International Air Tattoo 2024 theme resonates with AERALIS

Aeralis will once again be welcoming guests to its chalet on the flightline of the Royal International Air Tattoo in July at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire.

Bristol-based Aeralis is blazing a trail in defence aviation – aiming to transform the sector using open-architecture, digital aircraft design as part of building a pioneering, modular light jet system able to commoditise the economics of air force fleets.

Each year, the Air Tattoo designates a number of themes, which influence the aircraft types on display and provides focus for industry discussion. The main theme of this year’s show is especially relevant to Aeralis’ mission: ‘Pushing the Boundaries in Air and Space’.

The Air Tattoo explains: “Our main theme will highlight the important work of Flight Test & Evaluation in modern aviation, looking back at 100 years of British military test flying.”

The advancing complexity of aircraft design – in hardware and software – and the essential need to deliver a demonstrably safe and airworthy aircraft are almost in conflict, Aeralis said. Where broadly a quarter of a programme cost would have been aligned to certification, this is now more like three quarters, with increasing pressures to accelerate time-to-front line of new and more potent capabilities.

Anton Burford, Aeralis Capability Director, said: “If the aerospace industry doesn’t address the way in which certification is achieved, it will perpetuate cumbersome, complex and tim consuming ways of working that do not add to the safety of the product but simply increase time and cost. AERALIS is breaking that cycle with AERSIDE.”

AERSIDE (AERALIS Smart Integrated Digital Enterprise) and the interlinked, complex synthetic environment that we are creating within it, are enabling us to test infinitely more scenarios in the digital world, long before a pilot needs to slide on a G-suit; the physical prototyping and flight test campaign that will follow will serve as real-world validation of the digital simulations – and not as a primary means of proving the aircraft is safe and airworthy.

Aeralis' engagement with regulators in the development phase of our programme has enabled us to build their requirements into the system and provide authorities with a direct interface to the ‘single digital truth’ in AERSIDE itself, enabling a level of collaboration and efficiency in certification not seen before.

Anton added: “The shape of flight test and evaluation is changing and necessarily so, to a safer, faster, more thorough and efficient methodology, enabled by groundbreaking digital endeavours like AERSIDE.”