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If the future of flight was to be on aircraft that were a hybrid of fixed-wing and rotary-wing (for example the Osprey), assuming they had similar technical abilities and the same number of flight hours, who would have an easier time flying an Osprey?

Or to put it another way, is the Osprey closer to a plane or to a helicopter?

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The Osprey is closer to a helicopter and if I was going to chose from a fixed wing pilot or rotary pilot to train on it I'd choose the rotary pilot. The rotary wing physical skill set is so much more demanding than the fixed wing one. A helicopter pilot could master fixed wing cruising flight in the Osprey far easier than a fixed wing pilot could master hovering the Osprey (you can pretty much train a monkey to fly an airplane in cruising flight - airplane physical demands are mostly when you slow down).

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  • $\begingroup$ The Marine Corps shares your opinion, drawing Osprey pilots from the ranks of helicopter trained aircrew. $\endgroup$
    – Michael Hall
    Commented Jun 27, 2020 at 23:24
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I believe the FAA considers the Osprey or the AW-609 to be a powered lift category aircraft per §1.1. Therefore if you were an Osprey pilot and you completed the conversion of your military pilot certificate and ratings, you would hold an FAA commercial certificate in the powered lift category and class with an instrument powered lift rating. Given that your primary flight training (if you’re former USAF/USN) was in airplanes, they may add airplane single engine land as well with an instrument airplane rating too.

If the FAA’s policy stands, powered lift is a hybrid of airplane and rotorcraft helicopter aircraft but so different that the FAA considers it to be its own category and requires meeting the aeronautical experience requirements and passing a practical exam before being able to serve as PIC in such an aircraft.

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Generally, in my opinion a vehicle like ospery is resembling an aircraft charateristic more than a helicopter.

From the flight physics perspective, ospery is behaving "completely" like an aircraft in most of its flight time (cruise phase), while at take-off and landing, the vehicle is operating in a "similar" manner to a helicopter. For example, most of helicopters use their tail rotor for providing directional contol, while ospery does not have any tail rotor. A helicopter uses its primary rotors for vertival, longitudinal and lateral movements, while ospery uses them only for the vertical and longitudinal motions. For this reason, it seems different skills than flying a helicopter are required to be able to land an ospery.

Generally, I think the capability of landing or taking off vertically would not essentially make it a helicopter, as nobody considers the F-35B (the USMC version) as a helicopter. But, I acknowledge that the rotors may be misleading in the ospery case.

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  • $\begingroup$ I don't know enough about osprey to give a reasoned answer, but helicopters have many configurations, and only 1 of those involves a tail rotor. [Assuming in hover mode it behaves similar to a Chinook.] $\endgroup$
    – wanna-beCanadianPilot
    Commented Dec 24, 2018 at 5:55
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    $\begingroup$ @wanna-beCanadianPilot Actually, I meant the small vetrically placed rotors at the end of the tail boom. This configuration seems to be most used one among the helicopters, while a minority have used other configurations such as tandem-rotor (such as CH-47 chinook) and coaxial rotors (such as Ka-52). $\endgroup$
    – JetSonic
    Commented Dec 24, 2018 at 14:21

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