beach facility to train the initial cadre of pilots, including JetZero and FAA pilots, as well as training centre pilots and examiners. Simulator facility planning has already taken place at Long Beach and Greensboro.

The requirement could grow significantly. JetZero intends to ramp production over five years to 20 aircraft per month. Using what Davis described as a ballpark assumption of one simulator for every 100 aircraft, she estimated that around two to two-and-a-half simulators a year could ultimately need to be added by airlines or training providers as the fleet grows.

Developing simulation before the production aircraft is flying also means working with an evolving aerodynamic database. JetZero has generated its current model using computational fluid dynamics and validated it through wind tunnel testing.

“Until you're flying the airplane, the aero database isn't validated,” Davis said, adding that the company would continue refining the model and providing simulator providers with the latest updates.

Digital From the Beginning

Starting with a clean-sheet aircraft also gives JetZero an opportunity to rethink how information is delivered to pilots.

Davis said existing aircraft were originally designed around paper checklists, which were subsequently transferred onto screens. JetZero wants to take a more digitally native approach to its documentation, training, operating manual and Quick Reference Handbook.

That does not currently extend to AI in certified avionics. Davis said there are no plans to use AI there, although she sees possible applications elsewhere, including generating test points and helping create first drafts of documentation.

For all the novelty of the blended wing configuration, the recurring theme is therefore familiarity. JetZero is designing the Z4 to work within existing aviation infrastructure and procedures – and wants the same principle to apply to the pilots who will fly it.

Davis hopes to earn a Z4 type rating herself. But she has no ambition to be its experimental test pilot. Her test is simpler: “If I can fly it, Joe and Jill line pilot can fly it.”