The most expensive place to discover an aircraft problem is in the air. That is the value-proposition of FLYTO, a South Korean aviation-simulation startup building tools for drones, eVTOL aircraft, and other emerging designs. The company wants engineers to uncover more problems in simulation before committing a physical aircraft to a costly flight-test program. We recently talked on a video-call while I was in Seoul to discuss their company’s technology, product and objectives.
Hubert Nguyen, co-founder, Ubergizmo, in a video-call with FlyTo while in Incheon Startup Park, South Korea
FLYTO’s approach starts with real flight data. Its publicly described (Link in Korean language) VeriAero product is a high-precision flight-data acquisition unit, not the name of the broader platform. According to the company, the device collects information such as speed, attitude, altitude, control inputs, engine status, and aircraft response. That data can then feed a flight-physics model and a 3D digital environment representing terrain, cities, airports, or vertiports.
The goal is not to make a pretty virtual aircraft. It is to create a model useful enough to test a specific aircraft’s behavior across conditions that are expensive, unsafe, or simply difficult to reproduce in the real world. FLYTO says developers can repeatedly simulate weather changes, urban low-altitude operations, route deviations, vertiport approaches, control delays, and emergencies before running a real flight campaign.
That problem is becoming more important as aircraft designs become more unconventional. Advanced air mobility includes aircraft that are often electrically powered, highly automated, and capable of vertical takeoff and landing. They may need to operate around conventional aircraft, airports, new vertiports, dense urban areas, and changing weather. The FAA is still building the operating framework for this category, while also working with industry on simulations of how eVTOL aircraft could share airspace and airport facilities with traditional aviation.
Simulation is therefore part of how the industry will explore operational problems before putting people and hardware at risk. But a digital twin does not certify an aircraft, and it does not replace real-world testing. The FAA’s certification process can include simulation as part of an agreed method of demonstrating compliance, but it also requires engineering data, safety assessments, inspections, ground testing, and extensive flight testing.
FLYTO does not need to eliminate physical flight testing. It needs to help aircraft developers arrive at it faster, with better models, better scenario coverage, and lower costs.
The company’s lead is its experience delivering aviation-training simulators in Korea. FLYTO has already supplied training simulators to aviation-education institutions and delivered a Boeing 737NG maintenance simulator. That shows an ability to build and deploy simulator hardware.
The startup also recently announced a Pre-A investment led by The Wells Investment through a fund operated with MYSC. FLYTO said it would use the funding to improve its aircraft physics and dynamics models, expand emergency and operating scenarios, and commercialize its aviation and UAM validation platform. That is a meaningful milestone, although the announcement did not disclose the investment amount.
The business model follows a familiar hardware-to-software path. Simulators and data-collection equipment can give FLYTO a foothold with aviation customers. The larger ambition is to turn the resulting flight data, calibrated models, scenario libraries, and validation records into a repeatable software-and-services business.
FLYTO’s potential advantage is the closed loop between real flight data and repeatable validation: capture the behavior of a particular aircraft, model it, stress-test it virtually, and organize the results into evidence a developer can re-use.
To me, the next step would be a named aircraft-development customer and a documented case showing that its model closely tracked real flight behavior. It should be able to show an issue found in simulation, explain how that changed a design or test plan, and demonstrate how much real-world testing the customer avoided or improved. Future aircraft will still have to fly. FLYTO is betting they should fail on a screen first.
Filed in . Read more about Flight Simulators, Incheon Startup Park, Korea, Seoul and Startups.