Simpler Way to Fly: How Modern Cockpits Are Changing Aviation

My heart leapt out of my chest when Chris Caputo—the pilot who flew me on Beta Technologies’ all-electric Alia CX300 in June—said two simple words.

“Your controls.”

I visited Beta’s Burlington, Vermont, facilities to cover the manufacturer’s inaugural media day. Fortunately, a quick look around the cockpit was enough to replace my initial apprehension with curiosity—the controls were far more user-friendly than I expected.

The CX300 has a console with a thumb dial to adjust speed and climb rate, digital touchscreen displays, and four-axis joystick for each of the two front seats. Caputo handled maneuvers like takeoff and landing. But the joystick was simple enough—left and right inputs for roll, up and down for pitch—that I felt comfortable taking over for a bit.

Not too long ago, the average cockpit was a menagerie of buttons and switches that posed intimidation. Today, the most streamlined cockpits are closer to the complexity of a car than to the planes of decades past, allowing even someone with zero flight hours to decipher them.

I am not the only person to enter Beta’s facilities without flying experience and leave with time in the sky. The company offers flight training—on its dime—to every employee, from engineers to social media managers. About 700 were learning the ropes as of June, according to Noah Ranallo, who leads Beta’s standards and evaluation for Alia training.

About 35 full- and part-time CFIs—including Ranallo—train employees.Some trainees have graduated to Beta’s CX300 demonstration team. A few have even gone on to fly professionally.

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“Pretty much anywhere you sit at our various different facilities, there’s probably a flight instructor sitting within earshot,” Ranallo said.

Brian Jenkins is one of several CX300 pilots who joined Beta with no flight experience. When he entered the free flight training program, the company’s fleet comprised two or three Cessna 172 Skyhawks with analog gauges and an Enstrom helicopter. It now includes Pipistrel’s Alpha and all-electric Velis Electro, Diamond’s DA-40, and other modern trainers.

“On a nice day, it’s a constant stream of airplanes…sometimes 20, 30, 40 lessons a day,” Jenkins said.

Jenkins, for whom photography comprises about 80 percent of his work at Beta, earned his private pilot certification, instrument rating, commercial certifications for fixed-wing and rotorcraft, and seaplane rating—all within four years. He flies the CX300 about once a week and is also pursuing a CFI rating.

“[The program] would be happening whether or not we were using new airplanes or traditional 172s with round dials,” said Ranallo. “But I think that the modernization of some of the aircraft definitely makes it easier.”

Per FLYING Finance’s 2026 fleet school buyer’s guide, these next-generation trainers are no longer a rarity.

“Top-tier schools are now adopting a 1-to-4 ratio: for every four internal combustion trainers, they operate one Velis Electro,” its analysis found.

How We Got Here

Flight training has come a long way since the era of analog gauges. Ground school videotape courses brought training to the comfort of the student’s home. Headsets became a safety wearable rather than a pilot preference. GPS revolutionized navigation.

Per Jens Hennig, vice president of operations, safety, and security for the General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA), glass cockpits were the most recent technological innovation. Developers introduced glass panel systems for GA aircraft in the early 2000s.

The debate between the FAA and training industry on how to safely introduce glass cockpits spurred a new era of regulatory collaboration. 

Pilots and other non-FAA stakeholders—including Hennig—got a seat at the table and helped create the Airman Certification Standards (ACS), which unified about 80 fragmented practical test standards (PTS).

“It became this wonderful, comprehensive document that really can guide pilot training and introduce risk early on,” Hennig said.

Work on the ACS continued under the aviation rulemaking advisory committee (ARAC). Its members were terminated in 2025, but not before the FAA incorporated ACS documents into Part 61 regulations. The agency has put out a call for new ARAC members, and Hennig said the industry is keen to reestablish it.

The FAA also continues to foster new flight training tools such as virtual reality, which a handful of entities have been qualified to use for training. More changes are on the horizon.

Looking Ahead

With the ACS, instructors can prepare students for a wide range of certifications covering all kinds of aircraft and operations.

All of Beta’s pilots are trained in-house at their own pace under Part 61 instruction. The training fleet in Burlington comprises five Velis Electros, four Alphas, the Skyhawk and DA-40, and a Cessna 182. It also has several tailwheel aircraft, including the Piper Clipper and Cub and an Aviat Husky A-1A that is equipped with amphibious floats in the summer.

Jenkins said he flies whenever he can, such as between Beta’s facilities in Burlington and Plattsburgh. In addition to CX300 demonstrations in the U.S. and Scotland, he said he has flown “pretty much everything that we own.” In particular, he enjoys helicopters and the Husky floatplane.

“You get to really experience all different types of aircraft,” Jenkins said. “It really makes you a better pilot being exposed to all these different aircraft.”

The shift from round dials to glass cockpits has made it easier for Beta to put hundreds of employees through training. New manufacturing standards under the FAA’s Modernization of Special Airworthiness Certification (MOSAIC) rule, which took effect in July, could mark the next foundational shift.

“[MOSAIC] will kind of open doors to folks that may not have been able to take the traditional route,” said Ranallo.

The rule’s elimination of the 1,320-pound light sport aircraft (LSA) weight limit will open the category to larger, more capable trainers, such as the Tecnam P-Mentor.

Manufacturers could build models with better useful loads, retractable gear, variable pitch propellers, and other capabilities without the rigors of Part 23 certification. That means flight schools no longer need to pay a premium for aircraft that provide a realistic, full-fuel load for primary training.

Many next-generation trainers use modern Rotax engines that can perform primary training missions with about half the fuel cost of legacy heavyweights like the Skyhawk.

MOSAIC also permits electric powerplants, which could lower costs even more. The Velis Electro, the world’s only type-certified electric trainer, has an estimated hourly operating cost of $7. 

But there are others in development. Hennig said electric motors and batteries are “reaching a level of maturity where they can support the types of missions that flight training lends
itself to.”

FLYING Finance estimates that a school operating a fleet of five efficient, next-generation trainers versus five legacy models saves about $300,000 in fuel costs over a 2,000-hour time between overhauls (TBO) cycle. 

Instructors can use these more efficient assets for pattern work while reserving their older workhorses for advanced IFR training.

“That’s going to make it really cost effective for schools to train people,” Jenkins said.

However, MOSAIC also raises some questions. Hennig said GAMA is seeking more clarity on how simplified flight controls (SFC)—which incorporate higher levels of automation and are also permitted by MOSAIC—could be adopted for training.

“Since nobody has gone through the wickets of clearing a simplified control system, what does it look like in the end?” he asked. “Is [the objective] obtaining a pilot certification in less time? Is it to get the same pilot certification if the workload on the crew is different? Or is it something else?”

The dialogue between the FAA and industry on how to address glass cockpits spanned years. Hennig said there must be similar collaboration around simplified controls.

The agency determined that if a pilot earns their certification on an aircraft with a glass cockpit, they can fly the same model with analog controls without limitation. However, Hennig said that someone transitioning from SFC to analog controls would “certainly need to go through some training.”

The joystick systems on Beta and other manufacturers’ novel air taxis, for example, are a far cry from the controls of decades past.

“What that looks like, I can’t tell you without the specifics,” Henning said. “I don’t even know if there’s a singular answer to the pathway forward.”

Added Ranallo: “Until those [SFC] aircraft enter the flight training market, it’s going to be hard to tell how they’re going to affect folks’ training.”

This feature first appeared in the August Issue 973 of the FLYING print edition.