RockShox Flight Attendant: What is it, what does it do?
The eagle-eyed amongst you might have seen Nino Schurter running (and winning with) some spicey suspension in 2023. Well, it’s finally released and the crew at RockShox are frothing about it. So what is it and what does it do?…
Flight Attendant is an electronic suspension system that automatically and instantaneously optimizes your suspension damping to maximize performance. Based on the AXS ecosystem that gathers and processes huge amounts of data every split-second, Flight Attendant then analyzes the information and tweaks suspension settings accordingly.
Basically, through the AXS ecosystem, all the AXS-enabled components on the bike – fork, shock, power meter, derailleur and dropper post – are connected, listening and learning. Flight Attendant then uses this intel to make real-time decisions on what the best suspension settings are, and switches modes for you.
The Flight Attendant fork and shock have three damping positions, namely Open, Pedal and Lock. Open is for big hits and rocky, rooty sections. Pedal is a supportive mode offering optimal traction and Lock is the maximum efficiency mode.
There’s also a Bias Adjust in the system, so you’ll be able to fine-tune how Flight Attendant reacts – you can set it to favor the Open position or the Lock position. That’s very cool, but how about these apples; it also has a tool that enables the algorithm to learn how you ride so it can continuously personalize your suspension. They are calling this Adaptive Ride Dynamics, which is a smart functionality that compiles data from your previous rides to more precisely calculate your personalized Effort Zones – basically Flight Attendant will recognize when you are at a low effort, medium effort, high effort or all-out sprint – and keeps tweaking the damping to keep the suspension in the optimum state.
Everything operates from the SRAM AXS app where you’ll build a bike profile, customize your controls, adjust mode settings, view and edit effort zones, check battery status and update the firmware as needed.
By now, you are probably wondering how much faster it will make you. Well, according to RockShox, during their testing sessions, they found that riders went 1.8% faster when using Flight Attendant, as opposed to a manual system. Now, in a 90-minute XC World Cup race, that translates into a 96-second advantage. Depending on where you are in the field, that is significant. Learn more: rockshox.com |