A Vision
Aria Aerospace was built out of necessity, and exists today because of an unquenchable desire for excellence. This translates to an ever-accelerating drive to design and produce
"the greatest aerospace components in the world."
-Andrew Chapin. Founder of Aria
The Founder
Andrew Chapin wakes up every morning to a single thought: "In what way will I improve something about the world today?"
Pursuing mechanical engineering with a relentless passion for business, Andrew Chapin holds without doubt that the world of the future will be built upon what we can accomplish today.
An Inspiration
Shortly after turning 16, Andrew Chapin toured the Icon Aircraft production with a close friend who was there purchasing his first plane. He immediately fell in love with the precise and beautiful manufacture of the high-end sports planes. It was "a perfect display of mating engineering and art in a playful business."
Birthing Aria
Shortly after purchase, the new Icon owner encountered a startling awakening. Waterlanding on a cold Northern morning caused a blinding level of fog to envelop the cabin and caused a near miss with a mountain on his way out of the secluded lake. After hearing this, Chapin developed the first Aria product, the Aria Defrost Kit.
Shooting for the Stars
The next chapter in the intertwined destiny of Aria and Andrew Chapin is still being written. The latest mass market release for Aria Aerospace is the Cirrus Starlink, allowing pilots to be consistently connected to the world which they survey.
Is Starlink the Next Seatbelt?
In 1958, my grandfather attended a demolition derby with his good friend and was amazed how the drivers were able to walk away from their horrific wrecks relatively unscathed. That very night, he was able to convince his mother and father to install safety belts, a novelty then, in their family car. Within three weeks, my great-grandparents were T-boned at an intersection by their farm and would have both been paralyzed without their new seatbelts. What was considered a luxury in those days became federal law by 1968, and countless lives have been saved since.
In air travel, the first federal seatbelt regulations were introduced in 1926 to prevent dislocation during turbulence. Fast-forward almost 100 years later, and innovations continue to save lives in aviation, from BRS parachutes to advanced digital information displays. Companies have emerged that provide these systems to OEMs as well as retrofit kits, and as a result these features are slowly becoming industry standard.
If our aircraft are to follow the path of technological innovation we have witnessed through the last hundred years, it only seems natural that our safety technology should progress from the mechanical to the computational. But what next? If we examine our tech history, the next step is inevitably one of network-capable aircraft. Much like our phones transitioning from switchboard operators to cellular connections to high-speed Wi-Fi capable miracles of engineering, why shouldn’t our aircraft safety follow the same trend?
How does Wi-Fi save lives?
The most common use case by far is weather. Nature is a fickle creature, and her changing moods can be deadly for pilots without access to real-time weather and route data. Beyond weather, the ability to call or troubleshoot with full internet access during a mechanical or medical emergency is a game changer. What is the light blinking for? Why does this feel loose? Is this a normal feeling? Look it up.
Fortunately, many are already adapting to the future. United Airlines recently announced an accelerated timeline to install Starlink Wi-Fi systems in every one of their regional carriers by the end of 2025. It’s not just airlines though; I spoke to a flight school in the Midwest just last week that had decided to install Starlinks in each of their planes. “The safety benefits are just indisputable. We jumped on it as soon as we could, especially with the cost being fairly low.” I am personally confident that any flight school without Starlink capabilities in its training aircraft will be looked upon as miserly and risky within three to five years.
My company, Aria Aerospace, was founded on the hallmark of aircraft safety, with our first product being a defrost system that improved visibility during amphibious takeoffs. With our Starlink line, we are fully convinced that the future of aircraft safety is Starlink connectivity. Our goal is saving lives, one connection at a time.
- Andrew Chapin
Founder of Aria Aerospace