2023 Rockshox Flight Attendant

The first time I was in an airplane, in the late 80’s, my mom and I were flying to the Mediterranean coast to meet my father for vacation. He had driven a rental car down a few days earlier. Our family's 1972 VW Beetle 1303S, wasn't ideal for long trips. Ours was not very well maintained either. That's what you get when you don’t know how to fix german cars and can’t afford to take it in for the service.

My dad kept a rainbow umbrella permanently in the frunk along with a boat-load of spare engine parts that he wouldn't even know how to patch together. He decided to leave the bug safe at home in the scorching Turkish sun and not risk having it overheat while crossing the Toros Mountains.

It was my mom's second or third flight and she was visibly uneasy as we boarded the big beige 737 operated by Turkish Airlines, but I was excited. It was a rather luxurious experience from the moment we arrived at the airport. Pilots, passengers and the Flight Attendants were all decked out in the finest uniforms. I was about 6 or 7 years old, wearing short shorts and a Mickey Mouse t-shirt. I am much older and wiser and sophisticated now and wear clothes that say cool words like Mons and TLD and shit..

Obviously I was the ideal candidate for the extremely sophisticated Canyon Spectral:ON CFR LTD with Rockshox’ new Flight Attendant suspension platform, with a 150mm Lyrik and 155mm Super Deluxe controlling the bike.

Flight Attendant is a new-ish product integration from RockShox after a gargantuan R&D project with many athletes over 3 years. The idea is simple, on paper at least; change the damping characteristics of the Fork and Shock with the input from a crank-based pedaling sensor and a fork-based impact sensor. The system is controlled automatically with servos that run on regular AXS batteries. They determine which of the 3 modes the suspension should be in; Open, Pedal and Locked.

The theory is, all you have to do is concentrate on riding while the system will take care of the rest. An automation of this magnitude has been attempted before with less than ideal results. Fox’s live valve has fallen short in principle and execution. The reaction times are slow and the battery packs are bulky and vulnerable. Rockshox has definitely refined the form factor of the Flight Attendant to feel stock, unobtrusive and like it has been there all along. My concern about the challenge of dissecting a complicated new system related to its eMTB host. Thankfully the results were rather obvious quite early on.

SETUP

Did I charge all the batteries? Was the first question that popped in my head. Once all four batteries were electrified and in place, I was ready to tackle the array of blinky coloured lights that were trying to communicate certain important information to me, incessantly. Oh no... Am I going to be angry at a bunch of lights on my bike now? Turns out there is a "Dark Mode" that dims the lights on the fork for more zen experience.

Currently, the Flight Attendant system is available on ZEB and Lyrik forks and Super Deluxe Air Shocks. The damper is the last generation Charger 2.1 with bladder IFP instead of the current Charger 3 platform with the spring IFP. You do get the Buttercups at the bottom of the lowers where the air and damper shaft connect for amazing small bump sensitivity. You also get the new lowers with air bleed valves for releasing the trapped air that will make the fork less sensitive. The Canyon Spectral:ON is a 155mm rear wheel travel bike and the 150mm Lyrik Flight Attendant may be a slight mismatch, but I will dive deeper into that on the bike review.

Setting up the suspension starts off with sag which is set up traditionally. I measure my rear sag sitting down, which gives me more consistent results than trying to find my “attack” position. I opted for 30% sag on the rear shock seated which will equal 28% or so sag standing up. On the Lyrik, I settled on a 20% sag to keep me higher in the travel as It has 20 mm less travel than what's on my daily driver.

CALIBRATION

There are 2 kinds of people in the world, those that read manuals and and those that fail at setup and go back and read the manual as they should have in the first place. It's not hard to figure out which category I fell into for the calibration process. In my defence, there were a couple of pieces of information missing from the manual that required some digging to figure out. Since then, the AXS App and the manuals have been improved. The idea is simple; pair all the AXS components on the bike into a system and then start your calibration. Which means, that starting at the fork, you will hold the pairing button until it blinks slowly and then go through all the AXS buttons to add them to the fork. Fork, shock, shifter, reverb, reverb controller, pedal sensor and rear derailleur all have to be woken up and added before any of the components go to sleep. You don’t have much time to get the sequence right. This took a few tries to accomplish as I forgot a button each go around. It was mildly frustrating but without this, the fork will not calibrate and the system will never go into Auto mode. It is also worth mentioning that the Spectral:On I received being an early edition, did not get the Flight attendant controller paddle on the left. Instead I got the Reverb only controller which wouldn’t allow me to manually override the flight attendant automatic setting. I sure would have liked to.

Once Calibrated, the 150mm Lyrik informs me of its state in LED lights that blink at certain frequencies. A Slow pulsing Green glow tells me we are in Auto mode. Out of 5 lights, 3 of them are clearly marked Open-Pedal-Lock. When the bike is stationary, the system is ready and Open. I briefly wonder if my settings are even within the ballpark or if it is going to take a ton of time to set up. I am less worried about efficiency as the Bike underneath me boasts a 900Wh Battery and an 80Nm Shimano Motor. A powerhouse like that will erase lots of impurities and setup problems.

I remain unsure if this is the ideal platform to test an electronic suspension controller but I raise the saddle and go for a pedal. The whirr of the FA is similar to the mating call of the AXS derailleur and there is a fancy XX1 on the tail end of this rig. I sure hope I don’t rip it clean off; no mtb photographer’s income can replace that. The beast jumps out of its cage and hits the road at speed. The cranks keep turning and as long as they are, The FA will decide if the suspension is worth locking up partially and/or fully. The split state mode allows for individual control of the Fork and the shock. This means there are situations where the shock can be in Pedal/fork can be in Open or shock in Lock/fork in Pedal mode.

There is the tendency to leave the fork in a less restricted mode than the shock. On a pedal bike, I like this train of thought. The fork never needs to be locked in my opinion, at least not on a longer travel bike. Let the front dive into travel and stiffen up the rear for pedaling. On the eMTB however, I am not so sure if I like that. I may want different things... This is not a human-only powered contraption and the riding nuances are quite different.

When I did the BCBR Megavolt in late Spring last year, I was on a 160mm Travel Orbea eMTB with Fox suspension. The entirety of the ride was in wet conditions on slick trails. The active suspension was necessary to generate as much traction as possible so I set the BIAS on the new FA to -2 to engage a more open state in the suspension. The BIAS setting is represented with the Magenta LEDs have a 5 step range from -2 to +2.

This allows the system to take the input from the cranks and the Fork to decide what mode to stay in. The crank sensor is crucial to the system’s decisions. If the cranks are not spinning, there is very little reason for the suspension to stay locked. But If you have been pedaling for extended periods on tarmac, and the system is locked, you won’t be able to override it just by pushing into the bike to preload for a jump off the curb, which makes jibbing and playing a little more difficult on the way to the trail.

Is the Flight Attendant just like the real thing? All business no play? I find flying hosts to be quite friendly most of the time but they never break into an impromptu dance-off. As long as I sit in my seat and don’t make a massive mess, they have reliably supplied me with food and refreshments on all my flights. The Rockshox FA is no different; it gets the suspension settings done the right way, as long as you play it by its rules.

I quite like being able to see your compression settings by looking at the lights at a quick glance. I wish there was more information put out about rebound settings too.

Unlike an intercontinental flight, things happen quite quickly and abruptly on eMTB rides. There are quick repetitive hits on the climbs as you charge at them with 3-4 times the speed you would on your pedal bike. This means the suspension needs to act and react quickly enough to provide traction to the rear wheel. At speeds of 20km/h, the time it takes for the rear wheel to go over the same obstacle the front wheel has gone over is quite short. First the system needs to decide if the last 10 seconds of the trail you have been riding was smooth or bumpy, then it needs to decide if your bump into the obstacle was big enough to warrant an open suspension or locked.

On a long travel Enduro bike, the time it takes for the wheels to go over the same root are much longer than on an eMTB, so there is ample time for the body and suspension to prepare for the forward propulsion that needs to happen for optimal rear wheel traction over a greasy root. I found the reaction time for the FA system to be a touch on the slow side to fully open by the time the rear wheel touches the bump. A locked out 50 lb ebike in Boost mode cannot generate enough traction in situations like this and it cost me a few technical climbs because of the delay. I think the system would work exceptionally well on pedal bikes but perhaps it's not yet ideal for eMTBs.

On the descents however, the Flight Attendant stayed open quite well and out of the way. There were no unwanted lockouts on flowy jump trails and the Lyrik/Super Deluxe-Combo is an absolute bump eater. I even took the big E-MTB to the Whistler Bike Park to chase fast EWS riders around all day with heavy camera gear. The platform was unbelievable on the A-Line and Freight Train jumps and there were no braking bumps to bother the heavy, stable and hella-plush chassis of the Canyon Spectral:ON

At the end of the day I noticed a loss in rebound damping and a solid coating of oil on my front wheel which was caused by a missing rebound knob on the Lyrik. This knob not only adjusts your rebound but also acts as a seal to the system. With every compression, oil spurted out of the legs and onto my front wheel. This was less than ideal but was remedied rapidly by the SRAM guys on site. A fresh knob and a rebuild later, I was up and running in no time considering unlike previous years, SRAM was not running Tech service at Crankworx 2022. Kudos to them for getting me sorted out in no time.

As a little easter egg, they pushed my Lyrik to 160mm travel and changed the game completely for the Canyon tester. I will also talk about that in the bike review.

What's the verdict?

It's hard not to be impressed by the Flight Attendant's tech wizardry. It works as advertised and battery life is quite long. I seldom charged the batteries in the system and could easily get 15 hours of ride time on a single charge. This is about half as long as an AXS derailleur but the dampers work twice as much. The idea of keeping 4 batteries charged all the time is overwhelming however. If SRAM made a 2 or 4 battery charger unit, it would be very handy for this household. I once rode with no batteries on the fork and shock and left the system off for a more "pure" experience. It went exactly how thought it would; excellently. I really don't think the eMTB is the best place for this system, at least not yet. Put one on an Enduro Sled and I may change my tune. Perhaps more fork integrations are on the way too. The SID, for example, is definitely worthy of Flight Attendant status.

However, unless your bike comes with one, you need the correct frame for Flight Attendant Compatibility. Trek Slash, YT Capra, Canyon frames and possibly the Specialized Enduro will accept the bulk of the shock and the fork but I couldn't fit the shock on the Orbea Rallon that's my daily driver.

2899 CAD is also a hefty sum for a toy like this if you are not sure if you'll actually need it. You get a Fork, Shock, Crank Sensor and Batteries for that money.

I would also want a few more features. The high speed compression adjustment being one and rebound compression setting information being another.

Even without the roboty bits, the 2023 Rockshox suspension is a fantastic option to consider. From Buttercups to hydraulic bottom out controls, the fork and shock perform in line with the very best. I'd be curious to see if there will be any firmware updates to the Flight Attendant to change a couple of parameters for E-MTBs or tweak some features.

Rockshox Flight Attendant