RockShox Flight Attendant is smarter now than ever before. Not content with monitoring the bike’s behaviour, the new update learns how you ride and adjusts the suspension damping automatically. It’s a brave new world out there mountain bikers, but the big question for us is, does it help me ride harder and faster?

Back in 2021 when we first reviewed RockShox Flight Attendant, the system ‘just’ measured the bike’s angle and acceleration, its suspension movements and how fast you were pedalling it. It then fed that into a control unit on the fork and that determined how to adjust the fork and shock damping.

Quarq’s Dub Power Meter takes RockShox Flight Attendant onto another level, with one more really important data stream added

It still does this, and you can still get it with a simple power meter, but times have changed. The system I’m testing here and the one I reviewed Merida’s One-Sixty 10K Flight Attendant takes it truly into the AI space though, thanks to Quarq’s Dub Power Meter. It can now personalise the damping bias between support modes, after running it through RockShox’ Adaptive Ride Dynamics brain.

What else is new?

When Flight Attendant first came out there was no RockShox Charger 3.1 damper. The latest update introduces Flight Attendant to forks and shocks that come with the new damper: the Zeb Ultimate, Lyrik Ultimate and Pike Ultimate forks, and Super Deluxe Ultimate, Vivid Ultimate and Vivid Coil Ultimate shocks.

RockShox has squeezed its new Charger 3.1 here into the latest Flight Attendant application

My review of the RockShox Zeb Ultimate with its 3.1 Charger damper is one of improved sensitivity, smoother off-the-top and more responsive when absorbing repeated hits than previously. That said, adding an automatic damping adjustment circuit to the whole thing – Flight Attendant – is arguably more useful now than ever.

How does Flight Attendant work?

Flight Attendant’s foundation is an algorithm that learns and adapts from collective rider data. It also responds to live inputs like whether you are pedalling or not, what angle the bike is at and the bump forces being fed into the dampers. Sensors in both the fork and shock and a cadence sensor or power meter in the crank feed this information into the system’s main control module behind the right fork leg.

RockShox Flight Attendant’s brain is on the fork crown, signals arrive here wirelessly from the bike’s sensors, before the algo works out which damping mode to use

Flight Attendant uses gyroscopes to work out the pitch of the terrain, accelerometers to measure bump forces and frequency coming up from the ground, and pedalling cadence. This latter part is more sophisticated in the latest iterations of the software, and this is where the Adaptive Ride Dynamics machine learning comes in.

Adaptive Ride Dynamics records data from your previous rides and figures out your Effort Zones, of which there are four – sprint, high, medium and low.. It then uses this as another data stream to decide which damping mode to choose from (more on this in a minute). In short though, if the algo detects you’re sprinting it tends towards pedalling efficiency, but if it thinks you’re in a low effort zone it’s more likely to open up the shock and fork.

The system communicates between components using SRAM’s AXS wireless radio protocol, which can implement changes and make decisions in milliseconds. In my experience it isn’t always quite as fast as that on the trails, but Flight Attendant does seem to make meaningful changes roughly when you want it to. And it never, ever leaves you hanging – locked out when you want your suspension open to munch bumps.

There are three possible settings – open, pedal and lock – with Flight Attendant switching instantly between them

Open, Pedal and Lock

Flight Attendant doesn’t infinitely adjust damping inside the shock or fork, but cycles between three low-speed compression modes called Open, Pedal and Lock. Open has maximum suspension travel to absorb heavy impacts and jumps. Pedal is a compromise between reacting to bumps and moderate stiffness for powerful pedalling. And Lock offers maximum efficiency and minimum ride comfort.

I could set the Bias Adjust or the balance of how these modes interact in the AXS app and also on the fork itself. Increasing the bias (the range is -2 to +2) tells Flight Attendant to focus on pedalling efficiency and switch more readily into ‘Pedal’ or ‘Lock’ whenever possible: Conversely, reducing it tells it to stay in fully open mode more frequently and for longer.

I could also override the automatic decision making and toggle through modes manually like a very posh remote lock out. I found there’s really no need to do that though, outside of something like messing about on a pump track, because the latest system simply never gets it wrong on the trails. Auto Flight Attendant also means my fork and shock can be controlled independently of each other by the Control Unit, which is something I can’t really do manually.

Fox Live Valve Neo defaults to the closed position, while Flight Attendant flips that to be always open when resting

The damping always defaults to Open when coasting, so the suspension is never locked for descending or absorbing obstacles with my cranks level. Interestingly that’s the exact opposite of Fox’s latest Live Valve Neo, which remains closed unless it senses an impact.

Flight Attendant also opens if something goes wrong with the system out on the trail, like a battery or communication failure, and enters Safe mode.

Inside the fork and shock, the high-speed compression damping is fixed, while rebound damping is also set manually and in the usual way – it’s also fixed while riding. Low speed compression damping on the shock and fork are both adjustable in the AXS app or fork control unit, however. I can also add or remove volume spacers like on a regular bike.

Flight Attendant is now much easier to setup, thanks to the app, which also keeps track of your battery levels

Performance

SRAM’s AXS app is pretty well designed and logical, but initial pairing of all the components, doing firmware updates and calibrating Flight Attendant was a minor faff. I got my test bike from Merida at the EX Enduro on race morning, and just rode it completely stock. In a field with no phone signal, I didn’t have time to start drilling into settings and messing about with updates

In the default settings, the whole system works remarkably well in full auto mode for racing on slightly flatter trails. But one thing many riders might do straight away is dial down the stock low speed compression settings, because they default to almost the middle of the damping range at both ends. That’s too much in my opinion.

I ended up reducing the fork settings from seven to two, and the shock from seven to three. And because I essentially have an electronic automatic pedalling platform, I could optimise the default damping for how I want it on the downhills. There’s no need to run a compromised set-up for all-round performance, which is pretty cool.

The Quarc Dub Power Meter ran out of batteries at one point, but the system runs fine without it

Updating the app and all the firmware, trying to get the ecosystem to play nicely with each part of it, and setting up isn’t always a smooth process you can do in five minutes at the car park. The separate parts occasionally need re-pairing or re-calibrating. And the AAA lithium battery on the Quarc Dub Power Meter also ended up running low, and stopped the Adaptive Ride Dynamics part of the system working for a few rides.

Flight Attendant is pretty much seamless in actuation and speed, it switches quickly enough to the different modes to be right pretty much all the time, with no nasty surprises like locking up as you go into a jump. It’s much simpler than any mere lockout though, and it’s really effective at eeking out speed and taking advantage of smooth parts of a descent – parts where you’d never have time to lock the shock out manually.

Get on the pedals again and Flight Attendant will firm the bike up and help you pump the downslope