Samy Libsig is one of the founders of the sport aircraft startup eXalt Aircraft Inc. eXalt currently comprises a team of three engineers that are bringing a unique combination of fresh design thinking and engineering experience to the world of sport airplanes. The vision of eXalt is to turn the sky into a playground with an aircraft that puts the pilot’s flying experience in the foreground. This means an aircraft which is fun to fly, economical, maintenance friendly, and environmentally sustainable.

Looking at the sport aircraft market, it is easy to notice that aircraft designs haven’t evolved appreciably over the last couple of decades. This is probably for a good reason given that the laws of flying are obviously unchanged, and the design principles that worked in the past, are still valid today. But what is particularly fascinating is the manner in which eXalt Aircraft are using proven aerospace technologies and recombining them in novel ways to design an entirely modern aircraft. The result is an airplane that does not feature all of the most recent bells and whistles—just for the sake of using cutting-edge technology—but instead features a pragmatic design where each component has been carefully chosen to serve the company’s vision of maximising the pilot experience. As you will hear in this episode, one of the best examples of this is eXalt’s choice of a reinforced spaceframe design over an arguably lighter monocoque design. In this episode of the podcast, Samy and I talk about:

• the origins of eXalt
• their particular design philosophy
• some of the key design choices they have made
• and the near future of the company

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