In our long-term trials of new small-bottle oxygen tanks from Aithre and Aerox, we’re confirming what we suspected early on: You can suck a tank dry pretty quickly. Sure, these compact bottles (as small as 47 liters) aren’t really intended for feeding an entire cabin for hours in the flight levels, but it sure makes sense to maximize the endurance by eliminating waste.
That’s precisely what Aithre set out to do with its Altus AVI8 smart pulse demand portable system, recently announced at AirVenture last summer. The AVI8 joins a growing list of well-engineered cabin biometric products (including compact, lightweight carbon fiber bottles), smart flow accessories and the company’s Connect smartphone app for iOS. Here’s a field report.